Uh Counting

All first year students at my college alma mater are (well, were) required to take a year-long symposium class. The purpose: teach us how to write and speak for the next four years, and hopefully after we graduate. There were different "topics" or "genres" of symposiums that everyone could choose from when registering for classes, created in an attempt to allow students to find something related to their intended major. It was the only class where everyone that was in the first semester was guaranteed to be in the same class during the second semester, so the class of 13 students really got to know each other after a year-long class, during what is usually known as a major personal identification creation year at college. 

Although the topics of the symposiums differed, the core assignments and grading systems were identical. Each semester had one large presentation/report project, that included a week of showing our professor new references for the report, group trips to the library to learn how to find information (using real books, not Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary), practicing the presentation, drafting several versions of the report, and visiting the campus writing department for assistance; basically every OCD aspect involved in writing a really good report was forced down our throat and we were graded on how well we did each step. Grading was actually emphasized on the process of writing rather than the final product itself. 

I'm not writing this to brag about my writing or speaking skills though. You will not see much of the MLA format in any of my posts, and I could really care less about how to properly reference a periodical at the end of my report. Hyperlinking is awesome. 

Something that was drilled into our heads during the speech presentation portions of the class, though, continues to haunt me in my everyday professional life. While practicing and presenting our final presentation, our public speaking skills were dissected by our classmates, then read back to us afterwards. It was very humbling, and embarrassing, but also very, very informative. Each classmate was assigned to record certain habits that you have while presenting:

Looking at the audience. 

Shuffling your feet. 

Biting your lip. 

Posture.

Your wardrobe.

Fidgeting. 

I still do this mentally during presentations at work or during conferences. It's a terrible habit, and I usually leave conferences that aren't particularly applicable to what I do with nothing but criticisms on the speakers' public speaking habits, rather than being able to discuss any substance of the presentation itself. 

One mannerism in particular haunts me the most though: the "Uh/Um" counter. To this day, if anyone mutters just one "Uh" or "Um" during their speech, I instantly mark it down on the closest piece of paper. 

I'm not sure what drives me more insane; the Uh's and Um's coming from the speaker, or the fact that I can't look past them and focus solely on them. It's like hearing a ceiling fan click at every rotation, and as soon as you realize it and start to listen to it, you can't tune it out and it drives you batty. The ticking of clocks is the same way. I've actually disarmed clocks from their batteries/electrical supply in public places due to incessant ticking. 

During the last year or two, I have been able to suppress the urge to physically mark each Uh and Um down, but I still count mentally, marking the start time on my watch and counting for a minute. Then using that number and averaging it out over the duration of the speech to get a rough estimate of the number of stalls the speaker input into their speech. I've sometimes resorted to the manual heart rate method of counting for 6 seconds, then multiplying by 10 to get the bpm (upm in this case), but if the speaker is an Uh Extender, meaning they say "Uhhhhh" rather than "Uh," then the results are skewed because just one "Uhhhhh" can take a second or two, not leaving enough time for another "Uhhhhh." 

It's very scientific. Trust me. 

So, yesterday, we had a MD come into our office to present to us research that he's been doing for a few years. His presentation was a voluntary portion of his job interview actually, so it was a rather unorthodox way of saying I want the job. The effectiveness is yet to be determined, as he actually hasn't been offered the job yet, but when my manager comes to me asking what I thought of the presentation, this is all I can say:

Yep. The presentation was littered with them. And not just the occasional-beer-bottle-in-the-ditch litter. We're talking WALL-E littered.

Note the start and finish times at the top. His speech wasn't just 4 minutes and 40 seconds long. I was actually intrigued with his presentation, and thought I was making progress with my...condition. But after he lost me on a graphic slide, I instantly started to focus on his slightly southern US drawl during his extended, and sometimes medially inserted Uhhs. I tried so hard to resist the tick marks, but finally gave in, checked my watch, and began the Uh seismograph. 

86 Uhhs in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. It has to be a record. That's one "Uhh" every 3.25 seconds. When considering that each Uhh, on average, lasted about a half a second to just under one second (for practical purposes, we'll say 3/4 of a second), he only presented actual substance for about 77 to 85 percent of his time slot. Take away the dead air that occurred every time he tried switching slides (another 2 to 3 seconds per slide, for about 20 slides), and that's another minute out of his presentation that could have been filled with information. His presentation started at approximately 2:03, and the Q and A portion started at 2:42, giving him 39 minutes of presenting time. Take away the Uhhs, slide switches, and an occasional reading mishap, one can end up with about 28 minutes of actual presentation.

Over 1/4 of his presentation was lost to all of us. Time which we'll never get back. 

And time where he might have wished he had spent preparing a presentation that was actually applicable to what we are researching at our company.

As if I make time for this one...

I've started another blog. I've been neglecting this one for a long time, I know, but I don't really have a direction for it yet. 

I'm one of those people that start a blog entry, get halfway through it then realize it's going in a completely different direction than I intended. I then try to hack out the irrelevant portions, which then renders it a piece of crap, become overly self-concious of it, then hit delete before I publish. 

I created Addictive Exertion to give myself a place to talk about one topic in particular, and want to reserve this space for everything else I feel like sharing. I guess we'll see where I spend more time, but I think one will encourage the other, and they'll mesh smoothly. 

If not, then I'm just wasting more infinite cyberspace. 

So I got the bike…now what?!

Day 1 with the bike. I was dying to ride, but I had this overwhelming sense if inadequacy that really kept me down the in the basement just looking at the parts, trying to name them in my head, and peeling off the factory spec and advertising stickers. Occasionally, I’d sit on it with one arm propping me against the wall. After about 30 seconds of sitting, I figured out what my first investment must be.

Bike shorts.

I knew this was part of the deal of buying a road bike and “getting serious” about the sport, but still, walking into the bike shop and bee-lining straight for the spandex racks gave me immediate flashbacks to the days of tagging along while shopping for leotards for my sister’s upcoming gymnastics competition. Just the thought of donning Lycra as my under and outer layer, displaying the silhouette of my groinal region in a shiny black back drop for all the world to see while whistling around the bike trails and roads immediately caused me to stray from the direct path and towards the jerseys instead.

Short sleeve jerseys. Long sleeve jerseys. No sleeve jerseys. ¼ zip. ½ zip. Full zip. Race cut. Club cut. 360 degree reflective. The brighter the better it seemed, so I grabbed a yellow one and pulled it over my t-shirt. Luckily, a salesperson noticed me struggling in the corner of the store, obviously unaware of what a jersey should look like on my body. Second only to the guy who sold my bike to me, this guy was the friendliest bike shop guy I’ve met yet. I don’t want to stereotype, but in my short experience thus far, I’ve observed three kinds of bike shop salesmen (that are definitely not equally dispersed among bike shops):

1) the scruffy guy wearing a bandana, camouflage shorts and casual athletic shoes with pedal cleats recessed into the soles so he can clip-in to his fully-suspended mountain bike at anytime and ride through a muddy single-track trail to the closest climbing wall to hang with his stoner buddies;

2) the clean cut skinny guy with a polo shirt, slightly shorter than average khaki shorts that conveniently expose his massively toned quads and calves, both of which have been shaved recently, who always manages to fit in at least one reference to his last century ride or triathlon just to prove to you he is more experienced than you will ever be and could probably blow by you going up hill in a fixed gear track bike;

3) the guy that drives to the store, even though he lives two blocks away, maybe owns a bike or two but is really just a casual rider and is trying to make a buck or two at a sales job that’s close to home.

The guy approaching me was definitely number three, and even admitted it throughout his “sales pitch.” At one point in the conversation he actually joked about the wrenchers in back, noting that one of them broke his collar bone two months ago while trail riding with some buddies, but now tells customers that the sling is helping him recover from a really crazy crash at this downhill racing track competition. He nailed this jump and landed a little sideways and flew over his handlebars, but he wasn’t sure exactly because he couldn’t remember much of it once he came to. In reality, he was just going too fast through the woods in a city park a few blocks away and his handlebar caught a branch, spinning him off the bike and causing him to simply fall on his side. He actually rode his bike home and his mom drove him to the ER that night. What a bad ass.

The guy helps me figure out the fit of a jersey, which really is just what is comfortable to you when sitting on the bike. The fact that I’m between sizes in everything is accentuated during my jersey fitting, ranging between Medium and Large. I end up choosing a white and black, short-sleeved Large jersey. It’s snug where I want it to be, has a few pockets on the back (pretty much standard on cycling jerseys) and doesn’t ride up over my waist when bending over, which is the ultimate test when trying them on, I learn.

He then asked me if I wanted to try on some shorts. I give him the deer in the headlights look, at which point he chuckled and confirmed my freshness to the sport. He said they’re pretty straightforward in fit. He showed me the pad in the crotch (called the chamois, or “shammy”) and explained its significance (which really didn’t need explanation, as the padded shorts were the primary reason for my trip to the store in the first place). Then explained that typically, shorts with more panels (or pieces of material making up the shorts) tend to fit and stay in one place better than shorts with fewer panels. I, staying with my proclaimed theme of “mid-entry level,” go with a mid-range priced pair of black shorts, and head towards the register.

The day of my bike purchase, the bike dealer gave me a few pointers as I was signing the paperwork, and his primary concern for me was that the tires needed to be filled with air to the correct pressure on a very regular basis (typically before every ride) in order to maintain durability, and proper handling. He said that a firm tire not only gave you safety, but really made a difference in speed and handling. He showed me a few pump models he had on the wall, but I was still somewhat shell-shocked by the check I just wrote out and didn’t feel like spending any more money that day. He assured me that if there’s one thing I needed, it was a pump.

Conveniently, there were some nice floor pumps by the register of this new store that were on sale. As well as some tire levers (two or three plastic pry bars, essentially, used to change the tire), spare tubes (self-explanatory), and saddle-bags (1. road bike seats are not called “seats, they’re “saddles;” 2. saddle bags are the little bags hanging off the bottom of the saddle that hold your portable tools should you blow a tire on the trails while you’re miles from home). After hitting the little devil off of my left shoulder, I assertively said “Yes” when the sales guy asked if that was all I needed.

I paid no attention to the total price and immediately shoved the receipt deep into my wallet so I wouldn’t find it until my checking account balancing act at the end of the month (which consists of me going online to make sure my balance is positive and looking for any possible fraudulent charges from Argentina or something). I go home, leaving my purchases in the trunk until my wife took off for work (she works nights). As soon as the garage door shut after her leaving, I went and grabbed my toys and modeled my spandex tuxedo to myself in the bathroom. I couldn’t believe it. I now looked like one of them, except with skinnier thighs and calves and a little bit of a gut pushing my tight jersey out (which I didn’t notice in the store, or anytime before that night). That first night in spandex was definitely eye opening. I’ve never checked myself out as much as I did that night. I had a lot of work to do to make it past the newbie level. There wasn’t any form-fitting jersey or carbon fiber bike out there that was going to make me intimidate anyone on the starting line. I looked scared. I actually felt nervous. I haven’t even set my butt on the bike seriously yet.

I peeled off the lycra, allowing my body expand back to its normal atmospheric pressure. I sit on the edge of my bed while tearing the tags off everything. I then remember what the sales guy told me as I was leaving.

“Just get out and start putting some miles on and you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

Probably the best advice I’ve gotten yet in this new adventure.

Cycling: Hobby, Sport, or Obsession?

Dork.

Newbie.

Fred.

All words that I’ve learned during my recent research that, to an experienced rider, would probably describe me right now. Well, at least when outfitted for my new hobbie: cycling. The world of carbon fiber, lycra, helmets, and getting honked at while going half the speed limit in a regular traffic lane. The world that, to me, has always been populated by geeks sitting on tiny, atomic-wedgy-producing bike seats, crouching over their itty bitty bike computers trying to pound out two-tenths of a mile per hour faster while speeding down their favorite hill. The world of derailleurs, bottom brackets, down tubes, top tubes, chainstays, headsets, dual-pivot cantilever brakes, presta valves, and a billion other terms made up for bike shop gear heads that, when used out of context or with mispronunciation, make a person new to the sport stand out like an argyle sweater in Sturgis. All of this foreign to me…until last fall.

I’ve had a burning desire for some time to purge money from my checking account into the recreational vehicle called a road bicycle. My last true experience with cycling (if you can really call it that) was roaming my hometown streets back in junior high with the neighbor boys on my 9-speed mountain bike from the discount department store. I loved that bike, and went through a few sets of tires every summer. Whether they popped due to skidding out after bombing big hills, hard landings off of the neighborhood homemade ramp, or just because they were the cheapest bike tire I could find was beyond me, but at the end of the summer, I could tell how much fun I had by how far my rear rim was bent out of place (my new word for bent is now “untrue”).

My summer days typically consisted of waking up, checking off the list of basic household chores that my mom set out for my sisters and I as early as I could, and heading outside to ride up and down the street until my friend next door finished his chores. We usually looted the ashtrays in our parents’ cars for change before starting our rides. Our town had some very nice bike trails surrounding the lakes. Each day we tried to find a new path to get to them, with hopes that by end of the summer we would have ridden every street in town. Some days we’d use the change to buy hotdogs at the ice cream shop. Other days we’d have to take a detour on one of the “laps” to head home to eat lunch because we used all the spare change we could find the day before. Some trips concluded at the dam with fishing poles. Some at the beach to go swimming. Some at the baseball field to have homerun derbies with tennis balls. But no matter what we did, we’d usually be gone from the house for least five hours a day. At night, we’d try to do all of our own repairs and modifications using our dad’s tools. We’d take our bikes apart for fun then try to get them back together AND in working condition without our dads’ help. One summer we even sanded them down to the bare frame and did our own custom paint jobs. They looked horrible, but they were our own and we thought we were the coolest kids in the county. But, once high school came and I got my driver’s license, the bike was sold for $20 at our neighbors’ garage sale. Looking back, $20 was way more than the bike was worth monetarily, but no price could have paid for the memories, the scars, and the fitness that that bike gave me.

Since then, the only other times I have ridden a bike were when I borrowed my roommate’s commuter / mountain bike to ride around our college campus, (usually with a moderate blood alcohol level while heading to the campus cafeteria to load up on tacos and french fries) and during my very first triathlon on another borrowed mountain bike. My roommate and I signed up for the triathlon on sort of an “I’ll-do-it-if-you-do-it” basis as we walked by the painted sign in the commons building. I had sent a mass email to a bunch of friends asking if anyone had a bike I could borrow for the event. Luckily, I had a response and picked up the bike the night before the race, in exchange for a 12-pack of beer. The bike was another generic department store mountain bike. It had a slow leak in the front tire which I didn’t notice until the three mile mark of the race the next morning. At mile eight, I heard the infamous and smugly pronounced “Nice bike!” insult from a spandex warrior as he whooshed by me with ease on his carbon fiber skinny-tired steed up a slow-rolling hill. Humbled and, quite frankly, embarrassed, I simply looked down to the road directly in front of my sagging front tire and took the insult as truth.

Who was I kidding? I was no more of a triathlete, let alone a cyclist, than Subway Jared was 10 years ago. But alas, I finished the triathlon (in a very sub-par time, but finished nonetheless). I accomplished my goal…which really was only to complete the dare with my roommate. But that day, a spark was lit inside me. I was going to stay fit. I was going to get better at triathlons. I wasn’t going to be laughed at during the bike leg again.

After graduation, my focus drifted solely towards getting a job and running, then aspects of my personal life began to change and become more serious, placing many other things, specifically the fun boy toys, on the back burner.

I completed a couple 5k’s, 10k’s, 30k’s, and two marathons in the years to follow. A few friends also got into the endurance sports, and a select few of them into the multi-sport arenas as of late. Then, while flipping channels two years ago, I came across the documentary / replay of the Ford Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. The show highlighted people of significance and others with just plain interesting stories and followed them through the grueling race in the tropics: swimming 2.4 miles in the open salty ocean, biking 112 miles around active volcanoes and vast beaches, and then finishing it off with a 26.2-mile marathon. Hearing their stories of why they’re there, how they trained, and their feelings while crossing the finish line added fuel to the spark in my chest, causing me to tell my now wife that I’m going to do an Ironman. Maybe not this year, or in 5 years, or in 10 years…but I’m going to finish an Ironman someday. Being the supportive wife of my monthly random aspirations, she replied with her usual sarcastic, “Mmmmkaayy!”

Nevertheless, I was determined to start ramping up my physical activity. I was going to start by whittling down my running pace and start viewing races as more than just something to do, but an actual competition. I was going to start swimming laps and learning proper techniques…and wearing something other than baggy swim trunks while doing so. I was going to start biking…

Ah. The dilemma.

I started researching bicycles, mainly online. I’d find a bike a liked, really only by judging the color, and as soon as I scrolled down to the price, my mouse would head straight for the X at the top of the screen and close the window. I tried to find “the best bargain” out there, but after running a few too-good-to-be-true-deals by a few friends and reading their respective reviews, I learned that with bicycles, you really do get what you pay for, and finding a deal is nearly impossible without proper connections. So, I took it upon myself to start saving. The search continued for perfect bicycle: one that would allow me to ride recreationally, on a budget, and also allow me to show up on race day and actually appear like I know what I’m doing.

During the next few months, I learned the difference between Shimano and Campagnolo (they’re the two “main” brands of bicycle components that are completely incompatible with each other). I learned that for what I wanted my bike to do for me, I needed to get what they call a road racing bike, and that I probably shouldn’t jump on a triathlon specific bike just yet, and that my days of making fun of those curly handle bars were over (they’re called drop handle bars, or simply “drops”). I learned that there are different geometries for each bike, and sometimes they’re different just between brands of bikes and that every person requires a different geometry for their body build and for their primary activity on the bike.

Most importantly, I learned that no matter which way I looked at it, I was going to have to drop a lot of money up front to get into this sport. And as time wears on, I keep learning that bikers never really stop spending the money. In fact, they just spend more. Parts wear out. You “need” to upgrade to that new component group. You find a new color. You want to shave off a few grams of total weight by upgrading to a carbon fiber water bottle holder. You’re just plain bored and feel like heading to the bike shop. There’s always an excuse to add on to your hobby. And there’s always the perfect justification that you’re “investing in a lifestyle change” or “contributing to your health and well-being.” While there’s something to be said for both of those arguments, really, you’re just feeding that junior high kid trapped in your adult’s body trying to pimp your bike to make it the coolest bike in the neighborhood. I decided I was going to do it once and for all, and set a goal to have a bike in my garage by the end of the summer.

So, after riding about 10 different bikes, I found the one I wanted. The bike told me that I needed it, and vice versa. It had a red and white color scheme that screamed my favorite colors. It gave me the biggest rush as I climbed the road nearly effortlessly behind the bike shop. And, it was on sale. I caught it at the end of last season. A 2007 Specialized Allez Elite.

I’ll get into the components (and what and how I learned about them) in later posts, but the bike itself is a beauty. The bike guy described the bike as a “mid-entry level” bike. That sounded good to me, and my research proved him to be honest. Forty-five minutes later, I’m taking off the front wheel and shoving the bike into my back seat to bring it home. Was I going to talk about the price with my wife: of course. Would I be the one to bring it up: absolutely not. Would I make it seem like everything just comes with it and it was a one time money drop and do everything I could to hide receipts and new parts: absolutely.

Mandays (part three)

My first two descriptions were quite lengthy, mainly because they are my favorite. So I’m going to try to shorten them up from here on out…

First day of football season

On so many levels, but the greatest of which is probably the time of year it occurs. The last few weeks of summer, right before school started. In junior high, my friends and I would hop on our bikes to ride to the football fields, carrying a bag of equipment over one shoulder and using the other hand to steer the bike. In high school, the first day of football practice meant going to the fields early in the morning for the first session of two-a-days. The grass was wet from dew, the air cool, but the sun still powerful. All of the other fall sports teams were around campus as well, and everyone started talking about the coming school year. In college, it was the first Saturday when the majority of the student body came to one place and mingled around the field, freshman wearing their new clothes trying to meet new people and trying to hide the alcohol on their breath, upper classmen wearing the same pair of jeans they wore their freshman year but faded and fraying, carrying their booze in mixers disguised as pop bottles, savoring the beautiful warm weather before parkas, stocking hats and mittens are required for the next six months. Now, it signals a time that gives me a reason to be able to sit on the couch every Sunday for at least 3 hours in my sweatpants with the grill cooking beer brats and cold beer in the fridge.

State Fair Week

Endless options of fried food on a stick that you must eat for the simple reason that you can say you have eaten ___ on a stick. Hot summer-time weather. Great milkshakes. And thousands of people that make your highlight reel for weirdest people of the year.

Snowdays

You wake up in darkness. Sit up in bed, turn and walk to the window to see a white blanket covering everything in site, with a snow globe sky adding to the layer on your windowsill. The dread of the thought of shoveling flashes into your head. Back in school, you instantly turned on the radio to listen for school delay announcements, hoping that today would be the day that you hear the glorious word “Cancelled” stream over the airwaves. As the deejay makes his way alphabetically through the cities near you, your heart starts to race. You forget how many schools start with the same letter as yours, when suddenly you hear your school named. You run back upstairs to tell everyone in the family. You savor your homemade waffles and bask in thought of using your snow pants and coat that are screaming your name while hanging in the closet. As soon as the dishes are in the sink, you’re dressed in your snow gear and running to the garage to grab your sled.

Now, I long for the days of holding my head to the radio in the kitchen, but when we do get that big snow once or twice a year, it feels so good to call the boss and say you won’t be coming in. It feels even better to receive the call from your boss just as you’re walking to the shower, telling you to avoid the roads for the day and just call this afternoon to check in.

It’s still a ritual to make homemade waffles on snowdays in our house though.

Mandays (continued)

Non-shaving days

I remember the first day that I shaved: The autumn of 6th grade with a stolen disposable razor from my mother’s medicine cabinet, right before leaving the house to catch the bus with my sisters. I really only shaved my upper lip, without cutting myself, and with only warm water splashed on my face.

I’m not going to attempt to put a number to the number of times I’ve stripped my face of its natural ciliated covering by scraping sharp metal over it. But, I’ve been doing it long enough to know that it really can dry out and irritate the skin if done with improper technique and inadequate supplies; that shaving with normal razor pressure over any type of blemish (i.e. a zit) usually leads to a very painful skin laceration that bleeds like the movies and stands out like a canary in a cave mine; and that whenever I take a day off from the razor, my face wakes up and thanks me.

I’m blessed with a job that allows me to sit on my ass for 40+ hours a week, not perform any heavy lifting (or manual labor, or any physical activity for that matter), work indoors, and travel occasionally. Unfortunately, if I show up looking like Cro-Magnon man, the “professional appearance” line on my yearly review wouldn’t be rated too highly, clients would start to look at me like they should offer me a home that is alternate to my cardboard box in the alley, and the TSA would probably become a little stricter during my pre-boarding security screenings.

A five-o’clock shadow isn’t generally frowned upon, thankfully, but if I start the day with it, I then have to answer to my wife at home at the end of the day. She’s one that can’t stand facial hair, and makes it a point to notice it and pester me until I’m basically forced into the bathroom because I’d rather apply razor blades to my face than endure the constant nagging that she can dish out.

So, I’ve succumbed to this habit of shaving six days per week, on average. Generally, I try to make myself avoid shaving once a week, typically on Saturday or Sunday. Occasionally, I can stretch it out to where I shave on Thursday morning before work, and if the planets align so as to allow me to not attend any social functions requiring any sort of personal grooming, and for my wife to either be A) too tired or busy to notice, or B) at work or out of town all weekend, I won’t need to shave again until Monday morning. That adds up to 96 hours of my face keeping its upper layers of protective squamous epithelial cells, and retaining its natural hydration and oil levels, making every facial expression seem effortless compared to the Monday morning stoneface routine in order to keep your smile creases from cracking open.

Why are these 96 hours so blissful to my manhood? When these 96 consecutive hours happen to fall into my lap, it means that I: 1) have not worked for at least three out of the last four days; 2) have not had very much expected of me for the last couple days; or 3) have more than likely been spending a lot of time with the boys, and therefore, more than likely, have been doing things I normally wouldn’t have been for a long period of time. I guess you could say that it can be looked at as a symbol of my “freedom” from my regularly scheduled life.

As simple as it may seem, I take pride in my stubble days. I actually look at them like PTO days; like I’m allotted so many of them each year and I need to use them sparingly so as to maximize their effectiveness. I sometimes use them to spite the world around me. To tell the world, “I’m not caring right now.” To show my boss that I’m really not in the mood to attend a “touch base meeting” at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. To tell my wife that I’m going to keep her from rolling over and flinging her hair in my face in the middle of the night by instilling the fear that she might accidentally brush up against my chin and get a second degree sandpaper burn on her face. Usually though, these days remind me that I can just wear mesh shorts or jeans with a t-shirt/sweatshirt, throw on a hat and go outside to mow the lawn or dig in the dirt or play in the snow or work on the car or go to the rink or hit the beach. It means that I don’t have to risk slicing open my philtrum while half asleep and teetering in front of the mirror. It just means that I can be un-homme-au-natural.

I usually have a teleconference once or twice a week with some guy that works from home. He always makes it a point to brag about sitting in his boxer shorts at his desk in his basement at 1:00 in the afternoon while not having showered or even combing his hair. My five year goal is to do the same, with the ulterior motive of reducing my shaving days.

But then I’d have my wife to answer too. Crap.

Mandays

No, not Mondays, Man-days.

I was doing my daily morning routine upon entering my cube: unload laptop, dock laptop, log in, check voicemail as it syncs up to the network, check work email and shoot one or two messages off - making sure to copy my boss so she knows I’m in the office (only if I’m early, which I usually am), check personal email, check a forum or two that I frequent, check some scores, read a few select articles from a local paper online, then get working. This usually takes anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes of my morning. Since I’m typically early - and actually have a flexible work schedule, am allowed to use my work equipment for “personal activities, within reason,” and try to stay away from my junk mail folder, gossip sites, and a few of my friends messages - it’s pretty harmless to my professional well-being (hyphenated?). Our company’s IT people seem to be up to date on the popular and “harmful” (read: “takes up a lot of bandwidth”) websites as well, so really all of the fun things to do on the web are firewalled. They’ve even blocked proxy server sites, so going backdoor to the fun places (unless you’re “one of them” and obtain the proper hacker skills) is off-limits while on the clock. With that in mind, I figure that if it ain’t blocked, it’s (more often than not) okay.

Obviously, some days, while I’m warming up my hard drive with hotmail, I tend to sidetrack and spend a little more time than I should reading something other than a spreadsheet. Today, I found this.

Reading through it, I decided that although each of those ten days is relevant to me and can bring back some fond memories, they definitely aren’t all my best mandays of the year. At least not anymore.

It never fails to be rainy and windy during the fishing opener here in Minnesota, making every soaked man in your boat even bitchier than any ex-girlfriend you ever had. Superbowl Sunday has now transformed from cheap beer, cheap pizza and chips with the guys sharing stained love seats crammed in a small apartment into either a “couple’s event” with cute appetizers and desserts with your shirt tucked in (at least in my case over the last few years), or collateral for your wife/girlfriend to use against you the next time she wants to have a Sex and the City girl’s pajama and slipper night at your house in the middle of the week that goes until 2:30 in the morning, leaving your living room littered with half-empty wine glasses, your wine rack empty, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s whiny voice-over echoing in your brain the next morning. And the first day of barbecuing…please. I don’t hang up my tongs just because it’s cold enough to flash-freeze my sirloins before they hit the grill. There is no first day, because there isn’t a last day.

So, after some deep thought (and some major procrastination to complete this data entry and reporting sitting on my desk), here are my mandays, in no particular order:

The first day of walking into a hockey arena in September

I know I just said that these are in no particular order, but this is my favorite moment of each year, which is why it leads the pack. To operate an indoor arena in the summer months here in Minnesota is very expensive. There are a few rinks around the state that have the funding to cover insulation and the electric costs, but who wants to sit inside when you can be out soaking up UV rays? Once I hang up my skates in April, I don’t sharpen them again until this special manday. So, around April of each year, almost every arena shuts off the refrigeration system and opens their doors to welcome the warming, humid air into the building to melt away the sheet of ice covering the floor. Through the summer, the buildings are used for numerous activities, ranging from storage and conventions, to indoor soccer and rodeos. But as each summer comes to an end, the building managers begin assembling the boards and raising the plexiglass. Local water storage facilities must hate the first week of September, as every indoor rink in town get sprayed with firehoses to cover the refrigerated concrete with water. It usually takes a day or two to ensure proper thickness (1 – 2 inches) and evenness, but as soon as the ice is crisp enough to hockey stop on, ice time is for sale.

September is always a teaser month in Minnesota. We can go from August-like summer temperatures to frosty morning windshields within 18 hours. It can be pouring rain one week, and the snow plows can be salting the roads the next. But, no matter what it’s like outside, the weather in a hockey rink is always going to be the same.

On this manday, I’m typically carrying my hockey bag from the trunk of the car (once, my first time in a rink for the year was during a wedding reception in late August that was being held in the same community building as the local rink. I snuck out during the dollar dance to check out the rink, and mark my manday off for that year). You can normally be wearing shorts and flip-flops outside, and I usually do in order to magnify the effect. Your hockey bag weighs less than usual as your equipment had all summer to dry out in your garage (normally, after the first time you sweat in it, your equipment is never really dry until the next summer. Gross? Yes. But nearly impossible to avoid unless you can bring your equipment in the house…which, in 14 years of playing hockey, I have not ever witnessed if there is a female in the same household). You approach the wide doors of the arena and switch your sticks over to your other hand so you can pull the heavy door. You reach, pull and BAM!! It hits your olfactory hairs like a Caribbean breeze…but stinkier.

The air is heavy. Every hard surface has a glaze of condensation. The smell is something very unique. A mix of fresh leather, hockey tape, the rubber of new hockey pucks, mildew, propane exhaust, stale popcorn, and a musty sauna. It’s one that I’ve only smelled in one other place: the walk-in refrigerator in the microbiology lab in college, (in this refrigerator, during this particular voyage, we were growing E. Coli colonies from saliva swabs to determine how gross our mouths were (or something like that). Why the similarities in smell? These links give a pretty good summary. Although I can’t say that I enjoyed the micro lab smell, it did remind me of my favorite manday of the year).

That smell signals that hockey season is here for the next 8 months. Some of my greatest friendships, worst enemies, happiest moments, greatest moments of defeat, and, of course, my dirtiest jokes came from inside those many wide-swinging arena doors across much of the upper midwest. Although it’s gone from 5 or 6 days a week, down to 1, sometimes two nights a week, hockey is my escape from the real world. No matter what is happening in my life, I’ve been able to straps on my goal pads and pull down my mask, and the only thing that matters is playing hockey.

Even though that pungent smell is there all season long, and, in fact, only strengthens as the winter progresses and the air stagnates in the rafters (and the bathrooms get cleaned less often), that very first whiff of bacterial respiration somehow tells me I’m at my happy place and that I can check off this special manday for the year.


Since my first manday description ended up a lot longer than I expected, and I’ve had to minimize the window about 9 times due to my boss noticing my lack of productivity this afternoon and stopping by to “ask a quick question” and non-chalantly glance at my screen only to notice the same email open on my screen each time, I should get to work.

More mandays to come.

My first post.

Hi.

I nearly forgot that I had this account. I think it was when I discovered the 15 minute lunch a few weeks ago that I realized I had my own (empty) blog somewhere nearby just wasting server space. Sure enough, I found the faded yellow post-it note with my log in info on it buried underneath my tray of highlighters and extra chapstick tubes in my desk drawer...and here I am.

I've been intending to start writing for a while, (probably since around the time that I signed up), but I think it's been a combo of feelings of inadequacy as a writer (blog-envy?), laziness, and spending too much time reading everyone else's random thoughts in cyberspace that's kept me from exposing myself verbally. Honestly, I don't think I can ever make anybody in this world uncontrollably laugh out loud (like I did) in their near-silent officespace the way JV's (see 15 minute lunch) memories of he and his brothers nearly killing people when they were kids. But if I can just go someplace to think out loud, and maybe even make someone smile/laugh/think/waste time while doing so, then this (free) service will pay for itself in no time. I guess I can start by explaining grasshopper-phobia. It's pretty self explanatory. The fear of grasshoppers. I'm sure there's an official name for it in a psych textbook somewhere, like Orthopterophobia or something, but to my friends, that's what I call it. I hate grasshoppers. Hate. Yes, strong word: Hate. I hate the Calgary Flames and Brett Favre, but that's not real Hate. That's not "I'm going to throw a brick through the windshield if I see Jarome Iginla driving by" Hate or "I wish Favre would just choke on some chunky Mississippi gumbo and die" Hate, because that's just plain not right to hold that much anger towards anyone. I hate broccoli, but it's not the "I wish every broccoli farm to suffer a drought next year so that I don't ever have to see another head of broccoli" Hate. That's just a friendly "hate" in that I just don't want to say anything positive about it/them and I'd rather say "I hate ___" rather than waste the breath to add another word to the sentence and say "I strongly dislike ___". I really have no reason to strongly dislike any of those things either. Broccoli is a very healthy food, the Calgary Flames are currenly ranked first in the division, and Brett Favre is probably THE greatest QB to ever grace the NFL, both on and off the field. I don't like the texture of broccoli in my mouth; it gives me the gag reflex instantly, the Wild can't win in Calgary, and Favre isn't the franchise QB in Minnesota. That's all. But I Hate grasshoppers. Especially the big ones that you see on the sidewalk or trail, just sitting there. You walk within about 12 inches from them and they jump…but they never jump in the exact direction (the way their head is pointed) you expect them too, which instantly makes you flinch. Usually, they aim away from you, but then they start flapping their wings trying to fly. I say trying, because they can't really fly like other winged insects can. They more or less just bat their wings maniacally hoping that they can propel themselves in some general direction away from the “danger” than provoked them to jump in the first place. This psychedelic display of phototaxis results in this 1.5 to 3 inch creepy crawly insect flailing in an unpredictable spiral, whose destination may or may not be your cheekbone. If it happens to land on you, its six dagger-like feet have the ability to latch onto you like you were made entirely of the fuzzy side of velcro. It takes at least three awkward panicky swats to bat it off of your body, then it clumsily falls to the ground, rolls over, and looks at you with its big opaque eyes…and laughs. Bleckkk…

So, that sets up the story. Around 6th grade, I made a new friend on the school bus on the way to school. It was fall, and school had just started a few weeks ago. I’m not really sure what started the conversation, but by the time we were at school, Ben had told me that he had a go-kart, three snowmobiles, a dirt bike, and they were getting a four-wheeler next week.

Hello new best friend. Obviously, I wasn’t friends with him just for his toys, but they were the basis of most of our memories over the next 4 years.

That day after school, Brady (my other friend in the neighborhood) and I ride our bikes up to our new friends house. I’m not sure why we weren’t friends with him before, because he lived only two blocks away from us, but whatever. We get there, and Ben is filling up the gas tank of the go kart. This thing is one of the coolest machines I’ve ever seen. There’s a single seat, only about 2 inches off the ground with sheet metal for a floor, a small engine mounted on the back (a brand new lawn mower engine, I find out later), a steering wheel, a brake and an accelerator pedal, and that’s about it. He just got new tires on it. Slicks. Not sure how effective slicks will be, as he lives on a gravel road, and the only pavement is his 100 foot driveway, but they look really sweet. He said he’s going to paint it soon. I see no need. This was awesome.

It’s a typical hot, dry autumn afternoon. The sky is a little hazy with crop dust, and the sun is low in the sky, but still quite powerful. We had been taking turns (5 minutes a piece, precisely timed with our digital watches) doing laps around his lawn. We had a cool, winding track. Around the oak tree on the corner of the lot, back to the drive way where you take a sharp right and head straight for the barn, then a sharp left on the pavement (which felt sweet with the slicks) back onto the lawn where you zig between 4 newly planted trees, then loop around the flower garden then back to the oak tree. We were ripping up the lawn something fierce, and his mom noticed after about 2 hours. She didn’t really care, but asked us to not swing the back tires around so much to tear the grass. Our track was getting boring anyway, so we went to the garage and re-filled the tank and discussed our next feature.

Ben decided to show us the art of gravel drag racing. He ran up to his room and got a stop watch, and we decided to time each other from point A to B on the gravel road in front of his house. 2 runs a piece later, we figure out that we’re all using same kart, and therefore there’s really no difference in times. Ben thinks he can do something to go a little faster. He tinkers with something on the carburetor (how a 6th grader knows what to do to a carburetor was beyond me then, but he soon taught us the basics of spraying ether directly into it if the kart didn’t start. Yeah, genius) and sure enough, he shaves a whole second off the time. But, in doing so, he found that instead of locking up the brakes on the gravel to come to a fantastic spinning-cloud-of-dust finish, that is was a lot more fun to take a sharp turn at the end of the track, over the field approach and into knee-high hay field. With the low clearance, the kart came to a quick stop, but not before flattening about 10 feet of grass in its path. Thus was borne the new competition: who can get the farthest into the field until the kart stops.

Ben had his chance, so I was next. I sit down into the pilot’s seat and putter over to the starting line drawn in the gravel. Without hesitation, I gun it. I hit the gas a little too hard, spun the tires, but got moving anyway and soon was gripping and gaining speed. I whiz by the driveway where Ben and Brady are watching, hoping I don’t get very far into the grass. I crank the wheel at the last minute and head into the grass, just to the left of Ben’s crop circle. It’s a pretty hard jolt at first, but my momentum carried me just a couple inches farther than Ben had gotten. As I was sliding over the grass though, I noticed that the front of the kart, which was open with only the sheet metal floor on the bottom, was performing three tasks at once: flattening, cutting, and scraping. As it scraped the thousands of stems of near ready-to-cut hay, every single thing attached to the stem was being thrown into the go kart and onto my lap. Because it was warm, I had shorts on as well, and because the seat is on the floor of the kart, your knees are bent up, with your feet on the pedals only about 2 and a half feet from your butt, the leg opening of my shorts was facing up like a snow cone. I swear that every single insect, (and a half bale of hay) in that swath of grass ended up in my shorts. I leap out of the kart, swatting my ass like it’s on fire. Ben and Brady think I actually am on fire (after all, we’re riding a kart with an engine that’s been cranking for 3 hours into a field of very dry hay). They come running, but when they hear me screaming like a girl and see crushed grasshopper parts and chunks of grass falling out of the bottoms of my shorts, they realize what happened. I’m shaking my legs, kicking, swatting, jiggling my shorts. I swear bugs were just pouring out of my pants like when they pour the cockroaches out of the bucket on those reality shows. It had to have been two or three hundred of them (obviously it was only about 10 of them, but that’s how I remember it). I end up having to unbutton and unzip and reach in to flick out the last two demons. The first one was quite submissive and fell right out the bottom. The second one, though, attached quite happily to the right seam of my boxers, decided to take a leap of faith as my flicking finger approached it. He didn’t get very far, as he stayed inside my pants, but he still attempted to fly. Imagine that flurry of wings and legs, buzzing in your shorts near your genitals as you have both hands in your unbuttoned pants while you spin and jump and yell on the side of a public road with your two friends watching and laughing at you as they pay more attention to pulling the go-kart out of the field. Yeah, scarred for life. It eventually gave up and realized that gravity was actually its ally. It fell safely to the ground between my feet. Safely, that is, until I instinctively injected its brain matter into the soil. He had the last laugh though. He had successfully raised my heart rate to marathon-running levels, had caused more adrenaline to run through my veins than if I had been chased by a rabid grizzly bear, and had kept me from entering the grass field for a few years, even with long pants.

I called it a day with that final act. Brady hopped on and took his chances as I was getting on my bike to go home. He made it a little farther into the grass, but evaded the grasshopper colony that I had apparently cleaned out moments earlier.

The next day on the bus, we were laughing about it all, and couldn’t wait to get on the track again. We never conducted this competition again. I'm not sure if we were all now afraid of the hopping devils with near useless wings, or if we decided the spinning dust storm drag finish was more exciting, but to this day, I still can't walk comfortably through a grass field. Ben told us that his dad was ordering a new chain and a new clutch for the go kart that night. Apparently, he can usually get a few more MPH out of the kart, but the clutch was pretty worn. As we take industrial arts class in school, and check out a few mechanics books from the library, we learn that we can probably get it going around 30 MPH if we really wanted to.

And yes, we really wanted to.