running a 5K this weekend

I'm running my first 5K on Sunday. It is the Race for Justice, put on by the U of M Law School to help lawyer do more pro bono work and still stay current on their student loan payments.

I'm thinking about getting rid of my Ross Compact. It was fun during the summer but now it is just big and heavy and I think that I can do better.

I finally started on the straps for the Oskar Werner bag. I also found out that my friend at Augsburg is doing film studies now, which sounds super cool. Another friend is in Budapest doing a masters in public policy, specifically software patent law.

running a lot

I have been running a lot lately. I can hardly believe that I have run 49.2 miles this year. I haven't been biking much. I put the old drop-downs on the Ross Compact. Somehow it wasn't as fun as riding on the Schwinn in the summer. I can't wait to get the Schwinn down from my bike rack.

Last Saturday I was at the Bike/Travel/Fitness expo in the bowels of the Minneapolis Convention Center. I was volunteering at the Minnesota Ironman booth. I was able to sneak away and I got to ride my first fixie. Edina Cycle had a bunch of recumbants and then they had a 52cm Redline fixie hidden behind their big Minnehahaesque quadcycle. I was drawn to it. The sales guy told me that he had better flip the hub and I said, no that is what I want to try. Apparently I was braver than he. The only anxious part was taking off on the cement floor. Once I was going it was smooth and fun. I backpedaled a lot because I was riding around a very short track. This hurt my knee.

I visited Hiawatha Cyclery last Sunday with the boyfriend. It is a really cute little store. We chatted about a lot of the products and the background on the stuff. The boyfriend had never seen an Xtracycle so that was fun. Jim also had a Redline fixie for me to check out. It goes for $500. I got my back Reelight (which he was sweet enough to sell me separately) and a water bottle. After we left the store, the boyfriend turned to me and said, "Wow, you ARE a bike nerd". I forgot the difference between a geek and a nerd, but I think that I'm more of the one that know everything about a category of thing, as opposed to knowing everything about one specific thing.

off to Ireland in a few days; new word for snow

Until today, as a former-North-Dakotan Minnesotan, I thought that I had experienced almost every kind of snow.

I left to go on my training run-walk this evening (if you, addressing ,of course, the legions of souls who patronize this here site have not noticed, I'm raising money to cure leukemia and lymphoma, see sidebar at right). I didn't believe the forecasts for snow. It was warmish (34 degrees fahrenheit) and dry (my hands were really dry at least). I started my 4th run time (12 minutes left of the run-walk) and I noticed tiny snow flake. They got bigger. I started inhaling them. It was a good kind of inhale, fresh and clean. After my last run period, I was walking down 25th Street and I heard the snow fall. I had never heard it before. The snow was icy-ish and frequent. It made a sound like paper being rippled. A few people commented on my lack of winter clothing and pitied me for getting caught in the snow fall, until they saw from my expression how much I was enjoying it. I can only explain my recent acquaintance with this sound with a) avoiding the snow fall by watching Star Trek episodes one after the other. b) being in a car or on a bike during this kind of snowfall c) global warming introduced me to the paper crackle snow.

I recently became fascinated with the idea of reintroducing the classical education to the young people in K-12. Not in the home schooled christian sorta way though. It just seems sensible to incite debate during junior high, instead of continuing to force students to memorize shit. If you let the younger kids know that the memorization part of their lives will be over at some point, they might get into more it. They might find songs to memorize stuff. I'm all for the trivium. I might even make a t-shirt that says trivium on it.

"You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're even older. You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're older still."
--They Might Be Giants