Tim’s parents are heroes

And well heeled ones at that. It does my heart good to see land preserved. Though the twin cities is one of the few places in the country with an actual metropolitan government, it's also the third most sprawled metro. Land gobbled up like so much popcorn.

 

http://www.startribune.com/south/story/1538517.html

Hemmingway had it right.

Since writing papers is such a god-awful task these days, I've decided to follow the Earnest Hemmingway School of writing. Namely, drink scotch and sit in an overheated room and sweat at a keyboard. Sure, he was on Key West and busy fishing and drinking and leering at local dames, but I've got he Internet, what more do I need for the same sorts of distractions? Apparently Papa Hemmingway's favorite drink was a Teacher's Scotch and Soda, and so just now I had myself a glass of Glensalen Pure Malt Scotch Whiskey and some seltzer. Not exactly the same but guess what, I can write like CRAZY!!!

I think that the slight buzz helps me ignore the boring ignominy of what I'm writing (Form-based zoning codes in Peoria Illinois anyone?) and just spit out the verbiage. Not only that, but I feel smarter and sexier! It's like beer goggles in reverse!!

While digging through a box of crap on my bedside table, I found this old business card from the earlier days of my dad's career as a preeminent bicycle nerd. This card dates from probably the mid 70s when the bike shop was at the corner of Fifth and Kellogg in Ames. This location predates all of my memory at the bike shop, I can still remember the second spot, at Fifth and Main street, which must be some 24 or so years ago ( I have an amazing memory for bikes).




The second location, at Main and Kellogg had the creepiest basement with its requisite dank spaces and centipedes, but the coolest second story, full of bike parts and a pinball machine and a giant stuffed soldier doll, not to mention the samurai sword that Michael had in his office. There was also my dad's co-worker Charles, who would make elephant noises and lend me Spiderman comics. It was good times.

We are on our way to eco-responsibility. As odd as it is for me to think of buying worms, Jennifer ordered a compost culture full of red wrigglers this past week from some hippie outlet in Michigan. After a short trip to the hardware store and a long bout with the hand drill and box knife, we have our very own indoor urban composter. The worms eat all manner of things, from newspaper and cardboard to fruits and veggies. We finished their new home last night and Jennifer has it stashed in the basement, awaiting our detritus.

Bloggin’ aint easy…except when you’re procrastinating

I am currently being 'bent over a barstool' by classes, as they say in the parlance of our times. I have most recently enjoyed a weekend of debauchery, if in fact, Real Estate Finance is debauchery. I will likely post more interesting stuff once I've got some free time, probably around next May or June.

The following are what's up with me:

• I now have a new mouse for the computer. It is called the Quill Mouse and it is absolutely amazing. My wrist went from being ridiculously sore to just somewhat uncomfortable after my most recent 10 hour computer session. I heartily recommend it to anyone with wrist problems.
  
• I recently drank beers at a strip club for the first time. It was modestly traumatic, but I got over it. The best part about the place was that they had a Wall of Fame; girls from 1962 until the present were memorialized on the walls.
  
• I am now the official unofficial vice president of my bicycle club. The office is totally amazing, and I can't wait to go on Air Force 19 (which is another name for my red Raleigh with the brooks saddle)
  
• I have made extensive use of 911. I've had enough of the goddam drug dealers on my street, I'm calling the cops until they get fed up enough to do something.
  
• Jennifer and I could likely double our house price if we sold today, according to Jim down the street who has made his business the gentrification (or more humorously Jim-trification) of the neighborhood. I say bring on the rich folks.

Crunching the numbers, that's me. I knew before I signed up that I wouldn't like the Real Estate Finance class, and by god, I was right. While I find it interesting to learn a bit more about how businesses make the decisions that really shape the built environment in this city, (who are we kidding, city planners don't build cities, MONEY does) I am not exactly smitten with the whole world of MS Excel that I have found myself thrust into. I've been smacking my head against the concepts of asset valuation, discounted cash flows and expense reimbursements all weekend, and I am still foundering in the quagmire that is my first assignment.

I'm taking some comfort at least in the adage, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." which I am currently interpreting to mean that I don't actually have to ace this class to still get a job.

When English is not a first language, creative license takes on a whole new dimension. Check out the picture from my friend Stacey, who is currently working on a planning project near Seoul in Korea.

I rode my bike so hard that my ass fell off.

At least, that's what it felt like yesterday after I finished my 40K Time Trial near Harrisburg. In contrast with previous races, a lot of things went right: I got there on time, got ready on time and didn't even miss my start. The course totally suited me, it was a series of rolling hills that eventually trended upward over the course of 20K and then returned along the same route, giving me the psychological boost to fly down at what seemed like an amazing pace on my way back in . I finished the course in 57:30, which works out to something like 26 miles per hour for nearly an hour. That was pretty fast, though had I had the experience of doing one beforehand, I would likely have gone a little faster. The winner's time was 56:30, and according to my handy online pace calculator, I would have had to go only .5 miles per hour faster over the course to make up the difference. Jennifer continues to make fun of my newfound obsession with aerodynamics, however, despite the OBVIOUS advantages in both speed and geekiness.

Thank god for forest first aid. I am happily free of poison ivy despite smashing into it with my face. Amazing.

In other news, school is just around the corner and that means that I'm going to be up to my neck in coursework in the next few weeks. While I generally like the stimulation and the more relaxed schedule of class as opposed to work, I'm usually not crazy about the homework. One thing that can be said for the life of the working stiff, is that when you're done with work, you can go home and do something entirely different, no need to stress about upcoming papers and tests. I'll just have to keep the end goal in mind during classes.

I've got my fingers crossed. While mountain biking today at the Belmont Plateau area of Fairmount Park here in Philly, I somehow managed to smash my face into a branch hanging down from a tree above the trail. While this is usually a painful but tolerable part of mountain biking on the tight single track of the park, this particular branch gave me pause. Just after I was thwapped on the right side of my forehead, something about the hairyness and shape of the offending shrub gave me pause. Yes folks, it was indeed a large-ish branch of poison ivy that I had splintered with my noggin. Uttering some choice words, I headed back home at top speed, stopping only long enough to smear some touch-me-not stem juice on my face and spray myself down with water.

We will just have to wait and see if my face turns into a pussing boil or not. I'll post pictures if it's really nasty.

Ok, so today has not been a very productive work day. I will readily admit that this was one wasted. But, I found some interesting racer diaries, specifically this one from Ben Kersten, an Australian who is learning the ropes in the Japanese keirin circuit. While my experience there was quite different, I can empathize with him on sooo many levels. It is one of my few regrets about my time in Japan that I never got to watch a keirin event. Next time for sure.

NEW SPORT ALERT!!! NEW SPORT ALERT!!!

I had never heard of this particular sport, but I think I've just discovered a new favorite!! With an introductory paragraph like this, there is no way that I'm not going to engage in some Mangold Hurling this fall:

Thank you for your interest in ballistic root vegetables. This is the official site of the Mangold Hurling Association, whose goals are to make the traditional Somerset sport of Mangold Hurling known to a wider public and to encourage others to join this happy band of Hurlers.

What is Mangold Hurling? Put simply, Mangold Hurling is the sport of throwing – or more accurately pitching – the mangold-wurzel. It requires skill, strength and cunning. Mangold Hurling is usually performed during October each year. The mangold-wurzel (or mangel-wurzel) is a vegetable of the beet family, grown mainly as a fodder crop.

I found myself lacking the quarter necessary to procure a cup of the lovely "Flavia" coffee from the machine that sits like some kind of hyper-caffeinated robot on the table in the lunch room yesterday. Not to be put off the chase of a warm, sugary beverage I turned the proverbial lemons into lemonade and created a drink all my own. Noticing a container of Coffee Mate Non-Fat French Vanilla Creamer sitting on top of the Flavia, I poured a hefty amount into my mug, squirted in some hot water and created the ALL CREAMER HOT DRINK! It was pretty good, much like a white chocolate chocolate milk. While the drink contained a tragic number of chemically altered lipids and semi-solids along with an equally disturbing number of artificial ingredients, at least I had the necessary sugar rush to carry on for the next 45 minutes. Necessity truly is the mother of invention.

See, office life can be fun. Just lower your expectations a little and the fun rolls in!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

DVRPC Social Club is hosting a Miniature Golf Tournament !

Greetings Staff:

What's more fun than mini-golf? Hmmm. I can only think of one thing... that's right, competitive single-elimination match-play mini-golf with your cheerful co-workers in lovely Franklin Square! Are you getting excited yet? DVRPC Social Club and Wells Fargo are sponsoring the first annual William Penn Open. It works like this: all those interested in participating will be entered into one of four Mini-Golf Madness brackets: Bacon, McCarg, Furness and Jacobs. Competitors will be randomly paired (no seedings, Karen C. and Rich) with a co-worker, and then it will be time to go for the green. It works like a standard single-elimination tournament -- winners move on, losers go home. Kapeesh?

Eventually, the winner of each bracket will go head-to-head in no-holds barred combat for the coveted Franklin Cup. The semi-finals and finals will be televised on ESPN 8, "The Ocho." A champion will be crowned, a parade will be held, and one lucky competitor will hoist the Franklin Cup. In addition to the Franklin Cup, the winner and runner-up will receive handsome cash (or cash-equivalent) prizes (seriously), an endorsement deal with Spalding, a one year tour exemption, and a truck-load of dredge spoils.

Though I have long professed to hate soap operas, my favorite sport is nothing short of that. Not only do we have intrigue and mayhem on the international stage, the Tour de France was littered with the stuff that smutty paperbacks are made of, but even among the mediocre talent of the Philadelphia bicycling community, there are tales of intrigue galore.

So and so said this...

He doesn't know how to ride, he's a goddam menace...

He said that he'd work for me in the race, but he just sat on and then sprinted for the line...

Just last week, a couple of folks that I train with were out on our standard morning ride around a loop in Fairmount park. There is often a group of 30 something women led by a guy who used to be on my club. They ride at a casual pace, and much to our dissatisfaction, often 4 abreast. We've had incidents before in which some of our group has nearly been taken out by some of their group, and last Tuesday we decided to discuss this particular point, as we had on the previous week.

As it turns out, Kevin (the guy who used to be on my club) isn't really fond of criticism of his ride and blew up in spectacular, purple, cursing form at the suggestion that he wasn't leading his ride with respect to us. This somehow led to a threat to one of my teammates, James.

"James, you sonofabitch, you don't have the balls to ride against me! Come out Tuesday if you're any kind of man! I'm not stupid, I've got a triple-digit IQ! Come near me again and I'll ride you into a ditch!"

While James is sometimes obnoxious, and has an uncanny ability to push buttons, there was no real call for this personal threat, particularly coming from a psychologist (no, I'm not kidding).

In the end, I stepped in as the mediator and calmed down the blustering Kevin. Fortunately, my 3rd Grade Junior Resolvers training took over and by carefully avoiding "you statements" I was able to save the day.

Sometimes I miss running. At least there, the competition is primarily with the clock. Those who are better than you go faster, those worse, slower. Plus, it's harder to run your mouth when running a 6:45 mile than when sitting 5th wheel back.

Casual Friday is totally sweet. I never thought that I'd be into office parties or things of that nature, but there is something to be said for them. I think that with the desk job, there is little unstructured interaction, and the office get-together is really the ideal situation to put that back into the work day. Friday we had our end of fiscal year party, which included an all staff meeting, and a lunch cruise on the Delaware River. Now, the Delaware near Philadelphia and Camden is not what I'd call a "scenic river", unless you consider oil refineries and dockyards to be scenic. We take what we can get in Philly.

It was good to socialize with some of the other interns and folks who work at DVRPC, there are actually a number of cool folks, unfortunately they're cool folks that I never get to talk to in my daily affairs. I think that in the future I'll look for a somewhat smaller office where people are a bit more collaborative...yeah that's the ticket!

Well, bike racing is a mixed bag. Yesterday I lined up for the Faulkner Honda Criterium in lovely Hummelsville PA. The course was super sweet; very technical with 8 corners and 2 chicanes in each lap of a little less than a mile. Not being the absolute best of cornerers, I was a little bit apprehensive as I started the first race of the day, the Category Pro-1-2-3 race which included a couple of elite level riders from Massachusetts and a number of other local strong men. I had lined up with a couple of teammates and our basic plan was just to stick like glue to the fast guys and see how the rest of it went. I was doing all right, but the pace through the corners was fast enough that I got gapped at pretty much every turn, meaning that I had to accelerate eight times per lap and then try to make up for lost ground on the two straight sections. It was challenging to say the least, though I was able to handle myself pretty well despite it all. After about 10 or 15 laps ( it was a 41 lap race) I started pedaling too soon while coming out of a corner and hit the edge of my pedal on the asphalt, bouncing my rear wheel up and sideways. When it came down I must have dislodged the tire from the rim because I felt a "whump whump whump BANG" as my tire blew. Since I had not brought a spare set of wheels, I was kind of out of luck, no chance for me to get back in with the group. Fortunately for me, Art Miller of the International Christian Cycling Club had also found himself out of the race and gave me a tube and loaned me a spoke wrench to get my wheel back in order. I guess he didn't notice the Flying Spaghetti Monster logo on the back of my jersey.

Fortunately enough, I had registered for both the Category 3-4 race as well, and lined up about an hour later with a larger, but hopefully less intimidating group of riders. The pace was very much the same as the first race, attacks out of each corner, with accelerations and crazy bike handling through the sharp turns and the chicanes. I knew with a group as large as this that I'd have to stay in the front if I wanted a chance at a good result. With three laps to go, things started to get a little crazy as everyone tried to jockey for position among the final 20 or so guys who managed to stay on the main group out of the initial 60. Coming through the last lap I knew that I had to make a move to the front or be doomed in the single-file turns and corners of the rest of the course, so I sprinted quickly up to third place as one of the riders from the hometown team hammered it home, thinking that I was one of his teammates. This worked out PERFECTLY for me as I was able to keep a constant 3rd wheel throughout the final lap. I heard crashes behind me, always an ugly sound, but fortunately I was able to maintain my ideal position through the whole lap, until the final corner when my "lead out guy" peeled off and I gunned it for home. Somehow, due to the complexity of the course and the result of my frustrating and abbreviated first race, I was able to sprint in for the win. This is by far the best win I've had in cycling, I played it smart and I beat a large field on a challenging course, which went a long way to erasing the doubts about shelling out $30 per race every weekend.

Blogging takes a back seat when you're working hard to be the best tour guide in South Philly. My parents spent an enjoyable stint here from the 23rd to the 30th of June, and in the course of the week, ate cheese steaks, hoagies and real steaks; saw the Liberty Bell, the Empire State Building, Chinatown, lots of street garbage and crazy people and went on a brewery tour. Oh yeah, they also painted and fixed our house, and spent a whole day slaving away in 95 degree heat while I sat in air conditioned comfort at my office. It was good.

My parents were even able to watch one of my bike races in scenic suburban New Jersey. I attempted to be entertaining, but it was a tall order on a flat race with 45 other guys who had the same idea. I ended up finishing about 15th but might have done better had I not been slapped in the face by a tree branch on the last lap. That was a little distracting.



My dad and I also did a fabulous "father-son bike ride" through some of the nicer roads in the wealthy Philly suburbs. It worked out well as we were able to stop by and climb the famous Manyunk Wall, a 1 kilometer long 17% grade climb that is featured every year in the professional bike race that runs through town. It's a gut buster, but we persevered and finally did once what the pros do 14 times in the race, twice as fast. Oh well. I guess we need to start doping.

For their anniversary, we cooked up a beef tenderloin that Jennifer scored at the local supermarket. $6 a pound for delicious super tasty beef was a hell of a deal. Dad decided that he would add some of his personal flair to the salt crust that we baked it in.

Sadly, I don't think I've got any pictures of Mom, she was always behind the camera and if I did get a shot of her, it would probably have been of her painting the back bedroom, or the bathroom, or cleaning, or potting some plants or other housework that I told her not to do, but dammit, she did anyway. That was sure TERRIBLE.

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In other news, the prayers to Saint Felicula must have worked, either that or the Philly Water Department actually did their job. Due to the fact that our house is on a private (read old and decrepit) sewer, they were reluctant to fix the problem as it is "not part of the Philly water system" and was created before the official lines were installed. At any rate they came out just before my parents arrived and were able to fix the "choke" in the line that was flooding our basement with sewage. The upshot: no more water leaking into the basement!! It's fabulous. I no longer have to wear galoshes to go to the washing machine, the mold has stopped proliferating and life is good.

Also good, Jennifer recently was promoted to the post of Assistant Research Associate from the lowly rank of Research Assistant. This means that she is now the highest ranking person on her staff without an advanced degree and has received a hefty pay raise to boot. She's my sugar-mama for sure!

Getting back to the working world was rough last week, thank god for the Fourth of July which nicely broke up my grueling schedule of 9-5 with half hour lunch break. Such a life.

This is a shout out to all you Catholics out there:

Help save our basement from flooding with your prayers!!! Our basement is unlikely to weather the thunderstorms that have been sweeping through Philly this week without some serious "sewer reflux syndrome".

Please give up a prayer to Saint Felicula, the patron saint of sewers!

A little more about her...

St. Felicula
Her feast day is June 13. She died a virgin martyr, the foster sister of St. Petronilla. Flaccus, a powerful Roman official, pro­posed to Petronilla and was refused. He then had her arrested. After Petronilla’s martyrdom, Felicula went without food or water in the prison. She was then thrown into a sewer, where she died. St. Nicomedes recovered her remains.

I'm not sure if other people know her as the patron of sewers, but I think that her particular death would probably make her count as one. Anyway, Philly Water Department hasn't been doing their job, so I thought I would call in a higher power.

I picked up a copy of ESRI News, which is the main publication of ESRI the company that makes ArcView, the dominant geographic information software on the market today, to find a lengthy and interesting article on the overall degradation of geographic knowledge in the general public. This article was written as a matter of "Geographer pride" by a professor at Kansas State University, one of the few institutions in the country that offers an advanced degree in my undergraduate field of study. Apparently, while geography is one of the 9 critical subjects involved in the No Child Left Behind act, there have been $0 allocated to teach it in our schools. None of the ivy leagues offer graduate programs in Geography and only Dartmouth even offers it as an undergraduate option. While almost all of the "great" presidents of the past had official geographers, there has not been one since the Roosevelt administration.

What is geography? It is more than knowing the state capitals. Geography is to time what history is to space. It is the study of spatial relationships between places, things and people. It is cool. I have a degree in it. GO MAC!