The Wabash

On today's ride I decided to stop and take a picture of the river at my turn around point. This let me also blow my nose and get some water in me since doing so is much harder during the winter. I cut my ride short because I was tired and going any further would have required going up a hill. I know what you are all thinking, "what a wimp." I don't mind because I still got 20 miles under my belt for the day and that's not half bad for me now-days.

The ice chunks were floating quickly since the water is so high. Even if you look closely, you won't see Meredith.

Outside

Guess how many Christmas presents are featured in this picture?

Professors that inspire students to say stupid things

Here is a typical (or at least the one this afternoon) meeting with my advisor goes.

Advisor: So how's your prelim coming along

Me to advisor: Great. I think I'll have a draft to you by Thursday.

Me to myself in my head: Doh. What are you doing? There is no chance of you getting it done by then. He was happy and content before you even said that. You poked the bear and now his lips are chomping for some fresh grad student rump roast. rump roast? Is that even an appropriate thing to be thinking in the presence of my advisor. Pay attention! he's hasn't stopped talking at you.

Me to advisor: Yes yes of course, Thursday I'll have something for you to look at for sure. I'll even try to get that other paper we are working on revised.

Me to myself: he's giving me a weird look. He must have moved on to the other project.

Me to advisor: Sorry, I'll get that paper work to the secretary and the results in your box this afternoon.

Me to myself: nope, now you've brought up a project that wasn't even on his radar. You're cooked. Time for an exit plan.

Me to advisor: owww my contacts are suddenly and horrifically burning and hurting me. Darn things. You know I just got them. (fierce rubbing of eyes and stomping of one leg) Excuse me a sec while I run away....

Me in my head: gah.. thoughts are silent. Only say things it's ok for everyone to hear.

Me to advisor: bathroom! I'll be back in a few minutes... ill bring those results

Me running away to myself: that could have gone better.

Not even 8:00am

It's almost the start of business hours and I already have the majority of my three therapy sessions planned for tonight. Woohoo.

On a more sobering note, my session run tonight from 5:00pm to 8:00pm. Plain gross because it almost guarantees that I won't get to bike today. However, in my mind 3 clinical hours is well worth that sacrifice.

I have my new contacts now. Even though I don't plan on wearing them regularly in the future except for biking and other sport-y things, I have to wear them all the time for the next two weeks to help my eyes get used to them. I look funny, and I can't see really well out of my right eye. I'm not sure that the prescription is quiet correct. Not enough to claim that I'm blind or anything, just enough to walk around wondering if I'm crazy or if the world is a bit out of focus. I guess I walk around thinking that regardless of how good my prescription is! (whoosh... 3pts for the deep thought. I bet you didn't see that coming.)

Back on the bike

I had a real bad cold this week so I took 3 days off the bike. I'm feeling better now, and I got back on the bike yesterday and today. The cold must have taken a lot out of me though, I was barely able to bike for 40 minutes. I'm sure it'll come back in the next few days though.

I got two more compression shirts for biking inside. I used a gift card to Kolhs that I got for Christmas so they were virtually free. A win win situation.

The colts won today. I'm betting on a saints colts super bowl.

I'm Sick

I have a nasty cold. runny nose, foggy brain, and cough. I didn't ride the bike today because I'm sick. Now I'm off to bed.

Winter Will Never End

There was an indoor ride at the bike house today. I went to say hi and sweat a bit. The house looks normal from the outside, but once you hit the enclosed porch you know its a different kind of place. A place of magic pixie dust and furry kittens. Not really, but the porch is packed to the gills with really really nice bikes (plus a few normal bikes). The best part is when you step into the house. Imagine a giant eating fifteen or sixteen bikes, doing some jumping jacks, and then running around the house throwing up. There are bike parts everywhere. Tires hang from the lights, and the walls, and the tables. There are gears everywhere and grease cloths in every nook and cranny. If you didn't know better you would think that people were squatting in a mechanics shop instead of bikes being stored in a house. All in all the house works (at least for a house where cyclists live), and they let me come watch their cable and Tour Down Under highlights. I can't complain.

Liz said that I couldn't take any pictures because they would never let me come back. Isn't it the very nature of a cyclist to document and share every mundane and uninteresting part of the ride? Anyway, she said no so no pictures today.

Me and my Prelim

That is me. The wall is my prelim proposal. I have 1.75 pages of 20 written. boo.

But now I'm going to bed.

Recovery Day

Today was a fantastic ride. I was sore from yesterday, so I just went for a nice light hour while watching Mission Impossible 3. There are so many jokes when Tom Cruise is involved, but I don't have time to launch into those. Oddly enough though, the movie provided good entertainment and the hour went really quickly.

In other cycling news. The Tour Down Under starts tonight. Team Sky won yesterday's pre-race stage. Good for them considering that they are a brand spanking new team. What a way to start the season. Plus, they looked good doing it. Considering all the other team jersey's of the past and present, looking good is no given. In the end, The only time that lycra looks good is when it's moving at 25mph.

Here is a good example of what I mean: here vs here.

That's all for tonight. Happy MLK day. I have visitors coming over and homework to do. Hurray?

Grumpy Stomach

I did another two hour ride today. It took all the time but with none of the novelty. I think that key here is that I did it. I think half of the battle of going on the trainer is mental fatigue. I find myself getting in my head with thoughts like. "Isn't an hour long enough;" "Your legs are tired why don't you slow down;" "Pizza sounds so good right now;" "This is stupid. I'm not even moving;" and most demoralizing "I'm really tired but not even halfway done."

Once you get in your head like that time literally slows down, your legs feel heavy, you sweat more, and atomic bombs start going off in your head.

So here are the few indoor cycling tricks that I've developed so far.

1) Don't look at the clock. What ever you do, try not to look at the clock

2) Don't worry about running out of energy. Keep up your speed for now, and if you bomb out later so be it. Just don't get into the habit of changing effort goals halfway through a ride.

3) Have someone in the room watching tv with you. Pride is an amazing thing. Wanting to appear strong can directly translate into being stronger

4) If you must keep on eye on the clock, set a false one 5-10 minutes behind the real clock. If a stare at a clock that says I've only done 5 minutes I'll believe it even if I've done 15. It works for me.

5) Look forward to drinking water or eating a goo. It gives you nice little mini goals upon which to focus. (If inside, always drink lots and lots of water)

And finally, when you are feeling at your worst...

6) Remember that you will probably feel even worse in a race so buck up and make it happen.

Now my tummy is a bit upset because the Gatorade I had didn't sit well. Oh well.

Here is my favorite jersey that I got last year. This is the one I crashed in, but it wasn't damaged.

NFL playoffs

Watching football isn't my favorite thing to watch while biking. I love football, but there is never more than a minute or two of action before it is broken up by commercials, time outs, or other weird things. However, since the playoffs are underway I watched them while on the bike anyway. The Cardinals just had no answer to the Saints, and it was a pretty one sided game.

I think Kurt Warner should retire. He's had one to many injuries and concussions to risk it anymore. He's done a lot over his career and is still a great player, but seeing him get walloped by a linebacker throwing a block made cringe a bit to much. This is a man with 5 children. I think it's time to stop playing football and allow their future children to have a grandpa that can remember their names.

My ride wasn't that great today. I was mentally tired from yesterday's good long ride. My legs didn't get with the program. My backside was a sore. In the end, I got through the ride, but it wasn't anything special.

I had a headache again this morning, but that makes sense since it is a Saturday. I took some Excedrin, and my headache went away as usual. I have noticed that I get about 3 or 4 visitors a week from people who google "Saturday headaches." Try it and my blog is the first link on the fourth page of results. I may not get celebrity cycling bloggers to read stop by (I kept a close eye and no sigh of Fatty), but at least I can attract a steady stream of hungover but persistent college students. After all, I would think that getting to the fourth page of results could be pretty hard to do if suffering from a killer morning headache.

Unfortunately, I provide no magic remedies beyond recommending drugs or drinking a bit less on Friday night.

One week down

I celebrated the first week of school by allowing myself extra time on the bike this afternoon. I went for 125 minutes. The longest ever for me on the trainer. There were times when I thought my mind might explode, but that could have been due to the movie I choose to watch.

I threw in Total Recall starring none other than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was amazingly bad. Here are my thoughts about the movie in no particular order.

1) The gov is mostly naked in the first scene (I'm seeing a pattern here)

2) Anyone who loves the color red or communism will love this movie

3) For awhile I thought he was playing another robot, but he wasn't. The acting was just that bad

4) At one point in the movie a little person stands on the bad with a machine gun and shoots everyone.

5) Scientists should really look into the idea that being exposed to the climate on Mars can cause you to mutate and grow extra limbs (or other unmentionable body parts)

6)Every single underground tunnel must be only a few inches away from another tunnel since people always are crashing through the walls. The same goes for walls. When are Mars, always crash through the nearest wall instead of crashing through the nearest door.

Here is a picture of my legs. I don't know exactly why, but it seems like the thing to do after biking for two hours without moving an inch. Sounds a lot like grad school to me.

Here is the proof that I rode for 2 hours.

What you can't read that ?!?

Fat Cyclist

Today I invited Fatty from Fat Cyclist to visit my blog. He is a premier cyclist and contributes daily to his very powerful blog found here http://www.fatcyclist.com/ I consider him to be on the magnitude of celebrity cyclist. This mostly comes from his ability to raise money to help fight cancer.

I don't know if I sent the message to the correct email, or if he will read it. If he does, he may choose to silently wander through like most other people who read regularly. However, as of today there is a significantly higher chance that a real respected cyclist knows of my blog and may have even stopped by short a short glance.

I often tell my clients to go out on limbs because the worst thing that can happen is usually not that bad. I finally took some of my own medicine and went out on a limb knowing that the worst that can happen is nothing, and that's not so bad.

Woot woot.

Phat phone skillz

The only interesting thing that happened on my ride last night was that I received a phone call. It is always hard to try and talk coherently with someone when you are starving for breath. I didn't tell the person I was on the bike. I found that most of my sentences came out way too fast followed by awkward pauses of heavy breathing.They probably think I have some communication deficit while talking on the phone.

Me: hihow areyou...........

DM: fine, I'm returning your call

Me: great,everything hasbeentakencareof...................it'sallgoodnow

DM: ok, was something wrong?

Me: yesnoyesnoyes...wellsortof...not........anymore....I'lltellyouaboutitlater

Me: I'vegottogonow.....bye

DM: ok, bye?

end of call

Good for you if you took the time to read all that.

I realized today that my clients and I have two very different ideas of what urgent means. I was inundated with messages and emails from a client who urgently needed to talk to me. I even phoned my supervisor in the middle of one of her therapy sessions to figure out what to do. When, I finally called the client back it was not really urgent at all and had to do with scheduling business. Fortunately, it was all stuff that could be taken care of, and now the world is again spinning in the correct direction at the correct speed. You may have noticed the sun standing still for an hour or so yesterday afternoon.

I was so exhausted at the end of the day that I fell asleep with Liz on the couch trying to watch NCIS.

TV quote of the night, "This man clearly fits the profile of a malignant narcissist," Zeva NCIS. As if being narcissist isn't descriptive enough, now you can be a malignant one. I guess the easiest way would be to let those types of narcissists grow uncontrollably until they are huge.

"edit: malignant narcissist is not a widely accepted term in psychology, but it did make an appearance in the late 90's in a few journal articles. I still hold firm that it is not the correct way to distinguish narcissism subtypes. I'm pretty sure the show went for dramatic effect, which is fine, instead of accurate screen play writing. Thus a classic example of not getting your schooling from popular television"

Did it

I biked.. I know that may not surprise you, but it does me. I don't have a lot of time to write tonight since I have a pseudo deadline for a paper revision. So without further adieu, here are the facts.

Time on bike: 65 minutes

Workout: 5 minutes rest followed by 10 minutes just under threshold repeated 4 times

Movie of choice: The Italian Job

Position of Liz: Couch

Number of tissues used: 7

Amount of water consumed: 0

Amount of Gin consumed: 1 water bottle (don't tell Liz)

Number of times falling of my stationary bike: it's a secret

Just under threshold = going hard enough where its hard to talk, but easy enough to go for 10 minutes

Here is the next jersey picture in the series. I like this one because it unzips the full length which is a nice feature in my opinion.

Tired Nathan

Cold Nathan

The "Nathan can somehow spill dinner on the back of a jersey that he isn't wearing" phenomenon. (bottom left, just below the sprocket)

Waiting for the bus

I decided to take the bus this morning. I decided that the things that I need to do at school could wait till 9:30am. Hurray and lucky me. Now I have 10 minutes before I have to go stand out in the cold waiting for the bus.

Day number one of the semester went well, but it sure made me tired. I saw my two child clients and while both sessions were productive, both were exhausting for different reasons. I was so exhausted that I haven't even done the hour of paper work afterwards (it's waiting for me at school).

I'm trying to set aside Tuesday and Thursday to work on my research and prelim. I've already violated this rule by putting of my clinic paper work for today. It was short lived, but I'm still going to try my best to separate out my clinical days and school days. Today's goal is to work on my prelim, TA a class, and work on revising a paper on military reintegration. Sounds fun.

I'm going to get on the bike tonight. I'm going to do it. You all are my witnesses. I'll even post another Purdue Jersey picture from my slowly expanding collection. Lucky you.

Well, that's was a pretty dry post, but that's all I've got. Now it's time to go do that work.

Spring 2010... Go

If anyone else is annoyed with the three periods that have been appearing in my recent post titles, you are not alone. I too find them very very annoying. From now on there will be no more ...’s in the titles. I promise.

Liz and I celebrated the start of the semester last night with some friends at the local bar. You can't drink in Holland, MI on Sunday, but I guess you can do so here in Lafayette. Then we caught some sleep and Liz dropped me off for the day at 6:50 am. Whoo Hoo. Let the school fun begin... with a blog post (doh I did it again, but it was intentional).

So far this morning I have ordered copies of some assignments and syllabuses, cleaned a coffee maker; and made a k-cup of half-caf coffee. 1/2 the caffeine means I get to drink twice the amount of coffee. At least, I think that's the whole point. It's like the Crystal Light of juice. Just slightly inferior in order to allow for mass consumption (something that will serve my purposes well)

Well back to work now.

Jersey...Day 2

The only reason I biked today was so I could take a picture of the jersey that I wore. Here is an old Jersey I picked up cheap last year from someone on the team. It's seen better days, but it's a Purdue jersey so it has it's place in the closet.

Here is me trying to look maybe a little too stoic. I'm not sure it worked.

The movie of the night was The Terminator. In the opening scene the governor of California is completely naked. I think its weird that he now controls the 10th largest economy in the world (roughly). That estimate was before the complete economic breakdown.. maybe he now controls the 20th or so largest economy. Still pretty big.

I'll be BACK.....

Quiet...Liz is sleeping

Today, I tried out a new rear tire. From the pictures you can see the second most noticable difference. It is bright orange.

However the biggest and most noticeable difference is the amount of noise that this tire makes when on the trainer. My outdoor tires make this horrible and loud rubber squeaky noise every time I put any amount of pressure on the peddle. This wouldn't be really annoying if I were only biking in 10 minute segments, but I usually bike for about an hour. That's 60 minutes at 80 revolutions per minute for each of my 2 feet. That's around 9600 squeaks per ride.

Liz started either leaving the apartment when I was riding or wearing her ipod whenever I was on the bike. I started to worry about disturbing the apartment above us. We usually keep our tv volume at 16 out of 100, and I was turning it up to 60 out of 100 in order to hear it while biking. I think you get the picture.

The new tire is geared towards indoor use. In fact, the tire itself is plastered with warning about using the tire only indoors. I guess the rubber composite is different, but it is indeed much much more quiet. It squeaked just a tad after 45 minutes of riding. Most importantly, it was quiet enough for Liz to take a nap without being disturbed. You can see how close the couch it to the bike in the picture. It reminded me of these old commercials. I can bike and Liz can sleep. The world is again in balance.

Snow snow snow

We got so much so today that all the plans changed. First, Liz got to work only to be told to go home an hour and a half later. The people she works with really don't venture out into the snow, and I don't blame them. We were going to go out for eat tonight with some friends, but they decided the roads were too bad by them. So far, we are probably up to 3 or 4 inches. I know that this much snow is nothing in Michigan or any other northern state, but here in central Indiana they don't plow the road.

I went to the eye doctor. It can best be described as a non event. I take that back. I paid 70 dollars for eye measurements. Eye measurements don't involve a ruler of any kind. I didn't even know he measured them until they asked me to pay for it. The exam didn't feel any different, but it was..... The actual contacts will come in next week.

Here a new jersey that I was given today by a friend of mine. It took me completely by surprise because I don't know him that well.

pictures....

My hair is super flat because I wore a hat all day. It's cold outside.

Contacts and others

In biking news, I've now watched The Patriot and Full Metal Jacket while biking. I really like Mel Gibson in the Patriot. I think it is a powerful movie and is probably in my top 10 all time movies list.

I don't really like Full Metal Jacket except for the huge number of one liners that I grew up hearing.... most of which are completely inappropriate at any age. I'm not sure what I'm going to watch next. I could be time for a cartoon.

I'm getting my contacts tomorrow. It will be weird. I hope that everything goes well. I probably won't get to bike outside anytime soon though. The temps have been in the teens and there is a lot of snow in the forecast. Soon enough I will be out on the open road again.

Bed time

It's time for bed, but I'm waiting for Liz to use the bathroom first. This happens every night. It's my job to check to make sure the doors are locked, the heat is down, the humidifier is running, the tv is off, and the lights are off. What a glamorous life I lead.

Lots of different blogs have mentioned that it is cold outside. The same is true here. It is oh so cold.

On Thursday, I'm getting contacts. Then I'll try biking in the cold. I have the gear to do it.... I think.

I rode for 5o minutes on the bike tonight inside tonight. I didn't have any movies to watch so I watched the cross country skiing world championships on tv. I don't think I could every work that hard. Something about running up hills in the snow with skies on their feet seems really really hard. It was more exciting to watch than I expected. My ride went surprisingly well considering the cold that I am rocking.

And she's out of the bathroom. night