This Person Exsists

On Saturday I was dropping off my friend at her apartment after a trip to Des Moines and she ran upstairs to grab some gas money for me.  I waited in the driveway entrance to the parking area under the building and my car was blocking the sidewalk.  I was there for 2 minutes at most.  Here is a real person that I met during that time:


Man: [walks up to my car and indicates I should roll down my window] "You know, its illegal to park on the sidewalk."
Me: "I am not parked here.  I am just waiting for my friend."
Man: "The law would say you are parked here."
Me: "Oh... Ok... Do you want me to move for you?"
Man: "Yes.  I would like that." [waits as I move the car forwards 5ft and then proceeds on his way as I return the car to its original position.]


I should say that there was plenty of space for him to walk around the car without stepping in the street or in the scary/dangerous grass.  It would have taken him 2 extra seconds and he could have completely avoided being one of the most obnoxious people I've ever encountered.  But he chose the jerk route.  Good job sir.

Streaking

I have always wanted to go streaking and finally it happened.  AND THE POLICE SHOWED UP.  I will not say who was there but there were three of us.  Also, I do not want to go into too many details because it is quite the long story but here is a summary:


We did this at the cross country course in the dark with nobody around and supposedly no chance of getting caught.  We were there for less than ten minutes and about to leave when a cop car showed up before we could put our clothes back on.  Next there was a lot of naked hiding in the woods and naked laying as flat as possible in the field while the cop shined his spotlight everywhere.  Later a second cop showed up and there was a sobriety test for one of the participants who had managed to wiggle into her clothes and emerge from the field.  The test was passed with flying colors since no alcohol was involved and there was a lot of her saying "I'm just weird and embarrassed" and insisting she was alone.  Next, the cops started throwing around the word "suspicious" a lot and threatened to bring dogs out to find anyone else that was out there.  Finally the night ended with some sneaky passing of clothes into the darkness so I could get dressed and then a naked German flying into the back seat and laying flat on the car floor until we were out of sight.


Just when the night seemed it was going to end as horribly as possible, everything was resolved and we didn't get in trouble at all!  YAY!!!

The Hardest Thing I Have Ever Done

Yesterday I biked 140 miles.  I got up at 5:30AM and left the house at 6.  Then, I biked the last leg of Ragbrai from last year to Davenport, then took a loop around Credit Island, then crossed Government Bridge to Arsenal Island, then crossed another bridge to Rock Island, and headed south to sunset park.  After that I headed back on the same route.  I got back 13 hours later at 7PM and took the best shower of my life, gorged on some leftovers, and then passed out for almost 14 hours.


Here were the most interesting parts of the ride:


- At one point the road was closed for construction and I didn't have any other routes drawn on my map so I crossed a ditch to the nearby railroad and carried my bike for about a quarter of a mile.  A construction worker asked where I was headed and I told him he was on my bike path.
- Being kind of tired at 40 miles in and then trying to reassure myself by thinking how there was only 100 miles left.
- Hitting my first real wall at miles 80-100 and realizing I wasn't going to make it.  Regretting not preparing for the ride at all by biking more than a mile to class and back for the last 9 months.
- Bought 64 oz of gatorade at a gas station to refill the water bottles and talked to an old lady who convinced me to buy a paper poppy made by veterans.  The gatorade helped for the next 15 miles.
- Worst part by far was the last 20 miles in which my gps watch ran out of battery and there were no landmarks to indicate how far was left and it was suddenly the hilliest road in the universe.  I decided not to rest until West Branch and thought I was almost there at least a dozen times only to get to the top of a giant hill to see three more giant hills with no sign of civilization ahead of me.
- Ate ice cream on a bench in West Branch and felt like throwing up
- On the final stretch back to Iowa City I saw a sign that said "Iowa City Outer Limit" and started laughing to myself and almost cried
- Arriving at my front porch, dirty, exhausted, thirsty, and in shock that I actually made it.


Everything on my body hurts.  Especially the parts that were in contact with the bike (hands, butt, and feet).  Also my knees and hamstrings and quads and back and shoulders hurt.  I think my lips are sunburned and I have a bunch of bug bites.  As much as I never wish to do that again, I am glad I did it.    It pushed me way further outside my comfort zone than I ever imagined possible and now I know that when my body says to stop, there could be about 60 more miles in the tank.


Up next: Madison Marathon with Katie on a week from tomorrow.  We are running rogue since registration closed but it won't matter because we just want to finish and don't care about place. WOOOO!

CREDIT ISLAND:

GOVERNMENT BRIDGE BETWEEN IOWA AND ILLINOIS:

I am back.

College is done, its my 22nd birthday today, and it I have a ticket to Europe.  Things are looking up.


I want to refer back to this post:
http://dinowhomper.blogspot.com/2011/08/stay-in-school-as-long-as-you-can.html
It was a lie.  DO NOT stay in school as long as you can.  At the end of that post I said my opinion would change when papers and stuff rolled around.  That was not a lie.


Unlike work, school has the ability to follow you home from class and consume your free time and sleep time and make you a crazy person.  Last week when I was doing all my final papers and lab reports and exams, I noticed I had no clean clothes, no groceries, my room was a disaster area, my nails were grotesquely long, and I had not recently bathed or slept.  I also could not think of when I would next have time to fix any of these problems.  Work will never do this to me and if it does I will quit my job.


Anyways, I did my last school related thing yesterday and am now I am an engineer.  Score!  Also I decided being done yesterday is the University's birthday gift to me.  Thanks Iowa!  Also, a couple of days ago I got a plane ticket to Zurich, Switzerland in July.  Its official, I am going.


Here are some things I found about finals week:

I LOVE VENDIAGRAMS OF STUFF!!!!

Acclimation Station

I run really bad when its hot and since it turns out that global warming is not a myth after all, I am trying to speed up the acclimatization process this year by dressing warm and being really uncomfortable for a while.  Hopefully this will eventually make high temperatures seem cooler.  So far I haven't noticed anything but I guess it takes a while to start noticing the effects.


I have, however, learned not to acclimatize while sleeping.  I went to bed on a hot night wearing a full sweat suit and woke up drenched and disgusting.  


I also learned that steam rooms are like hell.  Today me and Katie tried out a steam room and we almost suffocated to death within the first minute and had to leave for the sauna.  They put oils in the steam for your skin or something but the only thing we noticed was the feeling of breathing in poison and a burning sensation deep in the lungs.  When more steam started pouring out of some vents near the floor it was way too much like being gassed so we escaped.  In the sauna we met a lady who said your immune system gets boosted by being in there.  She said she goes in every day for 20-30 minutes and almost never gets sick.  While, I usually go in for zero minutes and I almost never get sick either!  HA!  Take that lady!  She was super nice.


Here is a makeshift steam room for your home:

Honeymoon

My wife (aka roommate) and I went to Des Moines to drop off our son (aka cat) at his adoptive parents (aka roommates sister and husband's) house.  We realized we were married sometime last year when it turned out our rental agreement was really a marriage license and our landlord was actually a priest who went around tricking people into marriages.  That jerk.  Anywho, we decided to make our trip to Des Moines into a honeymoon since we never had one.


So here is what we did on our honeymoon:


- Dropped off our son, never to be seen again
- Looked at old pictures and videos with the wife's childhood friend Andrew then went to sleep before midnight
- Slept in and the wife made me breakfast
- Ran into a median with my car and destroyed the front tire
- Exchanged the tire for my temporary donut tire using Kathryn's lesbo-knowledge to figure things out, my cross country runner strength to pry off lug nuts (thanks coach Wynn!), and Andrew's moral support and photography skills to document the amazingness.
- Ate at Woody's BBQ
- Visited Kathryn's mom (also my mother-in-law I guess?) at her school nurse job
- Went to get the tire fixed and it took forever so we wandered the aisles of petco, toys R us, and target for hours til it was fixed.  Turned our I broke the tire pressure gauge --- more money.
- Got BeBops to go.
- Drove back to Iowa City.  Honeymoon over.


All in all, super good honeymoon with my wife and Andrew!!!  Yay Des Moines!

Want A 4 Day Weekend?

Invent one.


Last Friday to Monday was a 4 day weekend because class just wasn't going to happen on Friday or Monday and also I had to go to the National Rollerskating Museum in Lincoln, and the University of Nebraska Natural History Museum, and Indoor Track Big Tens, and my house in MN, and then back to Iowa.  All these things clearly require 4 days.


The best thing about this vacation was that it was a solo adventure.  Not that I don't like people, I just like doing what I want, when I want.  Sometimes when other people are around you have to do what they want, when they want and its not as awesome.


According to the sign in book, the rollerskating museum had no other visitors for a week and a there was a rollerskating super nerd working there.  He said he was really into rollerskating and I think he REALLY was.  Apparently there is a whole different subculture in rollerskating that I never even knew about before and they all live in Lincoln, NE and work at the museum.


I learned that the Rollerskating National Championships is held annually and there are categories of Dance, Hockey, Speed, and Derby.  There are also roller club teams and coaches.  I hope to never become a rollerskating coach.  That sounds way too dumb.  I also learned that Tara Lipinski was a highly ranked rollerskating star before she started ice skating.  It was probably a smart move to switch to a publicly recognized sport.


Here is a picture of the museum: