Riding on Bikes with Boys

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Kate

This weekend I went on another epic bike ride with my friends E (who went last time) and C. We decided to cover another part of the big loop of country roads, venturing out into some new territory.

It was another beautiful Sunday morning: the sky was a perfect deep blue with only a few clouds here and there, the sun was hot but not terribly so, and the humidity was bearable. That’s about the best situation one can hope for around here until it finally starts to cool off sometime in November. (I kid.) (Kind of.)

We took turns leading the group as we rolled out into the county, spotting horses, farms, abandoned gas stations, dead armadillos and squirrels, buzzards, and silos. Just getting out of town and riding down these long, narrow roads among tall evergreens is an instant pleasure. One stretch of road looked exactly like Oregon to me, with the exception of the long-needled pines (native here) in place of the shorter-needled firs (native there).

Up and down the many, many hills we went, our legs and butts (and small chain rings) getting a full workout. I enjoy about half of all hills. The downhill half! Hyuk, hyuk. But seriously, it was a really fun and challenging ride. We covered about 25 miles, not counting the miles between our homes and our on-campus starting point. I think my total for the day was about 28 miles — my longest ride to date!

My friend E is pretty experienced at long-distance cycling, and my friend C has actually done Ragbrai in the past, so I was happy just to keep up with the boys, passing them when I needed to and leading the line when it was my turn. Fun times!

As we neared home, we wound up on a stretch of road none of us had ever ridden before and what did we see but a road block — a bridge was out. Well, scheisse. We were out in the middle of the county with, yes, a map to follow should we need to find an alternate route, but also with three pretty tired sets of legs. No one wanted to have to backtrack or re-route. So we eased behind the roadblock and found a long stretch of dirt road. It looked like we could make it through.

At the spot where the bridge should be, we came upon all of the construction equipment and supplies (no one was working the site on a Sunday) and found the little makeshift bridge that was probably in use by the crews. It was narrow and tilted wildly to one side, but we managed to walk our bikes across and then lift them down the other side, where we were finally able to re-join the road.

Just a little bonus adventure!

In other, off-topic news: um, so, one of these guys? Actually my ex-guy-friend. I guess we are “friends” now? Or, friendly? Friendly-ish? I’m not sure how this is going to work out in the long run, but I think it would be nice to at least be able to do things like this on a friendly level together, especially since we work together, we share the same mutual friends, and we are two of only three bicycling people I happen to know in town.

What do you think? Can you be friends, or at least friendly, with your ex? HALP.

Falling is Like This

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Kate

Is it fall already? The time of crisp air and cool nights and leaves turning and things made out of pumpkin and cozy sweaters? Oh, how I long for it, but it’s not here quite yet. In Alabama it’s still well into the mid 90s (35 C) every day. But, but! There is hope. The humidity is dying down and signs of fall’s approach are popping up everywhere.

For one thing, college football has started. You know I don’t really care too much about college football (though I will always root for my Oregon Ducks), but it certainly does make it feel like fall. This past weekend, my friends Brunbec and Deebeecooper and I went down to campus to check out the tailgating scene at our first home game. What did I happen to see but the marching band!

Did y’all know I was in marching band in high school? Baritone saxophone, just like Lisa Simpson and Gerry Mulligan and that guy from Morphine. Coolest instrument of all, of course. We were pretty good — we marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade my sophomore year, in fact. Fall and cold weather and itchy uniforms and frozen grass on the practice field. Oh, I feel such nostalgia when I think of my marching band days.

That night we ladies hung around taking goofy pictures:

In the one of me, do you see that vein in my forehead? I call it my flux capacitor. As you can see, it is fully fluxing at the magic number of 1.21 gigawatts. And the cause of all this hilarity?

Yes, wine.

I did not let a night of over-indulgence stop me from going on an epic bike ride the next day, however. My friend E and I have been talking forever about going for a bike ride together and we finally made it happen. It was my first long ride since the triathlon in June and his first since he had a nasty wreck a couple of years back. I think it’s safe to say we each made our return to the roads in style.

I finally broke in this pair of padded bike shorts I bought a couple of months ago. They do indeed feel like a diaper when you are walking around in them, but when you are sitting on a hard bike saddle for 25+ miles of riding, they feel pretty awesome. Not gonna lie. I mean, they do not look good on me, no, but they work.

Our long Sunday ride was wonderful. The weather was warm but not humid, the roads were lonely and the countryside was beautiful. A couple of dead armadillos and trailer parks couldn’t detract from our enjoyment. I think long weekend rides will be just the perfect thing to do this fall (and a great way to add some low-impact cross-training to my marathon plan).

In other fashion news, I have fully embraced the horizontal stripe.

Clinton and Stacey of What Not to Wear fame — and my own mother — can suck it. Horizontal stripes rule. Just putting on a cozy cardigan in the evening makes me think happily about fall, too. With the drier air these days, the evening temperatures are becoming downright …well…not terribly hot. It’s a start, at least, and I’ll take it.

So this Labor Day weekend felt like a perfectly enticing little preview of what’s to come this season. The town is coming to life; friends and fun abound. And sweaters. One cannot forget the sweaters! Maybe soon I will even indulge in a pumpkin spice latte from the old Starbucks. I hope some good things are coming your way this fall, too.

Back-to-School Scheming

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Kate

Most people look at the beginning of a calendar year as a time to review where they’ve been in the last twelve months and what they want to do in the next twelve. This makes sense, of course. The first day of the first month of a new year seems so ripe for new beginnings.

For me, though, the new year always begins at the end of August. When a new school year begins, so do I. I have been living according to the August-to-August year for as long as I can remember. I started Kindergarten in August, 1983, and since then I have been governed by the school year. Thirteen years of primary education (counting Kindergarten), four years of college, seven years of graduate school, and three years of college teaching — this is year four. That’s a lot of years, now that I list it out like that. Twenty-seven years. Damn.

Well, to steer back in the direction of my point: I don’t begin the year anew in January, but now. Now is the time for me to think about goals, hopes, plans, plots, and schemes.

A building that reminds me of Winthrowup.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about trying to accomplish this school year:

Stay Organized: Between my campus office, my home office, my teaching, and my research, things can get crazy. I always find myself wishing I had brought home a book or folder that I left at school, or frantically looking for my flash drive. I am attempting to solve this problem by syncing my work-related files with dropbox (AMAZING, simply amazing tool), keeping up with my schedule on iCal and my tasks with teuxdeux.com. My home office will be used mostly for research and writing; my campus office will be prep, teaching, and grading central.

Plan Ahead, Grade Ahead: Hopefully staying organized will help here. My goal is really to avoid last-minute class prep and weekends full of grading hundreds of essays. Do a little at a time until it’s done. SO much easier said, though.

Pack Lunch: My office mate and I are going in together on a mini fridge to use in the office, which will make this easy and convenient. Any lunch I pack, no matter how hasty, will be cheaper and better balanced nutritionally than anything I can find on campus. Period.

Maintain Weight: I am really happy with where I am right now weight-wise. My fitness goals are always growing and changing (with my marathon focus right now and maybe more triathlons in the spring), but I don’t need or want to lose any more pounds. My newest Sports & Wine post over at the Bodies site explains my plans for the food aspect of weight maintenance, should you want to read about it in any more detail.

Bike Commute: I am committing to get to campus by bike instead of by car on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Those are my non-teaching days, where I might go in to grade or prep and thus I’ll be dressed in more casual, bike-friendly clothes. I may also try biking in on Tuesdays and Thursdays if I am wearing trousers, but my road bike with horizontal top bar isn’t ideally suited to biking in skirts (which I wear frequently). I have biked to campus once last week and twice so far this week, and it has made a trip in to the office on my “off” day much more enjoyable!

Dress Nicely: I still run into the problem of looking a little too young for my job, so I’m trying to cultivate a more professional appearance on teaching days so I can feel more confident and authoritative. I think it’s also going to help me to project more professionalism around the halls in general. Plus, clothes shopping is so much more fun now that I can wear standard sizes and therefore can shop in any store (uh, any not-too-expensive store, anyway — I still do have that enviable teacher’s salary). I’m currently finding inspiration from a few academic fashion blogs. See here, here, and here.

Job Market: The academic job market runs concurrent with the school year, meaning that postings for tenure-track assistant-professorships will start appearing soon. I don’t want to talk about this too much because it is an AWFUL topic, but here are my thoughts: I am not going to waste a ton of time and energy throwing myself at any halfway appropriate job just because one “should” go for the tenure-track openings. If something truly great appears on the job list, I will attack it with purpose. Expect not many updates on this one, ’cause, like I said, AWFUL topic.

Open Windows: I am going to try to be open minded about relationships and new people. Not just romantic relationships, but new friendships and social opportunities, too. Even though the guy and I split up, I still believe everything I said in this post. Just because that relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean I have to be like Clooney in Up in the Air, and shit, you know?

What about you guys? Though your lives may not be Ruled by School like mine is, do you have any goals or plans cookin’ right now?