Happy New Year!

The Dingbat is alive, and perhaps posting more this year. Several other 2010 resolutions may outweigh the "post daily to the blog" commitment.

Cross-training

I was thinking last week, as I got dressed in the dark--wait, I should explain. I was dressing in the dark, in the locker room at work. It's not as weird as it sounds, well, not as publicly weird: we have a single-shower locker room, one user at a time, so no one knows that I take off my coat, gloves, and sweater(s), and change my shoes in the dark (until now). I thought to myself, "I do this for the energy savings, but it's great preparation for sailing and camping and the like." And it's true; I can dress very efficiently in the dark, now.

That sort of thought--A (what I'm doing now) is excellent preparation for B (what I'd like to do)--is one that comes easily to me. And it helps get through a boring task, like changing one's shoes, if one can think of it in terms of future adventues. And, yes, there's a downside: you can fall into the habit of thinking of things in the future and missind the present.

But I'm writing now about the upside. The habits I form (keeping the lights off, for example) create not just skills but an approach to life: efficiency with energy and materials (not so much efficiency with time, as all who know me well will attest), for example. Camping, biking, sailing, working, living: it's all the same thing. What's the most efficient way to get from here to there? What's the best habit to be in to use the least energy, in as many circumstances as possible?

In the vivid past tense, as opposed to the generalizing present, here' a quick summary of the weekend's camping expedition (Full details, with pics, may be forthcoming. I won't promise, however). In short, it was fantastic. Fifteen of us (Bat Jr., Dr. Fledermaus, twelve students, and I) piled into cars and headed off to the Dunes for some hiking, beach football, hanging out around the campfire, and general relaxation. Oh, and wrestling (I won, if I may brag just a wee bit).

To continue the philosophizing, actions form habits, and habits form character, as Aristotle teaches in the Ethics. But you also have to remember the Poetics and that character and action must fit together. And sometimes you find yourself in situations for which you're unprepared. And if you're me, as I sometimes find that I am, those situations for which you feel completely unprepared often involve your interaction with automobiles.

It's not that I'm entirely opposed to them; it's just that I've become less and less comfortable with cars.

And, they are probably uncomfortable around me. Or they should be, if they know what's good for them. As we were packing up to head home, I needed to give the clamshell trunk of the Element a hip-bump to shut it. There was only one problem: the top half of the Element's trunk is at belly-button height, not hip height. So, I did what any normal red-blooded American male would do. Actually, I didn't. Rather that shoving it with the hands, I stood behind the car, jumped up and bumped it with my butt. And shattered the back window.

Let me repeat that, because I hardly believed it with my own eyes when I did it. I put my own ass through the back window of our car. Brilliant. Oh, and did I mention it was raining?

Anyhow, after we drove back to town (I was sensibly banished to riding shotgun in a student's car), I had to drive to Logan Square to have the window replaced (by the good people at Fernandez Used Auto Glass). It was terrifying, like a scary movie where bad things keep happening but they're never quite bad enough that you know that's what the movie's been bulding up to. A car accident happened in front of me, for example. I saw two bikers riding down the same street as me and wanted to offer them a ride, just to protect them from my karma--when I changed my route to get away from one of them and he turned up in front of me three blocks later, I thought to myself, "God damn it, man! You're doomed! Get away!" I felt like a self-aware Oedipus, and accepted our joint fate.

It turned out that fate had other things in store for me. I got the window repaired, and, under strict admonition to avoid highway speeds until the glue set--I visited the new REI store in town (I was very impressed by the huge bike selection, and hugely lucky that today was the quarterly garage sale, so I came away with a big ol' bag of goodies--shoes, gloves, a random set of kayak deck bungee hardware, and a 16" BMX wheel--for about twelve bucks), as well as Sam's Wine (getting a thank-you gift for BatDog's weekend walkers), and Zaleski and Horvath, a place I'd been desiring to visit since it opened.

The delivery of a fresh hot latte to Dr. F, and the delivery of a thank-you note within hours of the incurrence of the debt of gratitude, have, I think, set karma aright in the Dingbat household. An evening of hockey certainly helped, too.

Weekend plans

We're (along with 15 of our closest friends) going camping this weekend. Just a quick little jaunt to the dunes, more than an S24O (that's "sub-24 hour overnight"), less than an expedition. It's fun to exercise the camping skills and knowledge--left maturing for some years. True, we've had two- and three-person trips, even a two-family campout in Michigan last summer. But nothing so, well, Boy-Scoutly: a mix of experienced and inexperienced campers, all very eager (and honestly I've very little confidence in my ideas of what they're eager for).

It will be fun. And we will so our best to prepare and then forget that we are in charge; that is, to release the responsibility for each person's having a good time to the campers themselves.

In other news, our camera tells us that we are about to shoot its ten thousandth picture. A sunset on the beach, perhaps?

Blogging the future: Race to Mackinac

The sailboat race to Mackinac begins this Saturday (July 19, 2008). If you want to follow our progress, here's how:

	14-Jul-08 - 12:18pm Dear Sailors and Friends: For the first time in the history of the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, all boats in the fleet will carry position transponders, which will allow spectators around the world to follow the Race. This state-of-the-art tracking system allows anyone following the race receive hourly updates on individual boats, entire sections, or even the entire 439 boat fleet as the race moves up Lake Michigan. Race tracking services are being provided by iBoattrack, a division of Horizon Marine. There are two methods to access the tracking site maintained by iBoattrack. The first way is to go to the Race to Mackinac web site CLICK HERE) then click on multimedia and race tracking. You can also bookmark the site directly at http://charthorizon.com/races/2008_chicago_mackinac/htdocs/ (the site will become active shortly before the race begins). In order to familiarize yourself with how the tracking works, we urge you to take a moment to look at iBoattrack's last race tracked—the Newport Bermuda race—CLICK HERE . Though the race is now complete, you can see how the system worked. You can easily select individual sections to track (the 'class' drop down box). You can also use the movie mode to animate the race. Note that you can mouse over any boat’s current position (except when in movie mode) and get the vessel’s boat speed and other information. If you would like more detailed data on any boat, select either the 'Boat Mapper' or the 'Google Mapper' from the links at the top of the page. These will take you to a separate page that allows you to focus on an individual boat or boats. It allows you to animate the race too. In addition, there are a couple of extras for users of the site to explore. First, iBoattrack will maintain and monitor discussion boards. We encourage you to visit the boards and discuss the race with other friends, family and fans of the Race. Should you have questions about the tracking system, how to use it, or how it works, iBoatrack will do their best to answer you on the boards. Second, in order to learn about the weather than the sailors are experiencing on the Race course, you may visit AccuWeather.com, which will provide regularly updated weather information during the race. A link to the AccuWeather.com site will be available on the tracking home page. In case you encounter difficulties with the website, there is a 'help' button in the top right of each page of the tracker. Please forward this e-mail to anyone who may be interested in following the Race, and encourage them to track your progress as you race north. We hope that this project will make the Race more exciting for your family and friends. Regards, Greg J. Miarecki Chair 2008 ChicagoYacht Club Race to Mackinac Greg Freeman Vice-Chair 2008 Chicago Yacht ClubRace to Mackinac Winn Soldani Technology Chair 2008 ChicagoYacht Club Race to Mackinac

I seem to have started something

Last night, I think I started a dissertation. The problem was (is?) that I don't really know exactly what I'm writing about, and so rather than get through this exam with a whole bunch of post-it flags sticking out of books that I've read (and an extreme inability to recall what each color stood for), I'm going back to the basics: index cards. Yup, index cards.

I've done this before--not with index cards precisely, but with the same idea. The most successful papers I've written have been the result of recording in a word processing document all of my observations and important points of fact and interpretation--anything that interests me, really--and then printing it all out, cutting the individual notes, facts, pieces of evidence, ideas, clever turns of phrase, anything that occurred to me as I was reading, and laying them all out on the living room floor in logical hierarchy:


Main Point.
Subpoint
piece of evidence one
pieces of evidence two and three, which need to be understood together
Subpoint two
----uh oh! I have no evidence for this; better reconsider!----

You get the idea: it's a very concrete way of determining whether or not you've proved what you set out to. And to get an idea of what is provable within the scope of your paper.

This time, it's a little bigger, but I'm organizing the index cards as I go. Category cards get written up in portrait rather than landscape format so that they can act as dividers--but if the category proves unuseful, then that card gets set behind the 'no longer useful' category card.

It's flexible, and it allows me to take all the things that I find interesting and see what I can make of them. And it will, I hope, mean that at the end of taking this exam, I'll be well on the way to proposing rather than just knowing more but having no idea what I'm going to write on.

(Wish me luck.)

The state of the stacks (first in a series)

Fat Cyclist keeps us informed as to his weight, a public self-shaming into positive progress. I hereby tell you, with the same goal, the total height of all the stacks of crap paper on my desk.

147 cm

If you haven't heard: Good News!

We're having triplets! Two more girls and a boy, due in July, but the doctor says that they'll probably come early.

Lost, Season 31

Where in the Sam Hill are my other black shoes?
And that extra bicycle we had around in the fall?

And what else have I lost without yet realizing it?

Spoilers in the comments are welcome.

Wednesday catch-all

All the news that fits in a 5-minute post (warning--all bike content):
Tuesday night ride report: good fun, but 'urban singletrack' (that's the rut in the park full of mud, grass, chunks of asphalt, and sand) would be more fun with company. Yes, I'll advertise again for next time. (We don't quite have the momentum for going without, yet, I guess.)

Read this. It will give you goosebumps. Hat tip to Surlyblog whose Ms. Bloggins it made cry.

My old rear wheel died last week. Time to build up that new set of wheels for next winter, a bit ahead of the planned schedule. Owen at Blackstone Bikes set me up with a SRAM three-speed internally geared hub, and it's sitting on a shelf in the living room where I can gaze fondly at it until I pick up my rims and start making a wheel. Further updates on this adventure in wheelbuilding as events warrant.

Since the demise of the geared rear, I put my fixed wheel on the Surly. The only gearing that worked without shortening my only 1/8" chain is 36x18. There's a coffee out there called 53x11; they're bikers, of course, and they, inter alia, support a cycling team. I'm thinking the coffee must be really strong. After riding 7 miles on Monday with a 25 mph tailwind, I'm thinking that they should make a supercaffeinated blend called "36x18." I was spinning like mad to keep up with myself. But I could pull the trailer without feeling like my knees would fall off.

Stats

Bat Jr. had her two-year check up on Tuesday (and impressed her pediatrician by naming her body parts: "What's this?"..."hair!"..."What's this?"..."ears!"..."What's this?"..."Suprasternal notch!").

By the numbers: 27 lbs, 10 1/4 oz; 34 1/4 inches tall.

Weather or not...

It's got to be the length and thoroughness of the winter, but depression is everywhere. Not, happily enough, among our own students, but it's hitting students across campus, other friends and family...it's been a hard couple of weeks. What to say? How to light a hopeful little fire? Jeez, how to get outside for a couple of hours?