Drenched

I just got back from working a 4 hour shift at Drenched Fest. It wasn't nearly as awesome as the website makes it look due to the Vancouver style rain we've had for the past few days. Also, the bands don't start until Thursday so it was just water skiing.

Or so I was told. My job was to sit out by the entrance and ... I don't know. Answer questions if people had them?

"Does this road with the sign that says 'Event Parking' lead to the parking lot?" "...yes"

The first hour or so was interesting. I've made a goal for myself to see how long I can go without wearing pants (uniforms and pajamas don't count) so I left the house this morning in shorts. I didn't know I'd be standing in the rain all day, and boy was it cold.

After an hour of that I hitched a ride to the parking lot from a passing school bus driven by a recent immigrant from England. Picked up my car and drove out to where we'd been standing. We then sat in my car on the side of the road for the last few hours and did as close to nothing as has ever been done.

Cod with Wasabi

I had a dream when I was napping this morning that I would blog about how we ate Cod seasoned with wasabi last night for dinner. We didn't though.

We ate cod, but we massacred it because no one know how to cook it. Oops.

Killer Heat

It's so hot here. I don't know how it happened. It seems like just a few weeks ago I was running with icicles on my eyelashes.

It's about 28C inside my apartment right now, which is some how 5 degrees hotter than outside.

I guess our apartments ability to retain heat was a good thing in January. Now it just means I have to go to sleep with ice packs in my bed.

Still Trying to Balance

I'm still having issues with the balance thing.

I've definitely pulled up too much and haven't been working out quite as much as I probably should if the goal is a Half-Ironman. I should still be able to finish the thing at this rate, but boy will it hurt.

I'm not too concerned though. "Training" was becoming too much of it's own burden. I like just going for a run or a ride. Semantics.

Night Runner

Last night I went out for a run at about 11:30pm, I love running at night, it just has a different feel to it. I haven't run at night since it was about -25 C out. What a difference 40 degrees can make!

The route I picked was a bit of an odd choice: down to the river, across the Edworthy Park bridge, along the south side of the river, back under Crowchild Trail. Now, for the non-Calgarians reading, the south side of the river between Crowchild and Edworthy Park is pretty much a paved path through the forest. Which at midnight, is very, very, very dark.

Of course I had my headlamp and red turtle light on.

It was a very interesting experience. If I let my mind wander and forget where I was, it was serene and pretty. But every so often I'd remember I was running through a dark forest at night and would be looking over my shoulder constantly and seeing things in the shadows.

At one point I was running along, close to the rivers edge when I saw two dark patches on the path and then a dark mass off to the side. My first thought was "Oh, that's a severed head and the dark patches are the blood from when they dragged the body into the river."

No.

It was a freaking beaver.

It turned to look at me, which really shocked me, but I was still extremely happy to realise that it wasn't a severed head turning to look at me. I stopped and said "What the hell are you doing here?" as if it were the one that was out of place in a forest, by a river in the middle of the night. It kept looking at me, sort of shrugged, turned and went back to the river.

Anyway, that was a great course for a tempo run. Easy down to the park, absolute terror down the south side of the river, easy back home. I'll bike it out later and see how far the south side is, but it took me roughly 20 minutes -- including talking to the beaver. I'm guessing it's around 5km? And fueled by the horrifying fear of the unknown I probably just did a best 5km time.

Lingua Franca

I was just in line behind a guy at the airport buying a coffee, and this poor guy clearly didn't speak Starbucks:

<Barista>What size, sir?
<Guy>Uh, better make it big... uh.. GRANDE!
<Elliot>Uh, you know Grande is only medium, right?
<Guy>What? Really? No, stop.. Put that cup down, give me the Tall one
<Elliot>Seriously, Tall means small. You gotta learn the language man.
<Guy>What? That doesn't even make sense? What's big? Venti! Give me a Venti.

I thought the world learned this skill years ago. Maybe he was in a coma.

Then again, I'm pretty sure his drink was a decaf something-or-other, so that could be the problem right there.

Free Time

Originally when I started this blog my idea was that it would complement my training log. Anecdotes about workouts and things like that. But, as I mentioned earlier, balance is something I have a hard time maintaining in my life. If I only give one side of the story, is it really an accurate account? When I don't post for a while, am I not training? Am I feeling burned out? Or, is there something else going on that is taking my focus off of exercise. So, I'll start branching out more and talk about things that don't directly deal with training, but clearly have an impact on some level.

What follows was originally an email to the Fam.

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Obviously I have a lot of free time given my work schedule. I'm not sure how well you guys know it, so let me explain it first.

I think of the world in 8-day weeks. The first two I work during the day, 7:30am-5:30pm. The third and fourth I work at night, 5:30pm-7:30am the following day. I come home on the morning of the fifth day, and have the rest of the time off. It's great.

So, anyway, I have all this free time. What's really interesting though is what happens to you when you have all this free-time and don't feel guilty about it. It's not like I'm neglecting anything, I'm working full-time, paying off my debts, life's pretty good. So it really is free-time, I can do with it as I please.

What I've ended up doing a lot of is playing around with programming computers. It's always been fun endeavor for me, you all know that. Anyway, I realised I was doing it lots and really enjoying it and (re)learning various techniques and technologies. How to learn more though? Take classes.

Soooo... In another example of me going all-or-nothing on something: I looked into getting a CompSci degree.

Fast forward a bit to today. I went to the bank and applied for a personal line of credit. I find out on Monday how that all went, but the bank lady seems to think it should be fine. I could almost do the whole thing without any loan, but it would require short-term huge charges to my credit card which isn't a smart move. The banker thought I was a bit strange:

"So, you're a Fire Fighter wanting a computer science degree? Isn't that kind of strange?"
"You'd think it's even stranger if you knew I already have a degree in Math"
"What? Why are you a Fire Fighter?"
"It's fun and I get to break things."

So anyway, on Monday everything should be set up so I can pretty much push a button and be a student. The whole thing will be through Athabasca University, which is entirely done online and via correspondence. The program is BSc in Computer & Information Systems. I'll get some credits for courses I did at Kenyon, but the whole thing will still take a few years.

Obviously the question that comes up is: So, will you quit being a Fire Fighter? I don't know, I honestly don't. I don't think I could go back to the 9-5 work style.

But that's really not the question that's important. I think the important question is whether I want to do it. And I do.

The entropy of my life will only ever increase. If I don't do this now things will come up and I might not have this freedom later on, and that would be a tragedy.