Back to speed

There's a thing in higher education, well, all of education really, called the summer break. If you've been through any part of the education system or work in such an environment, you completely understand what I mean when I say I LOVE SUMMER.

It's the season when all the students are gone from campus, and it's quiet. It's the season when I can come in a little later (err, I should really say later than I normally come in) and the bosses bat narry and eyelid. It's the season when I can take days off and it can either be a Monday or a Friday and it's NOT a big deal. No events, very few prospective students visiting. Little to no (application) file reading, hardly any frantic phone calls from parents who want the assurence that their child is going to be treated like they are the only freshman coming to BU.

There's the opportunities, many of them, to go up to the north shore and go camping. Or to take in the beauty of God's created world from a local state park or on a bike trail on the road to nowhere. (I got to do a lot more of this last summer seeing as I was away from work for a while).

You get the idea: I love summer's slowness, nature's full blossom, and the tranquility of living/working under very little pressure.

Well the school year/fall is everything that summer's not. And it's back with a vengeance. Here's a good example. In the month of October, I'm only going to be in the office for a grand total of one working week. The rest of the time is split between south-west Minnesota, Colorado, and south-east Minnesota. It's going ot be interesting.

I just shudder when I think about how in two weeks my life is going to look very different from what it looked like two weeks ago and I thought I should share that with you.

p.s. Hang in there Beth, you'll be alright.

Foolish Friday

Foolish. That's what I am and right now, I'm going to go ahead and admit that I'm proud of my folly.

Let me explain.

Didn't have much going on Friday, the day started off normal. Checked the wires for news from home, went blog trolling for a while then finally settled for watching some tennis. At about 12:30 Justin called, commence foolishness.

He and I have taken to biking over the last few weeks. Typically, I'll either go down to Minneapolis where he lives, or he'll come up to Roseville (where I live) and we'll hop on one of the many bike trails in either neighborhood.

After going out together early last week, Justin and I hadn't ridden together all week. I'd finally figured out how to get onto the Getway trail from my house earlier in the week, so when we got to the point of deciding where we were going to ride I eagerly suggested getting onto the Getway trail.

A few minutes later Justin shows up and off we go. East on County B to Lexington; south on that to Roselawn; east on that into the park; out onto Dale; further south to Larpenteur; east on that to Jackson street; one block south onto Wheelock parkway; and finally east on that across 35E to the Gateway Trail.

The Gateway trail is just that; a gateway or better yet, a get away from the cities. You could take this thing all the way up to Duluth if you felt so inclined, we didn't. What we did though, which isn't much better, is decide foolishly that we were going to ride on the trail "for a while".

It was before two when we started riding, I had nothing going on that afternoon, neither did he. He only had to be back at his house at six to leave for a retreat in Stillwater. Stillwater is 21 (highway) miles from the cities.

The trail is beautiful and not too hard to ride on. So Justin and I kept going, and going, and going. Paying no attention to the reality that we had to turn back around and come home at some point, we soon had gone 18 miles! At that point we saw a sign that said "Stillwater 4 miles." The trail veered off to the left and kept going north at this point--away from Stillwater and all civilization for that matter.

Feeling hungry and dehydrated (we'd plundered my lone 23oz. bottle of Propel Fitness water along the way), we decided to ditch the trail and head for Stillwater. "I know there's a Dunn Bros. there," cooed Justin. He works at Dunn Bros. in south Minneapolis, and that has conveniently become a source of many caffienated products in my life. At that point, we both were envisioning an ice cold peach iced tea (iced tea with peach syrup.....heavenly).

"Let's go for it," I urged.

Never before has my resiliance and endurance been tested like it was over those four miles. Along with the trail we ditched, we also left behind the relative smoothness of the terrain. All the way to Stillwater it was up one hill and then down on the other side only to be confronted by yet another torturous incline. We both were worn out and tired. Flooded with lactic acid, every muscle in our legs burnt with each revolution of our peddles.

And then we unravelled.

We realized that Justin and I deal with excercise pain (you know the burn you feel when you work out) differently. He responds by working harder and faster to get it over with. In my mind this causes more pain, but whatever. My response to "the burn" is to slow down; scale down the intensity and hopefully the pain will scale down too. He ended up almost half mile ahead of me.

Thankfully, we finally made it into town and had to decide on a POA (plan of action). The first order of bussiness was (obviously) to find the Dunn Bros. in town. We searched, and searched, but hunger was just too intense. Finally Justin burst out, "I just want to find a place to eat and drink, I don't care whether it's a Dunn Bros. or not!"

We found a coffee shop, ordered sandwiches and (you guessed it,) peach iced tea. We had to teach the girl how to make it since she hadn't made one before. Let me just say, I've never been so thankful to have food and beverage in life as I did then.

Then it hit both of us both we're foolish. But oh well.

By then it was almost six, Just wasn't going make it back on time. We knew we weren't going to try bike back home. So I sheepisly called my awesome wife (to whom I'd boasted earlier "we're just four miles away from Stillwater.") She agreed to come pick us up.

Remeber when I said Stillwater is just 21 miles away from the cities, that's highway miles. We figure we rode almost 30 miles between getting to the trail, the trail and getting to Stillwater. We were dog tired.

Anyway after the food we walked around waiting for Bren to come. Rejuvinated, we realized that we'd been nothing short of foolish.

Thankfully it's something we can brag about.

*Sponsors note: This Foolish Friday story brought to you by the makers of Propel fitness water. Propel Fitness Water is a trademark of the Gatorade company.