guide to eating fruit

ever wonder what were the most tasty or least difficult fruits to consume so you could get in your 2-4 daily servings in the least painful manner? me too. fortunately, today xkcd.com clarified everything with this insightful graph:

frilly pillows and a dragon

i had the pleasure of spending this weekend in fayatteville, tx--a town so small, weather.com couldn't locate it when someone tried to figure out what the weather forecast was for the weekend. all of the texas 4000 riders descended upon this little town for a training camp this weekend. we had awesome weather and two great rides...in total this weekend, i had less dogs chase me than i had had chase me in a single 30 mile ride when i lived in san antonio this past summer...so as far as rides go, this weekend was pure bliss.

i also had the pleasure of having a slumber party with three boys and a dragon (get your head out of the gutter jakub). and at the risk of being a traitor...at slumber parties, boys stay up at night talking and giggling just like girls--only the topics of conversation don't revolve around boys as much as they revolve around recounting episodes of south park (which, evidently, i need to see more of). as for the presence of the dragon, i should explain further, but first a little background. we were staying at a bed & breakfast. now, this was the first bed & breakfast in the us that i'd ever stayed in, so i'm not sure if it's representative, but there was pink foofoo stuff everywhere. i'm not sure what else to say about that. there were two bedrooms, two living rooms and a small kitchen and eating area--all ideal for our purposes. the coaches got the bedrooms downstairs and then four of us (tx4k-ers) stayed up in the attic, which appeared to be the kids area. there were four beds with pink bedspreads and doll-sized chairs all with small decorative pillows...and a large stuffed dragon. he was bright red, had very cool blue, marbled wings and was made of the same material as squishy, the martian one of my friends won at a dave & busters-type place in boston...meaning that he was not really very squishy. the dragon was a little out of place, but really added to the ambiance.

lesson: if you ever go on a training trip, bed & breakfasts in the country are awesome...and if you ever open a bed & breakfast, the presence of a stuffed dragon in the children's play area is a must.

don't do this at home

sometime last week, one of my roommates and i got into a heated discussion on eggs. he said putting an egg in vinegar would dissolve the shell and i said putting an egg in vinegar with some food coloring would make an easter egg. turns out we were both right, but we had decided to conduct an experiment to show that the eggshell would in fact dissolve. we got a small cup, poured in a bunch of vinegar, added an egg, covered in saran wrap and let it incubate for a few days on the kitchen counter. during the course of our experiment, the egg began to appear bloated, a strange looking sticky goo started appearing on the sides of the glass and the plastic wrap began to bulge.

we decided to end the experiment this evening for fear that something odd was going and we were creating some sort of biohazard. my roommate removed the plastic wrap and poured the vinegar into the sink and touched the egg. the shell had basically dissolved but touching the egg was like touching a hard boiled egg. so we started tossing it back and forth, because...well, why not? so we start moving further away from each other until we're standing across the dining room from each other throwing our science experiment back and forth. i start laughing a little too hard and forget to cradle the egg as it heads my way. the egg lands in my hand and explodes. turns out that although it felt like a hard boiled egg, it wasn't. in fact, it was still raw. but the innards of the egg landed on the floor in perfect sunnyside up fashion. if our floor had been a stove, it would have been brilliant and breakfast would have been ready in a few minutes. instead, we had raw egg on the floor, all over my jeans and hands...and then my jacket fell off the table onto the raw egg for good measure. i wish we'd gotten it all on film.

recommendation: don't throw eggs in the house, especially if you don't know whether or not they are cooked.

a beautiful day to run...and ride...and eat

therefore running, riding and eating was exactly what i did. i had never run a marathon bandit before, but i have to say it was quite enjoyable. you don't worry about what your time will be or whether or not you tapered (or trained) enough. you just get up the morning of the race, throw on your running shoes and head out the door. there were four of us who started together. david was officially registered for the austin half-marathon and hilda for the full marathon. jakub and i both ran bandit. we were getting ready to walk to the start in the morning and instead of packing running type things like gus and water, jakub packed a squirt gun. there is a true bandit runner for you. we decided that we should make official bandit runner tshirts for future adventures. anyhow, running as sherpa for a friend is a lot of fun. hilda, jakub and i ran the whole marathon together and finished in about 3:50. it started out a little cold in the morning, but the sun came out and it warmed up nicely. our other housemate ralf found us about 4 miles out from the finish and documented the rough miles. i hope to put a picture or two up soon.

after a quick lunch, i went out and rode with the texas 4000 bunch. we had a bunch of new riders which is always fun--lots of falling over when stopping, which bruises the ego way more than the body but is still amusing to watch. it reminds you how much you had to learn when you first started riding. that and it was like coaching again, which i have been missing the last year. we have a training camp coming up this weekend, so hopefully the weather will be as nice as it was yesterday. and no day with this much activity would be complete without a tuna and jelly sandwich, so after my ride i had one. it was delicious. if you're a skeptic austinite, we should ride (or run) together some time and then you can come over for a post-workout sandwich.

classical guitar

in college i had a number of friends who played the guitar and i was fortunate enough to hear them play though on a somewhat sporadic basis. i presently have a roommate who is applying to grad school in music performance, plays classical guitar and happens to live in the room next door...and i have to say i have never heard someone make that instrument sound as amazing he does. he has an audition at ut next saturday, and in preparation held a concert in the house for us tonight. about 30 people were present so it was a nice, cozy bunch. it is awesome to watch a talented musician play. seeing how fast their hands move to create a song gives you a whole new appreciation for the difficulty the art...and it just sounds really neat!

bme phd

i got the official news this week--i got into the biomedical engineering program at UT, so i will officially be an engineer again in the fall. i'll still be working for the same advisor and doing the same type of research, so it's mostly just my department classification that is changing. i'm excited anyways though.

this sunday 2/17, i will be "supporting" one of my housemates in the austin marathon by running the whole thing with her. i've never unofficially run a race before, so this should be an interesting adventure. i'm still trying to figure out what i'm doing for boston. i haven't secured a place to stay yet and that is going to determine whether or not i go. stay tuned.

headaches

it's been awhile since i posted last...but i promise i have a good excuse. i've started getting really bad headaches at work from staring at the computer. while i know this may sound pretty lame, i've actually been avoiding my computer when i'm not at work because of it. last week, on one of my non-work days, i sat down at a computer in my lab for five minutes and my eyes started watering profusely. i looked like i was crying. thus, i have decided that either work or computers (or both) are bad for my health. as i can't just give them up at the moment due to popular forms of communication being as they are, i obtained a screen cover and now have a good excuse to get up and move around, and not look at my computer. apparently the headaches are caused by eyestrain which is exacerbated by having a fluorescent light directly over your computer (design flaw of the building in which i work, i suppose).

anyhow, onto more interesting news. i'm still waiting to hear from the bme department to see whether or not i got in. this is nerve racking. even my advisor says it shouldn't be a problem, but i'm still bothered that i haven't heard anything yet. oh well. the bikes are in for texas 4000, and we have many new riders out cruising around austin now. i think that the arrival of the bikes has finally made everyone begin to realize that we are really riding to alaska in a few months. my fundraising has been going well. to date, i have raised ~$3500. my goal is to raise at least $5000 so i'll be working hard the next few months to help make that happen. i finished reading into the wild and just took out a couple books containing john muir's writing as well as a copy of thoreau's walden. i don't have a lot of spare time to read right now, but i try to keep a few books around, so that i can read a few pages whenever i have a minute or two.

a friend forwarded me alink to a blog post in the nyt about the endless pursuit of unnecessary things. something to think about.

finally, happy belated mardi gras to all, and happy lent to all those who celebrate it.

into the wild

i decided i needed to read jon krakauer's into the wild before i saw the movie (although i have to say the reason for wanting to see the movie in the first place was mostly for the scenery). because chris mccandless read a lot of natural philosophy and related literature the book (into the wild) has a number of quotes in it relating to wilderness and related themes by thoreau and others. one passage i was reading this morning particularly struck. it says "like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless [the person who the book is about] seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too powerful to be quenched by human contact" (p. 66). i don't really date that much and have never really been particularly bothered by this, but whenever people ask me why, i ask if they'd like to see my calendar. since i can remember i've been searching after something, but i've never quite been able to put my finger on what (although i suppose you can never literally put your finger on an idea...). yet this passage, though not necessarily revealing the something, seemed to pinpoint the personality of individuals who are searching for that something to the exclusion of a lot of other things (though not necessarily in an unhealthy way). it left me with that 'ah yes, i am not alone' feeling. krakauer mentions that in addition to thoreau, john muir fell into this category of people. john muir founded the sierra club and had a hand in establishing national parks in the us. i am the ride director for the rockies route for texas 4000, the group with which i am riding to alaska this summer. on this route, my team and i will pass through many of the big (popular) national parks in the rockie mountains (tetons, yellowstone, glacier national park, banff national park (in canada), etc). as many of these were, i believe, the haunts of a naturalist/natural philosopher or two, i am thinking that over the next couple months i should be reading some of their work in preparation for my ride and what i may see along the way. if anyone has read any of muir's work and has recommendations, please let me know.

27,000 miles

no, that is not how many miles i will be riding this summer. it is the reading from the odometer on my car. i bought my car new in hawaii in january 2004 with 11 miles on it, and when i shipped said car to the mainland in june 2007, the car had 18-19,000 miles on it. in the last 7 months, i have managed to put mileage on my car that previously would have taken me two years to obtain. that my friends is a lot of money spent on gas, and way too much time spent in the car driving back and forth between austin and san antonio. i am looking forward to 2.5 months of cycling and minimal car time (until the road trip back of course!). ride on!