Gotta Love Colorado Weather

We had a blizzard yesterday. I think we ended up getting somewhere close to 14" of snow. The wind caused a lot of drifting snow which made it much higher in some places. I probably should have taken some pictures after shoveling the driveway...that really would have shown how high the snow had gotten. Below are some pics that we took at 9:00 AM. It continued snowing for the rest of the day and we had substantially more snow by the time it was all over.



Now, here are some pics from 9:00 PM today...



It got up to about 60 degrees today and the sun was shining all day. In just 36 hours the weather went from "you can't see 15 feet in front of you...only go outside if you dare" to "beautiful fall day...I should put on some shorts and enjoy the weather". I'm not sure if I will ever get used to the weather around here.

Local Politics

Last week I listened to a debate between Jay Fawcett and Doug Lamborn who are running for the US House of Representatives 5th District in Colorado. In case you don't know, the 5th district is considered a republican stronghold which includes such organizations as Focus on the Family. I was quite surprised to hear that the Democrat, Jay Fawcett, is actually in a close race with Doug Lamborn. I think the reason is quite clear if you listen to the debate: Fawcett-Lamborn Debate.

I don't think that I have ever heard a debate where one of the candidates absolutely destroys the other candidate before. This is worse than the first John Kerry vs. George W. Bush debate during the last presidential election. While President Bush came off looking angry and uncomfortable at times, he at least addressed all of the issues and rebutted when he got the chance. Lamborn just stood there and refused to answer point blank questions about how he would do his job. Even mediocre politicians have some kind of answer when asked about what they would do, even if their whole answer is an avoidance of an actual answer (Bill Clinton is the King of this). While I don't agree with all of Fawcett's viewpoints, he has definitely gained my vote. I would much rather have a strong leader representing me in the House than the guy who answers a question with "Next question, please".

Book Reviews for October

I had to stop reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a great book and I was thoroughly enjoying it. The only problem is that school work was getting in the way and it was taking way too long to get through the book. I suggest saving off the book until you have the time to read a 1,000+ page book.

The next book that I read was Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It was the Hugo Award winner for this year and I wanted to see how it stacked up against Old Man's War (which was nominated for the Hugo as well). While I thought that this was good sci-fi, I really didn't enjoy it as much as OMW. I don't know, I guess I'm much more of a military sci-fi dweeb and can't get as much into the hard sci-fi that is found in Spin. It's a very good book and is definitely worth the read. I just enjoyed OMW much more. In fact, I re-read OMW just to make sure I could do a really fresh comparison between the two. In my eyes OMW still wins.

After that, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Wifey recomended it so I decided to give it a try. For some reason, this book seemed very similar to a lot of other coming of age books that I've read in the past. The only difference was that it was set in Afghanistan. There's something that I now call The Sixth Sense Effect. Here's how it goes: After watching The Sixth Sense you come to expect that M. Night Shyamalan's movies will have a huge plot twist somewhere near the end of the movie. As a result, any more M. Night Shyamalan movies that you watch will not surprise you if and when the plot twist occurs. You're expecting it and it's not going to surprise you when it happens. I found that to be the case when I watched The Village. I have a feeling that more people would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they didn't know that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The Kite Runner suffers from The Sixth Sense Effect since I've read coming of age books before and I know that some huge revelation would be coming. I guessed what the plot twist would be within the first couple of chapters and the rest of the book was a slog once I knew what was going to happen. It's a well written book, but I don't think that it deserves all the hoopla that has surrounded it.

Next Book: Cell by Stephen King

Oh no, not the knees again

I've taken about a 3 week hiatus from running. Unfortunately after the Nielson Challenge, I started pushing myself to run faster during my training runs. As a result, my left knee started hurting again (a recurring injury that I've had since highschool) and I backed off to only running once a week for a couple of weeks. Even then, my knee was still hurting, so I stopped running completely to see if that would help. I haven't felt any twinges in a couple of weeks, so it may be time to start slow jogs again. Back to building that aerobic base...

Obligatory Kid Pics

I just realized that I haven't yet posted any pictures of the kids. What blog is complete without the inevitable kid pictures. Here are some of my favorite of the most recent pictures...

Woo hoo!

Ran in an event called the Nielson Challenge today. It's basically a 2-mile practice race on a very flat course that occurs on the first Saturday of every month. After your first race, you are given a handicap (pretty much equal to the running average of your top 6 times during the last 24 months, with some incentives added if you run more often) and all other races are run against the handicap. The person who beats their handicap by the largest amount wins the race. It's a pretty neat event considering that you can win the race even if you come in last place...you just have to improve over your average time by the most amount. More details can be found at the Pikes Peak Road Runners website: http://www.pprrun.org/

The reason for the exclamation in the title of this post was because I beat my running goal by a lot! I was aiming to run under an average pace of 10 minutes/mile (in other words, run the race in under 20 minutes) while running negative splits (i.e. run the 2nd half of the race faster than the first half of the race). I ended up running the race in 16:09. My first mile was somewhere around 8:16. That puts my 2nd mile at 7:53! The average for both miles was 8:09. Not only did I accomplish everything that I set out to do, I did it in style! I was able to run the last 1/8 mile at pretty much a full sprint. I used to be able to do this in highschool, but I was usually disappointed in myself because I felt that I had saved too much energy for the end. In this race, I felt like I had worked hard throughout the race and that the sprint at the end was everything I had to give.

One thing that I learned about was that my max heart rate is 188 beats per minute (at least that was the heart rate I had at the finish line). I also realized that my training runs can probably be run at a slightly faster pace. Unfortunately, one of the things that came up this week is that my training runs are taking up too much time. I'll have to reduce the number of times a week that I run from 5 to 3. As a result, I've just totally revised my training schedule between now and October 28th. My goal for this year's race is to run at a 7:39 pace, putting my race finishing time at 23:46. That's a 30 second improvement over today's race pace...I think I should be able to do that over the next 8 weeks.

No, this is not some weird form of driveway art

We just got a whole bunch of dirt (under the tarp), mulch, rock, and railroad ties delivered. Boy, are we going to have some fun getting this stuff moved from the driveway onto our yard!

Quick Update

Pleasure reading has come to a screeching halt. Just started my next class in my Mechanical Engineering degree. It is called "Analysis of Mechanical and Aerospace Systems". I feel like I'm woefully unprepared for the course since our text is Modern Control Theory by William Brogan. I've heard a lot of good things about this book, but thus far it seems to be working with the assumption that the student has taken a Controls course. Right now I'm giving myself a crash course in Classical Control Theory and I'm hoping that I'll have enough knowledge to get me through...

Sailing was absolutely awesome. Even though it was a small lake, it was definitely big enough to get me hooked. We did most of our sailing on Sunfish, but I also got a chance to go on a Fireball (definitely too much boat for me) and I spent an afternoon sailing a Butterfly. I had a ton of fun (especially the 2nd weekend when we had fairly steady winds) and I can't wait to get back out again!

Running is still going strong. I'm up to 16.5 miles/week and I will be doing a 2 mile test race next Saturday. My current goal is to finish at a pace under 10 minutes a mile. We will see how that goes.

Still With The Water Issues

As a follow up to the previous post...

The funny part is that I've waited until now to decide that I want to learn to sail. No, living next to Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes most of my life wasn't good enough. Moving to Philly didn't suffice either. Nope, I've got to wait until we move to the Rockies where the things they call "lakes" are what most Easterners would call "ponds". About the only place you can sail is in the man-made reservoirs that serve as the region's potable water supply. I'll be taking my first class this weekend in Standley Lake. The image at the left shows a nice comparison of Standley Lake against Conesus Lake in New York. If Conesus is considered a small lake...it looks like Standley is tiny.

Oh well, the "Wildlife Refuge" part of Standley is actually pretty cool. Apparently, they have some bald eagles nesting on the lake and a whole section is blocked off so that humans don't disturb their habitat. Maybe we will see them flying around while out on the water. Now that would be cool!

We've Got Water Issues

Growing up in Rochester, NY sure did not get me ready for the weather here in the mountains. I always pictured the Rockies to be just like the Appalachian mountains...only much bigger. You know...lush forests, crystal clear mountain lakes, and snow topped peaks. Boy was I wrong. Where Rochester has about 300 days of rain/snow a year, Colorado Springs has about 300 sunny days a year. I've heard the area described as a high plains desert...which I'm guessing is pretty true.

It is extremely dry over here. If you dig into the soil (if you want to call it that), you find that it is actually only sand. In the summer, we get almost daily afternoon thunderstorms which usually dump a whole bunch of rain (and sometimes hail) in about 20 minutes. Then the clouds blow away and it's clear skies for the rest of the evening. The drenching will do very little for actually watering the lawns (and all the water just drains through the sand immediately); as a result, almost every house in the Springs automatically comes with a sprinkler system. You have to let the water run for about an hour every day in order to keep your grass green. I just about had a heartattack last year when I opened my first utility bill which reached $300...$250 of which was the water portion alone.

At that point I decided that having a green front lawn really didn't matter. Our house is located in a portion of the street that doesn't lend itself to playing out front. The solution, out with the lawn and in with the rocks and mulch. We will have a small island next to one of the trees where we will plant native plants. The rest will be rocks. I've rerouted our sprinklers so that they only cover the tiny little island. For the most part, we will keep the back yard the same. At least we will be cutting out half of the watering needs for our lawn.

We've been working on this project most of the summer. We've just finished tilling the lawn into the ground. Now all we have to do is lay down the lawn fabric and bring in the rocks. I'll post some before and after pictures once the project is finished.