Finnegan, Begin again.

So... it's been suggested that doing some writing would be good for me, and it's hard for me to argue. And really, at least in my own head, there's been a lot going on, so maybe I'll give this thingy-thing another try. Baby steps...

This morning I wimped out of riding, spooked by the forecasts of mixed snow and rain and 50 kt winds. Which failed to materialize. Tons of rain did materialize, though, and since I had to run into town to buy blackworms for the electric fish, I wasn't entirely sorry to have taken a car. But, when L.J. and E.G. showed up for beans-rice-and-science lunch on their bikes, I felt a little soft.

Before this latest storm rolled in, though, it's been beautiful here in PDX. The last storm dumped a ton of snow on Mt. Hood, and the shoulders are pure white as the mountain rises above the fringe of conifers on the horizon. I really am so happy to back in the Northwest. The picture above was taken on my Friday ride in to work. I'm at the top of the Riverside Cemetery, just before dropping down to the Willamette and crossing the Sellwood bridge to work. It's a pretty great ride, and it trade the terrifying lack-of-shoulder of Hwy 43 for these deserted roads in the Cemetery and the bike path ringing Tryon Creek State Park.

I've always been in favor of commuting by bike. I'm an ecologist, and I know too much about the impacts of driving to pretend a blissful ignorance of the impacts of my car. And early in my married life, I found that the increase in commute time that accompanied my ride really helped me make a transition from lab to home. Driving just put me home too fast, and I was still thinking about whatever bits of work I'd been wresting with- physically home, but mentally in lab. Biking home gave me time to let go of work, plus gave me some excercise, so by the time I walk in the door, I was happy, and happy to be home. Now that I'm a dad, and a postdoc, it's a bit more complicated. Both are more than fulltime jobs, and I'm not sure I'm doing either well. It's increasingly hard to justify to extra 1.5-2 hrs a day riding, when I feel like I'm leaving everywhere undone. My only consolation is that maybe the riding is preventing me from doing an even worse job... The exercise does mellow me out, and it is slowly eroding the dissertation-belly, and 20 years from now, I imagine I'll appreciate the working heart.

The commute was the most interesting part of the day

Today I tried the PG to Menlo Park commute on Neil's NT 650. I don't think I'll be doing that again. Well, I'll be doing it once more, I guess, but that thing is just not a commuting dream for anyone over six feet tall. I get the attraction- it's a really nimble bike, and I'm not immune to the antisocial charms of the Kerker exhaust Neil's running. But right around Moss Landing the "cafe"-style mirrors started unscrewing themselves from the grips so that I had to lever them up with the meat of my palm. That put me in an even more punishing posture. And the cockpit , what would be the top tube of a bicycle, is really short. I just... didn't love it.

Which is funny. I really thought the Hawk was going to be this awesome traffic weapon, at least compared to my K100RS. The KRS is just not a glamourous bike, and I have these dreams of riding something within a decade of its fabrication... The K100's are big, and really top heavy. Somehow BMW was able to make a really heavy bike, and locate the center of gravity above the actual bike. It's like the soul, floating constantly a foot above the tank. But that bike just fits me. I can commute 100 miles each way on that thing, and still be in a good mood when I get home. Way better than when I'm in a car, and that's the point of motorcycles, I think. If you're not comfortable, the whole motorcyling experience is wearing. (well, too wearing). Still wicked fun for an afternoon, where you can pull off you helmet and get a beer, but if you've got to pull off your helmet, and get to work, it kind of sucks. Now, on the commute home, maybe I can take Pescadero, and make this twitchy little bastard work WITH me.

Oh, in uglier motorcycle commute news, I pulled over next to a guy who was stopped on the side of Highway 17 this morning with his shiny BMW R1100RS. Two of the four lugnuts holding his rear wheel on had gone walkabout. He said it felt like a flat. He only had 2 mile left till his exit, so he was going to crank 'em down and go slow... but Hwy 17? I peed a little just talking to him. I've heard of getting the back wheel loose, but good God! Not what we like to see.

Chamber Day

Most of this morning was Chamber cleanup day for PGOR. Once a year we do our housekeeping at the Hyperbaric chamber. A lot of Brasso, and lot of mopping, and we dissassemble pretty much all the pressure fittings, and sterilize the interior. Good fun, that. It went really fast this year, and we were done just in time to miss Sweden's World cup opener. Ah, well. This is the price we pay, I guess.

After the Chamber cleaning, we had a picnic with the ocean rescue folks. One of the rescue folks fixed T a virgin strawberry daquarie, and she spent about a hour glued to that. Then she studiously filled the dog's water dish with pebbles. I call that good employment.

Cleaner, Faster, Better than Before!

Getting closer... I should be working on my talk for the International Temperate Reefs conference, or at least polishing up on of my manuscripts, but instead I'm puttering with this. But- this may not be all bad. I have high hopes for using this blog to keep up with my far flung family and these damned friends of mine who keep moving away.

This, this moving away is one of the larger problems with being a graduate student. The constant shared stress makes for intense friendships, and this community of people I've been living in for the past... um... eight-plus years is incredibly wonderful. Incredibly wonderful and inherently temporary. It's a dandelion community, and now we'rdefending, and people are taking to the wind. Dammit. However, it's also a community with a heroin-like attatchment to the internet. So... maybe the weblog is a good thing...

In other news, it's finally spring on the central coast, and I've been able to bundle up the bairn and the pooch and do some hiking to check out the bloom. That's never bad. The picture above is from Sobranes, just North of Big Sur.

Oops, the bairn awakes...

Ping

The first test. Sitting at home on a foggy day while the baby sleeps.