So there I was eating my breakfast when all of sudden it sounds like the pipes in our bathroom exploded (don’t worry the pipes are fine). It turns out the city was doing some work on the sewer line down the alley by our house. The hooked up a suction truck on one end of the alley and a camera truck on the other. When they turned on the suction, it pulled all the water out of drain pipes, including all the p-traps. Naturally, this let sewer gases to bubble up into our house, which was… unpleasant to say the least. On the bright side, at least I wasn’t using the bathroom when it happened. So I Got That Goin’ For Me, Which is Nice

Does it say more about me or more about my co-workers that an opened, and not quite full, bottle of scotch could sit on my desk all day without a single comment?

Atomic Robo

For the past couple of years, one of my great joys of FCBD has been to see what new madness came out from the mad crew of Tesladyne (in the form of new, free Atomic Robo comics). Due to a complete failure of thinking on my part, I had previously not gone looking to see what was available for Atomic Robo online. Yesterday, I corrected that oversight and learned that Atomic Robo is now a webcomic and available to read entirely online! 😀

I can’t imagine myself as a runner. I’ve never been good at it nor have I ever developed any desire to be good at it.

Instead, I like to bike. In part, it’s because when you get up a good head of speed and have a flat bit of road in front of you; you can just coast along and enjoy the ride. It’s also because there are some many gadgets and dohickeys that you can get for a bike that really appeals to the tech in me.

In any case, as the weather has been awful and I don’t get enough exercise elsewhere; I’ve been using our exercise bike at home. It’s a fancy model with all kinds of electronic whatchamacallits built in. I try to do 15-20 minutes every day[ref]Well…. I do take weekends off.[/ref] and on a good day I’ll get the bike to tell me I’ve gone nearly seven miles[ref]Once or twice, I actually got it to claim I’d gone over 7 miles![/ref]. Yesterday the weather was particularly fine and I had no pressing demands on my time. So I got my real bike out and went for a ride. I got myself onto the Cedar Valley River trail and just headed out. Initially, it kind of sucked[ref]A portion of the trail nearest to me goes past a local dump, nicknamed Mt. Trashmore and that portion of the trail reeks.[/ref] but I pushed past it and before long was really enjoying myself.

I’ve been on this trail before, but never gone all that far along it as I’ve had other commitments to draw me away. As my schedule was open, I just kept going and was soon past the areas I was familiar with. I was starting to feel a bit winded, but the day was particularly fine and the trail was lovely[ref]It also helped that I’d gotten past the Mt. Trashmore section and it didn’t reek any more.[/ref]; so I kept going and going. Though now I was drinking more from my water bottle and stopping to rest more frequently. Additionally all the tiny little hills on the trail were starting to feel like mountains and that’s when I realized I’d been out on my bike for over an hour and I wasn’t going to have enough ommph to be able to get back home. I called up my wife[ref]Hiya Sweetie![/ref] to see if she was back from her appointment and could come get me. As I’m actually writing this from home; you can safely imagine she was available. 🙂

After we were home (and I was rested[ref]By rested, I mean no longer gasping for air[/ref]), I mapped out where I’d biked and found I’d only gone about seven and a quarter miles over the course of an hour. A far cry from how well I thought I’d been doing on our exercise bike. So I guess what I’m saying is while I’m no runner; I can definitely relate to how sucking sucks. 😉

This post was inspired by Sucking Sucks, A Runners Tale.