Kicking Snow Waste

Des Moines had its second significant storm of the season Tuesday night / Wednesday morning.  The one in December dropped 12 inches.  See here for my post about the last one.  The one this week dropped 5 inches.  The good news is that the state and local DOT's didn't bungle up their response to it this time like they did in December.  It doesn't matter how good the response is, I still always manage to get accumulation on the underside of my car.

I like to kick the snow and ice that builds up behind my car's tires.  I know I shouldn't because it is possible the built up accumulation will take with it a part of the wheel well, but I don't care.  It does a couple things for me.  It allows me to take tight corners without the wheels scraping against the snow, giving me better handling.  It also allows me to get out any aggression that I might have.  Sometimes you have to kick fairly hard.  I find it satisfying when I get that plop of snow waste to fall to the ground.  When I do it in a parking stall it is even better.  This is because I then get to back over the snow waste on my way out, smashing it to smithereens.  Take that!  That's what you get for gumming up my wheel well.

RAGBRAI Overnight Towns

The RAGBRAI overnight towns were announced for 2013 on Saturday night!!  Here's the list:

Sat. night: Council Bluffs
Sun, night: Harlan
Mon. night: Perry
Tue. night: Des Moines
Wed. night: Knoxville
Thu. night: Oskaloosa
Fri. night: Fairfield
Sat. night: Ft. Madison

I'll display my analysis of the route (half complaints, half other), but I'll first list a disclaimer.  Only the end towns get announced in late January.  The pass through towns during the day and the route between the towns isn't decided upon or announced until later.

Now my analysis:

1. The biggest disappointment is that Des Moines is the overnight stop for the Tuesday.  It is my firm opinion that RAGBRAI should never stop in Des Moines or travel through it.  The metro area is just too big.  We wouldn't be anything too special for the one night we are there.  15,000+ people simply would not make as big an impact to the economy of the metro area as it does to a lot of the smaller overnight towns.  In addition, when RAGBRAI goes to the bigger cities like Cedar Rapids last year, bicycle and vehicular traffic has to be carefully routed to avoid a lot of congestion.  Cities try, but no matter how you do it, there will be a lot of angry citizens.  I like it better in the smaller overnight towns that are more appreciative of our presence.

But don't take it to the extreme.  Don't put us in a town with only 500 people.  They are usually wonderful people, but those towns don't have enough churches to serve us those wonderful church dinners.  As anybody who goes on RAGBRAI knows, those church dinners are extremely popular.  Most people only do the "fair" type food for a day or two out of the whole week, and that's only when all of the churches are out of food.  There's just something appealing to getting a good "normal" type of meal.  They are also usually a good value for the money.  You have to be quick to get the church meals.  You have to be there within the first hour or so, or the crowds will have gobbled everything up.  Most churches would rather go with lower profits and underestimate the crowd than overestimate and have to deal with the leftovers.

2. There will be a ton of bandits this year.  Bandits are what we call the people who are not officially registered for the ride.  Officially there are 8,500 weeklong riders and 1,500 day pass riders registered each year.  On days when we don't usually pass through the bigger population areas, like on a Monday, it is estimated that there are 5,000 bandits.  On a day like Sunday, Tuesday, or Wednesday this year, I'm guessing that there will be 10,000 to maybe 15,000 bandits.  Sunday will attract a ton of people from Omaha.  Most of them don't even have to take off work for it.  Tuesday and Wednesday will get a lot of Des Moines people.  Just have somebody drop you off in Perry and you'll ride home yourself.  Then take off from home Wednesday morning and have somebody pick you up in Knoxville at the end of the day.  It's just that simple.  

3. There isn't nearly enough of a challenge this year.  Early reports are that this will be the 2nd shortest, 15th flattest, and 7th easiest overall in the 41 years of RAGBRAI.  (Don't ask me how they calculate the overall difficulty, I don't have a clue.  The other two measures are easy to determine.) The people that you see are a wide cross section of Americans.  There will be speed demons and also people who are barely going fast enough to stay upright.  There are people who attack the toughest hills and love them, people who will do very well on the rollers but the toughest hills force them to do some cross-training (walking the bike up the hill), and also people who struggle on the rollers because they have never been taught the tricks on how to handle them.  The riders come from all sorts of athletic backgrounds.  I don't believe that RAGBRAI should be catering to only the weakest in the group.  It's fine if you want to go for the shortest route, but try to make up for it with a challenging climbing profile.  If you want something with little climbing, then please give us a longer route.

4.  We aren't sure where most of the festivities are going to take place in Des Moines or what route we are going to come into the metro area from Perry yet.  However, I could either make a detour on my way in or do some extra miles at the end to make a pit stop by my apartment.  I'll likely have moved into my next apartment complex by then.  I wouldn't have my car with me though, that would be stuck in Council Bluffs.

5. I hope there is an opportunity to ride around the perimeter of Lake Red Rock.  This is nearby Knoxville, so it could be on either the Wednesday or Thursday.  I think I've been to all the other major lakes in Iowa.  I believe my family went to Okoboji when I was really little, but I should see that one again eventually.  If the route does not come close to it or only skirts by it, I may have to take a detour.  Considering the length of the ride this year, adding extra miles is not something I would have a problem with.  Besides, it is sometimes good to have an hour or two to yourself while in the midst of a weeklong tour with 15,000 of your closest friends.

6. When I told my Dad about the route earlier this week, he was a bit excited about the last day, Fairfield to Fort Madison.  The route that day will probably be in the neighborhood of 65 miles.  Dad will occasionally ride the last day if it ends somewhere near Burlington.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t get much exercise any more.  He trains a little, but not nearly enough.  I’m fearful that this time he’ll have a heart attack.  Last year the end town was Clinton, so he didn't do it.  2011 started in Coralville and ended in the Quad Cities, which he surprisingly wanted to go on.  That year was the only one since 2009 I didn’t do the whole week.  I did the Friday leg myself then Dad joined me for Saturday.  That ride was really rough on him.  I rode next to him for as much as I could, but on some of the bigger hills I just couldn’t.  There’s only so much you can change your pace on hills.  This thought is fairly understood by most bikers.  After you get to the top of a major hill and proceed a couple hundred yards to recover, you let the people in your group gather back together.

Some Preferences About Women

I prefer that I can't tell that women are wearing makeup.  If you feel like you need some sort of concealer, or whatever you want to call it, to cover up some complexion issues, go for it.  But if you feel the need to make it so that you look like you have raccoon eyes, or got beat up at a local dive bar over the weekend, please don't do it on my account.  I can see your eyes just fine, I'm not blind.  I don't wear contacts or glasses and have never been a referee for any sports game.  You don't need to draw dark circles around your eyes to get me to notice them.  There is also no need to make your lips sparkle with gloss or cherry red lipstick or whatever.  All any of this stuff does is just give the impression that you are a high maintenance.  Low maintenance is good for me.  It would be great. [Feel free to insert the scene from When Harry Met Sally here]

A woman who isn't shocked by the idea of going camping for a weekend would be great.

A woman who doesn’t fake bake would be great.

A woman who has the ability to attend some sort of social function and not constantly be checking in or texting or whatever with people who aren't at that function would be great.

A woman who understands that there are some items where my inner nerd and dorkiness will come out would be great.

A woman who has no inhibitions with showing off her intelligence would be great.

A woman who knows there are some days where I may not want to talk about anything serious, and just want to be silly and nonsensical, would be great.

A woman who also allows the flip side, times when circumstances may not allow me to try and make you laugh, would be great.

A woman who understands that my preferred sport is triathlon and various subsets of the three components, many of which consume a lot of hours, would be great.  Even better would be if she participates in any of the components.

A woman who understands that I can't cook worth a darn but am willing to try, would be great.

A woman who knows that it will be near impossible to get me to eat brussel sprouts or beets, would be great.  If I do eat it, it should be obvious that I am just trying to impress her, and I should be called out about it.

A woman who knows that I eat a ton of fruit, but do not eat cherries, would be great.

A woman who has some sort of connection to the folks at Gatorade and will let them know that Grape G2 is the best, would be great.

A woman who can get me bulk cases of Grape G2 super cheap, would be great.

A woman who understands that I don't drink much at all (Really!, a six pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade or Lime will last an entire month), but if she wants me to go dancing with her she has to imbibe me with a lot of alcohol, would be great.  There is an exception for those dances where they tell you all of the steps to do right there in the song.  I'll willingly make a fool out of myself while completely sober for those.

Want My House Part 2

This post is an update to this story.  I got an offer on my house yesterday afternoon.  My agent and I sent in a counteroffer later that evening.  We received a response basically accepting the counteroffer early this afternoon.  I'm hopeful that this sale will go through smoothly.  My old agent and I almost had the house sold last May but the buyer balked at the condition of the furnace.  He wouldn't entertain the notion of letting me have it fixed / dealt with.  It was rather strange.  We made a conjecture that the buyer got cold feet and used the furnace as the excuse to get out of the contract.  It's a big deal when you purchase any item with a comma in the price and then add a couple zeroes.  I understood, but was rightfully disappointed for a while.  The furnace has been replaced since with a completely new one, so that shouldn't be an issue this time.

I've been very pleased with my second agent.  I switched my listing to her back in November.  My previous agent was the same one that I had used to purchase the house.  She was great to work with on the buying side.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a marketing plan in place on the selling side.  I think that is part of the reason why the house was sitting on the market for a year and a half.  None of the potential buyers saw the house unless they were one of those who scoured every single listing on MLS (like I did when looking).  So I had to part ways with her.  She understood and wished me well.  My new agent put my house on the 24 hour real estate channel.  Every agent that wants to can put a 15 second slideshow with an overly energetic voiceover announcer on one of the local access cable channels in Omaha.  My listing was also advertised on a ton of real estate websites.  I'm convinced that is what caused the number of showings to increase dramatically.  More traffic through the house leads to a higher chance of the house being sold.

When I told the news last night to my parents, they were of course happy for me.  Not soon after I had relayed the events to them my mom brought up that this could allow me to change apartments.  I agreed.  My lease runs out at the end of March.  I have my actuarial exam to study for through April.  May will be used to find a new place, so I would be out of my current place by the end of June.  That would be perfect.  I would only have to go month-to-month for three months.  Then I could get out of this disappointing apartment complex.

Semi-connected Thoughts

This must be the week for free food.  Yesterday the state pork producers’ board was giving out free lunches to anyone who wanted it in the downtown area.  It was just a promotional tool primarily.  Pork sandwich, chips, pop, and frozen fudgesicle were being given away to whoever wanted it.  A lot of people from my company walked the seven blocks in the skywalk system to get it.  We knew about this one ahead of time and had planned on it.

This morning's food was unexpected.  On the skywalk system, in between our parking garage and our building, there were a couple McDonald's employees just handing out free Egg McMuffins.  It was in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the sandwich.  That was nice.  It couldn't have come on a better day, either.  I was up early as I have been doing for more than a week now.  However, I was just dawdling about until it was time to get ready for work and dawdled too long, forcing me to quickly grab a couple cereal bars and a Gatorade G2 as I headed out the door.

I didn't even attempt to do any athletic activity this morning since I had a hard workout last night.  I ran for the first time in well over a year last night (last year I focused on biking only except for some swimming in November and December).  2.5 miles round and round a YMCA balcony track.  At 19 laps per mile that was 48 laps.  I didn't have anything interesting to look at on the track, especially when you see the same thing 48 times.  I found myself just watching the pickup basketball players down below.  A couple of them used terribly bad language.  Somehow my line of thinking went from players trash talking to technical fouls to how you can get a technical for dunking the ball in pre-game warm-ups (not that I ever had that problem since my vertical leap was at most 2 inches) to wondering what happens to the possession arrow when that technical is assessed.  Normally you get two free throw shots and the ball afterwards (unless you're talking the NBA where they have the stupid 1 shot rule, which just encourages more bad behavior, I don't like the NBA at all for other reasons as well).  Because of the possession part, the game doesn't start with the usual tip.  On a tip the team that doesn't recover the ball gets the arrow.  I was wrestling with that thought for probably 6 laps.  The team that was penalized had paid their two shot penalty and in effect had lost the tip, so they should get the arrow for actual game play.  That doesn't seem right even though it makes sense.  Why does the team that wasn't penalized lose the opportunity to get the ball the next time there is a tie-up?  I eventually came to the conclusion that the penalized team gets the possession arrow.  I was glad I was using my fingers to keep track of my laps because otherwise I would have lost count somewhere in there.