... in less than a week that MSN has let me log in and post.  I don't actually have a post prepared because I click the link on my custom favourites every single day and get nothing in return but that bizarre half-logged-in "Continue" screen, then nothing.  But I just wanted to acknowledge the quantum leap MSN has made in letting me log in twice in 8 days.

 

2 thumbs way up.

 

 

Is everyone else as disappointed with the ongoing login problems plaguing MSN Spaces?

...

 

...

 

...

Yep, that's what I thought.  No-one has responded.  Because no-one has been able to get connected and see my cry for help.

 

Maybe one day it will all be sorted.  Or maybe one day I'll be proactive enough to seek out another blogging service, or innovative enough to register a URL and get my own blog hosted somewhere cheap.  And by cheap I don't mean inexpensive; I mean inexpensive and proportionally crappy.  But anything is a step up from the level of crappiness you get with a competely free product like this.

 

And so you know, just like MSN Spaces, my riding is in the toilet.  The new job I started 4 months ago last Friday is a near perfect 48km (30mi) from home.  So in the 77 available working days I have managed to ride to work exactly once.  That's 7300km (4500mi) of riding gone begging.  In contrast with what could have been, what actually was is this... 13 rides in the past 126 days for a total of 488km (303mi).  Sort of OK unless I put an asterisk against those numbers and say that 4 of those 13 rides totalled 292km (181mi).  That leaves the 9 other rides averaging less that 22km (14mi) each.  Any wonder I'm back into wheezing-at-the-top-of-the-stairs mode.

 

 

I'm living proof that you can get in way over your depth without anybody noticing.  I can't believe how busy and stressed I am right now.  I think I'm hovering right on the edge of sanity that awaits any 41 year old 10 weeks into a career backflip.  I’ve lost 11kg in that time despite riding less than 80km.  But I’m offsetting the lack of riding with a lack of sleep.

 

Week 7 is a groovy bit of school vernacular.  What it means for most teachers is that the holidays – and associated respite from hordes of teenagers – are only a month away.

What it means for me is that I’ve been on the steepest learning curve of my life for 50 days.  Every single day I discover something new that it would have been nice to know a week earlier.  Most days I discover something I was supposed to do yesterday.

Like today.  Today I discovered I should have had at least 3 lessons observed by my department head and 1 lesson observed by a deputy principle by now.  And it’s my job to invite them into the classroom, they don’t want to force themselves on me, and especially not unannounced.  They’re job is to make sure that I can do my job, not to stress me into the dirt.  But a big long checklist to work through, handed to us on January 22^nd would have been nice.

Today I said that out loud to “those above”.  Now I have another job to do on top of everything else.  I have to develop said checklist.

The good news is that means I’m “proactive” and “contributing”.  When you stack them in on top of the words “physics major” it all adds up to… I’m gold.  And that’s before I hand them a new work program sometime soon because the other physics teacher didn’t write one last year when the state authority published a new syllabus.  Then I’ll be gold plated gold.

Now all I’ve got to do is strap on my safety harness and ride this rollercoaster all the way to retirement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next post will be about something meaningful that’s happening in my life.

 

Today, however, is an irrational tirade about alleged gains in technology that are in fact huge backward steps.  Let’s begin.

 

The object of my affection today is the humble bicycle wheel.  Well known to all and sundry as a device consisting of a tyre and tube, a hub, a rim, somewhere between 1 and 10 or 11 sprockets and some spokes.

 

And therein lies the problem.  Not so much the increasing numbers of sprockets, but rather the diminishing numbers of spokes.  In my humble beginnings as a competitive cyclist in 1981 my one and only set of wheels had 36 spokes.  When my first real racing bike arrived in 1983 it also had 36 spokes at each end.  The following year when things got serious I ended up relegating the old wheels to training duties and got a pair of singles with 32 spokes each for racing (those Mavic GP4 rims are still in service on my spare track wheels).

 

Why 32 spokes?  I was a fairly robust lad, even at race weight and 28 spoke wheels were light, too light, and were deemed too fragile for a sprinter.  36 was heavy, but 32 was OK.  And 32 had beautiful symmetry which appealed to my OCD.  32 spokes meant 16 on each side, or 8 pairs on each side, or 4 pairs of pairs.  Every spoke had a partner to keep things in order.  It only occurred to me much later that the strongest shape in the world, the triangle, was best achieved by some multiple of 12 (6 per side arranged as 3 pairs at the vertices of the triangle) thus making 36s a much stronger proposition.

 

But too late.  The pattern was set.  32 it was.  And so it came to be that my 3 bikes had 5 pairs of wheels with 32 spokes each.  Until 2006 that is, when the 32 spoke wheels in the road bike started spitting spokes out at regular intervals.  My personal philosophy on broken spokes is that replacing a broken spoke is OK 3 times, after that, when the 4^th one breaks the wheel gets rebuilt (or replaced depending on your salesmanship to the family budget coordinator).

 

As so it was that in late 2006 I found the budget coordinator in a soft moment and became the owner of a pair of Mavic Aksium road wheels.  They seemed strong enough.  They were certainly heavy enough to have been strong.  But I was reluctant to trust them with 20 spokes up front and 24 at the rear.  And my distrust was well founded, they were out of true in double quick time.  So back to the shop for a re-tensioning of the spokes.  And away.  That was 2 years ago.  And 12,000km ago.  Under a jockey racing in excess of 100kg.  Much of the time well in excess.

 

And today I reaped the rewards for my 4 year coke and cheeseburger bonanza.  A broken spoke.

 

Here is where my rant takes on two distinct flavours… one is the immediate impact of a broken spoke.  The other is the cost of the repair.

 

First the rideability was completely gone.  In the days of 30+ spokes one broken spoke was no big deal.  Let off the quick release on the brake and away you go.  I did it dozens of times.  A really bad buckle may necessitate the slight adjustment of the rear axle to prevent the wheel rubbing on the frame.  Not today though.  One spoke gone out of 24 is the end of the world.  Especially when coupled with these new fangled vertical dropouts in modern road frames.  Who would have thought that the demise of a humble spoke, 300 odd millimetres of stainless steel wire, would necessitate the call of shame?  And I don’t know any housewife who likes to be summoned out of the house before lunch time on a Saturday.  I’ll be on extra household duties for a month to clear that debt.

 

Second, the cost.  Replacing a spoke is simple.  For me at least.  I’ve built most of my own wheels for the past 20 odd years so a single spoke is no big deal.  Until today.  At this point I must make an important point to those not familiar with the most recent generations of Mavic wheels (among many others, no doubt); Mavic use proprietary spokes in their wheels.  Proprietary is a fancy word for unique; non-generic; exclusive.  All those descriptors that ultimately boil down to the sorry owner of said product being painted into a corner when it comes time for maintenance.  Today that was me.

 

And once you’re painted into the corner, there’s no decision left to be made.  You’re stuck with their pricing structure.  Which was $6 for one bloody spoke.  Not to mention that the spoke nipples are also non-standard and therefore not compatible with the spoke key at home so I also had to pay $20 for the store mechanic to true the wheel.  A task well within my skill set.  It was either that or bin the whole wheel and cough up $200 plus for a replacement.  Even with my club discount the transation still bit into me for $20.10.  Even at the appalling value the Australian dollar currently holds on the world stage, that’s still highway robbery.  If it had happened to any of the other 4 pairs of wheels in the stable $1 would have seen it over and done with.

 

Next time I’m up for wheels I’m buying hubs, rims and spokes (lots of spokes, probably 64 if history is any indicator) and building it up myself so I know exactly where I’m at.  All name brand stuff no doubt, but in a generic configuration with enough spokes so that the wheel will still be relatively circular with one spoke missing.

 

Keep coming back because, like I said at the start, in the next day or two I’ll be explaining why I need a reliable bike.  Really reliable.

 

During one of my epic blog crawls (note to Mrs Big Mike: these are not procrastination sessions, they are journeys of cultural enlightenment) The Unholy Rouleur was discussing what was going to cause him to pass out that night.  Part of that discussion involved describing one of the tomorrow symptons; the feeling of a cat sleeping in your mouth.  A soft man's hangover if ever I've heard of one.  In justifying my opinion of the general lack of manliness of American drinkers I penned the following:

 

 

Here’s how it goes in our family.  I have 2 or 3 sisters depending on which hand you count with.  The scorn of pregnancy out of wedlock in the early ‘60s still echoes through such calculations.

 

The oldest has been married a couple of times, has no kids and will probably grow old as the clichéd cat lady (not the Halle Berry character).

 

The next one, 3 years younger than me has a son of 18 healthy years.  He was brought up without a father and has grown up fairly normal as far as teenagers go.

 

I’ve got my 3 scattered from 7 years old through to 13.

 

My baby sister only met her husband 4 or 5 years ago and started her family 3 years ago.  She now the proud owner of a pair of offspring and is deeply entrenched in the crayons and Wiggles phase of parenting.

 

It’s interesting how parenting perspectives change over time.  My youngest at 7 is very mature, very cute and very smart.  So smart she makes better decisions than me most of the time.

 

I got an email from the youngest sister yesterday and it’s bounced back and forth a few times since then.  Here’s that exchange showing how parenting perspectives shift:

 

Sis:

Hey there

 

I was just wondering if anyone is going to the wiggles concert on 19 December.  I think I might have to take Miss Chloe and Mr Daniel.

 

Luv

Kylie

 

Me:

I doubt it.  We haven’t watched a wiggles video for 2 or 3 years.

 

Sis:

I think your children are deprived!!

 

Me:

Jasmine’s growing up.  She prefers movies like Zohan and Hancock.

 

Sis:

whatever they might be

 

Me:

Adam Sandler – “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan”.  A Palestinian assassin fakes his own death and becomes a hairdresser in America.

Will Smith – “Hancock”.  A drunk obnoxious superhero.

 

Sis:

don't sound like movies a young girl should be watching!!

 

Me:

She’s very mature.  And smart.  With the right upbringing and valid contextual parental explanations it’s fine.  And who doesn’t like a good fart joke?

 

Sis:

ha ha

wiggles tickets are booked

 

There you go.  My sister is so deeply entrenched in parenting her children she doesn’t even know who Zohan and Hancock are.  It’s a sad world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Sunday afternoon.  Some time before sunrise tomorrow morning I will push the transmit button on the final assignment of the semester.

 

And the year.

 

And the whole degree.

 

5000 words on alternative pedagogies is all that lies between me and 10 weeks of clear air before my teaching career starts.  Oh, and a to-do list that rivals the phone book for both size and motivation to read.

 

 

Just yesterday I came to the realisation that I am in fact two different bike riders.  This is weird because I own three bikes (or fifteen depending how you define ownership).  There’s the road bike, the track bike and the fixie.

 

Why aren’t I just one bike rider with three bikes?

 

Or…

 

Why aren’t I three different bike riders depending on which bike I ride?

 

These are the issues I ponder as I sit at university and procrastinate away valuable assignment writing time while watching the Masters Track Cycling World Championships on web TV.

 

Here is where my questions arise from:

 

Yesterday I was preparing to go for my daily ride and as I was putting on my shoes I was considering what my ride would consist of.  What benefit I should gain from the ride?  I was in turmoil.  Having done a power session the day before, today should I be doing a speed session?  Or should I be doing a long steady ride?  Not a recovery ride between power and speed sessions, but a significant calorie burning event.

 

Perhaps the question is simply a manifestation of my bike riding serving two different purposes.  I am a competitive track cyclist and I am a person in need of weight loss.  I need to ride my bike to train for my track racing.  That requires speed and power sessions to keep my racing edge.  But I also need to ride my bike to raise my heart rate and burn calories so I can lose weight.

 

The kinds of riding that satisfy those two purposes are so different that they could almost be different sports.  If I was a competitive chess player and overweight I would need to practice my chess and burn my calories.  These two activities would be mutually exclusive (if anyone can tell me how to burn 600 calories an hour playing chess I’d like to know).

 

The fact that my competitive activity and my exercise activity are one and the same is both handy and frustrating.  Handy in that the expense is spread over a broader span of use.  But frustrating in so far as after a high intensity “track quality” interval session I challenge anyone to feel the urge to go out and plod along at 60-70% of their maximum heart rate for 2+ hours.  Similarly, at the end of 2 hours slogging along there isn’t the sharp edge available to do a quality track session.  One will diminish the quality of the other.

 

The only reasonable alternative is to treat the two activities as totally isolated from each other.  I hereby declare these two activities to be independent of each other and undertaken as two completely separate sports.  My purpose now is to go to my “life co-ordinator” and beg for permission to shoe-horn another bike ride into every day.

 

Yesterday I started the final subject in my 32 subject degree.  8am-12pm Monday to Friday for the next 2 weeks brings me to the end of 4 very interesting years.  4 years of high stress, but tempered with high flexibility.  4 years of learning new and fascinating stuff.  4 years of casual work and accelerating credit card balances.

 

And now I’m staring down the barrel of a fulltime job where none has existed for the past 45 months.  I’m appreciative of the impending financial change, but also apprehensive about the new routines I will have to create and adhere to for probably the next quarter century.

 

I’m hopeful of a lottery win or the royalties on a miraculous invention that will return me to the freedoms of a tertiary student.  But I’m a realist and I know that a lottery win for me is just as likely as ever again having a full head of hair.  And my imagination is limited to co-ordinating my socks and t-shirt – or belt and shoes.  But rarely on the same day do I co-ordinate both pairs of apparel.

 

So I’m lumbering forth seeking a new equilibrium, trying to create a new momentum to carry me comfortably forward.  Hopefully it will involve my bicycles because I miss them.

 

I’ve had hints at offers from 3 schools but nothing solid, although that’s not a complete surprise since I’m not yet officially available to work.  As for the 3, 1 is too far away.  1 is nice and close but I suspect the workload will be oppressive.  The third is just right, from what I can tell of the workload, the distance and the student demographic.

 

There’s even more good news regarding number 3.  It has work starting in 2 weeks time rather than late January (the best kind of work too, 3 days a week).  It is only 25km from home, a comfortable distance to pedal both directions most days.  I taught there on my last prac placement so I know a lot of the students, I know the environment and the way the place works.  It’s the best option for so many reasons.

 

Now all I have to do is turn their fuzzy-maybe-offer into a solid job and I’m set.

 

A couple of years ago one of the most accomplished cycling coaches in Australia retired to our region.  Merv McDonald's contributions to youth and sport have earned him much respect and many awards, not the least of which is an Order of Australia Medal.  Merv's DNA has held up well with his son, Warren, returning from Beijing where he was the head coach of the Australian Womens Road Team.   

 

Last weekend our cycling club yet again reaped the benefit of Merv’s invaluable contribution.  6 teams of juniors competed in the Queensland Team Time Trial Championships.  Those 6 teams came away from the weekend with 3 gold and 1 bronze medal.  The other 2 teams also put in strong performances finishing 4^th and 6^th in their respective divisions.

 

The club also fielded 2 adult teams resulting in a silver medal for a team who last year suffered a 4^th place where they missed the bronze medal by less than 10 seconds.  The second team of adults fell victim to redneckitis - some hillbillies decided it would be funny to scatter tacks on the course.

 

2 of the adult medallists still have their tails between their legs after being overshadowed by their own offspring.

 

Just a reminder my surname is Leask... now read the results.

 

Results, Queensland Team Time Trial Championship, Laidley, 28 September 2008.

U11

1^st Sunshine Coast (Rory Bown, Liam Clarke, Henry Parkin, Zac Leask)

 

U13

1^st Sunshine Coast (Daniel Fitter, Sean Grimes, Jacob Rowney, Jack Jude)

4^th Sunshine Coast (Emil Vejby, Karl Strohfeldt, Alec Woodward, Aaron Clarke)

 

U15

1^st Sunshine Coast (Brendan Hill, Nick Schultz, Seb Vejby, Matt Scriven)

3^rd Sunshine Coast (Ryan Cavanagh, Zac Brown, Jack Tait, Sam Blake)

6^th Sunshine Coast (Thom Adcock, Mandy Holcombe, Lewis Neville, Aidan Leask)

 

Masters 2/3

DNF-puncture (John Greenhalgh, Lex Greenhalgh, Stuart Greenhalgh, Rigby Doherty)

 

Masters 4/5

2^nd (Mark Bown, David Wighton, Ross Blumel, David Gillow)

 

 

 

U11s (from left, Henry Parkin, Zac Leask, Liam Clarke, Rory Bown) receive final instructions from race officials – 10m2s away from victory.

 

 

U15s (from left, Aidan Leask, Mandy Holcombe, Lewis Neville, Thom Adcock) warm up under the club tent.  For 3 of the 4 it was their first state championship and they rode to an admirable 6^th place, only 2m30s behind the bronze medal team.

 

 

 

The junior team with their coach.

 

Merv and Gwen McDonald proudly displaying some of the medals earned by his team of junior cyclists.

I'm finally relaxing now that I'm clear of that 10 week practicum at a local high school.  My last.  I was rated a 6 on a 1-7 scale where 1-3 are considered fail and 4 only makes you eligible for temp work.  All I've got left now is a 2 week lecture block starting in 15 days time.

 

If you don't live near me I know you'll hate me... 3 days before the end of August we went from 10 weeks of 2-5⁰C overnight minimums straight to 12+ with 23-25 daily maximums.  Apart from a couple of days of light rain where we only topped out at 20 it's been mega-spring.

 

Sadly my bike didn't recognize me last weekend when I dusted it off.  I rode further in September 07 than I have in the past 6 months.  40 flat kilometres done gently hurts like crazy, in the muscles and in the nether regions.  The sit bones are bruised and there's so much skin missing it's weeping, but not quite bleeding.  God help me next week when the kids go back to school and I start hitting 80-120km a day.

 

And on top of grinding my genitals back to the bone, I'm also wearing out other bits.  I've just become the proud owner of my first (and second, although 2-for-1 doesn't ease the pain) pair of reading glasses.  Probably inevitable with 20 years of office work followed by 4 years of study.

 

This afternoon I was talking to a guy after my ride – the first decent ride for over 6 months.  This guy is fairly overweight and a little bit blind to the fact.  He’s also got a huge set of legs and some incredible stories to tell from the time way back when he was racing seriously.  He spoke of being almost 50kg over his old race weight while only looking 30.  He talked of a busy life, aborted comebacks and the battle to stave off old age.

 

This was a man that hated his addictions, though minor.  That was distressed with some of his past decisions and resented some that had been made for him.  As the conversation progressed he declared today a turning point in his life.  A new beginning that was set in motion 4 years ago and only now about to pay dividends.

 

The more I spoke to this guy the more I started to think that I needed to get myself organised too.  It wasn’t long before I was actually feeling a little uneasy about how similar we were, and it made me realise just how out of tune my life was.

 

Then I realised I was staring at the mirror…