UAR x2

Because I am a sucker for punishment, today, exactly one week before the Twin Cities Marathon, I rode in my second Urban Assault Ride. Last year, my partner and I had both been doing a respectable amount of biking (it helped that I'd actually been using my bike as my primary means of transportation, whereas recently I've become woefully spoiled by David's car!), but this year neither of us had really biked at all all summer.

Still, we had a great time (though I'm rather tender, and will doubtless be all sorts of sore tomorrow), and made it to all but one of our check-points (an improvement over last year!). Unfortunately, like last year, I did run into some mechanical troubles. It wasn't a spike through the tire, thankfully, but I did manage to bend my front fender when I stopped suddenly and caught it on my foot. That caused it to rub on the tire, which meant it felt like I was gently braking for most of our ride out(/uphill) to REI. Thankfully, on the way back I found a gas station garage that let me borrow their pliers so that I could remove and toss the offending fender, and had a much more pleasant ride thereafter.

This year, whether because the course was arranged better, because we'd actually completed the quiz and ended up in the first wave, or because the check-points were better equipped to handle large numbers of people, we spent hardly any time waiting in line for the activities (which included a toss/catch game involving wet sponges and a laundry basket that rested on one partner's shoulders [with a hole for the head!] and the "plunger paddle" where both partners sat on a longboard and paddled to stations using a toilet plunger).

Afterward, David and I went to a gamelan concert in St. Paul and then to Pancho Villa with my UAR teammate for burritos.

Oh, also! For the race, we made shirts. I couldn't find a "Ciao Ciao" graphic online, so I recreated one using the classic Coke logo. I thought they turned out really well. We're working our way up slowly; next year we'll make all the checkpoints and wear all-out costumes!

David's pictures (plus some of my partner's) are here:

Blog

This is the first and only text message my mom has ever sent me, a missive so elegantly simple and direct that it could not be ignored:

So, here I am, trying to blog. The sheer volume of the things I could write about the past few weeks--not to mention the photos I could post--would be daunting enough, even without school and my shiny new fellowship starting; unpacking and reclaiming my apartment after the summer; finishing the online course design project I was working on this summer; and getting the website for Abraham up and running (it's still sort of in beta--the Paypal for the CD is still under my account, for example--and there's much more coming, but feel free to check it out!).

The brief version of everything is that David and I left Walla Walla on August 23 (after helping to throw what I think was a pretty fabulous surprise birthday party for Hathor) and drove back to Minneapolis--via southern California and the Southwest National Parks. I started school on Tuesday the 8th, and we left again on Thursday, hitting eastern Indiana on our way to Chicago for my birthday present from David--tickets to U2's first show of the U.S. leg of their 360° Tour! We were back in time for school on Monday.

I'll try to add a few details, and photos, to that skeletal report, but now you're more or less caught up.

I'll leave you with a photo of my awesome office, which David's camera phone doesn't do justice, although it does show my two big mostly south-facing windows. What it doesn't show is my big closet and sink, complete with medicine cabinet and used razor depository (!). I'm in a fabulous old (1936) brick building that used to be a dorm (apparently a few of the offices even have bathtubs!) as well as an educational center. I'm hoping that some of the venerable learning that must undoubtedly have seeped into the walls goes ahead and seeps into my brain. In any case, I'll try to post more pictures.

But now I'm going to bed, because, did I mention? I'm also training for a marathon.

Southern California Pictures

So David and I are in Alamogordo, New Mexico, after leaving Albuquerque this morning and hitting the Petroglyph National Monument; White Sands Missile Range, Missile Park, and Museum; and White Sands National Park, with stops along the way in Socorro and Truth or Consequences (plus one creepy police-state-type border-control check point just outside WSMR preceded by a bank of surveillance equipment).

We haven't uploaded (or, for that matter, even looked at) photos from today and yesterday (which featured the Grand Canyon!), but we do have a few from last Saturday in the desert. David managed to pare the album down to 175 favorites from the three cameras in action--first Becca's, then his, then Erin's. They feature our sound bath at the Integratron, visit to Giant Rock, and then the sunset and fun with long exposures at Keys View in Joshua Tree. Check them out!

Many more pictures and stories await, including the Oregon Caves, northern California, Loma Linda, and the Grand Canyon. Tomorrow, we visit Carlsbad Caverns!