I Live in Iowa: Week 7

Another week making bank, paying bills and building aerobic endurance... my life. So I worked 42 hours although I had Monday off so I really only worked 34 hours in 4 days.

One of the projects that I have spent time on recently is pressure testing a new platic tank. This is new territory for my group and it involves a different set of skills. I am enjoying it very much. I got an A in plastics in college (always an accomplishment for me) and my professor thought I would be a plastics guy. In all this is an interesting area.

Something that I enjoy about engineering is not knowing the answer. I like to understand the physical phenomena and have a generally simplified way to mathematically express it. It is constantly problem solving. Without that mental component of problem solving in my life I feel unfulfilled.

I ran 23 miles of nice relaxed slow running. In fact, six of those miles were with another runner. Woohoo for training partners! My right root still had outside metarsal pain off and on but if it was too bad I didn't run on it. Knowing when to run and when not to run because of pain and soreness is a long and painful learning process. Knowing what I know now, I'm raising my kids barefoot and in low heel shoes (girls at formal events excepted).

In the bicycling world I went moderate his week and broke down. Seriously, I "broke" in some manner of speaking six times on the bike this week. Monday I hit some gravel on my road bike and had two flat tires at the same time. Tuesday, I hit a truck, he cut my off by taking a left turn and he braked and I couldn't stop fast enough. It scared him more than me! Wednesday, I went on a 35 miler with the local bicycles racers. I got a rear flat and then ten miles later another rear flat. Saturday, I broke a spoke on my bicycle while doing a brick workout with the local tri/runner guy. He's won more races than I so this might be a good step in the training group direction.

So I am thinking about dropping $3-4k on a bicycle. I have wanted that kind of bicycle more than half a decade and I suppose I can afford it, but at the cost of a student loan and perhaps year delay on Everest. I'm going to write a long and wordy post about buying a bicycle and how unemployment, an engineering salary, and my future plans as well as my former plans are affected by buying a bicycle. Okay, I know I read way too much into this but $4,000 for a bicycle is a huge commitment that I would like to make if it would not adversely affect my life in other areas, but I don't make that much money.

In other news I went out for dinner and drinks with two coworker friends. My social life is picking up. Plus I planted my garden this week.