I Live in Iowa: Week 154

Another week, living the dream! Every time I say that, it’s like I don’t totally believe it, this isn’t how I dreamt my life would go, but I just said it, and I’m not very good at lying, so it must be true. In all seriousness, the things I have to complain about, like being single, or running slow, or blowing money on Mt. Everest, are pretty privileged things to complain about and the fact that they matter to me, is my own doing. 

The highlight of my work week had to be a one hour long presentation about Mt. Everest. Everyone said it went really well and it was a packed room with people standing at the back, maybe 80-100 people total, not counting those on the phone. For me, there is so much to tell that I felt like I was going so fast, and leaving out so many details, yet the clock just kept flying by. My favorite part of the experience, was actually preparing the presentation. In fact, I put some of my thoughts and ideas about focus and motivation into graphical form for the first time and I’m so happy with how they look, I will be posting some of them here. As far as the engineering side of things, we’re doing really well on our four year long project. We had another test finish this week, and the results, while requiring us to redesign a few things, were much better than I expected. Good test results are the kind of thing you want to high five the team afterward.

The week in exercising went really well. I ran more than 63 miles and bicycled more than 80. Certainly not a huge volume week, but a big increase over the last few months. It’s still all pretty slow and I’m just trying to get in volume, but I’m healthy, and I’m recovering well. The highlight of the week is pionereing a new grade 3 bicycle climb north of Dubuque. No one had ever done it on Strava before. Basically there is a town, and a few miles away and 600 feet higher is another town. There are two roads to get from A to B, a shorter, all paved road, and a longer road with a mile or more of gravel. Well, I put my skinny tires and carbon fiber bicycle over the gravel and almost fell off a couple times, but made it up to be the first one to do such a thing, at least in the last few years. It’s a small “first” but I have to find ways to keep pushing myself and that was not my usual bicycle ride for sure. 

Other than that, Sunday I saw a couple teachers from my high school and middle school days at a retirement party down in Kansas and thanked them for the huge positive influences they had on my life. Monday, having Memorial day off I basically just slept in a ran 15 miles. I’ve gotten out and socialized a little more than usual lately. I say that relationships are the most important thing in the world, yet I spend so much time alone, that I have to wonder how much I value those relationships. This Nepal experience has given me immediacy in my relationships, and I desperately want to spend time around others and talk and get to know each other better.