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Day’?s Verse:
What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.
Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
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Weight (lbs) — Object
23.0 — LeMond Poprad
31.4 — Specialized HardRock
Total roundtrip bicycling distance from Marlborough to Worcester: 14.6 miles
Price for three 700×25/28 Presta tubes at Bicycle Alley: $10
I had a good weekend. First came the Step It Up! event, which was a little bit awkward but actually turned out interesting. I met a Dan Procotor, a member of the local Sierra Club group, and I may get more involved in that; I would certainly like to.
Then in the evening I attended a surprise farewell dinner to John Trimbur, probably the most influential on me professor of my college career. He is moving on to Emerson, a loss for the WPI TC program but a good step up for him. The dinner was a complete surprise for John, and 40 of the 70 total TC graduates showed up to tell him how much his work over the years had meant to them. I think he came near tears a couple times; I almost did. While I attended that rather moving event, Ian and Nora went on a date to see the lame Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.
Sunday we woke up to huge fat drops of snow falling. I estimate the average size at maybe a silver dollar; certainly no smaller than a quarter. This shifted to sleety rain, and then back to snow, several times during the day; when we arrived in Worcester for church, we noticed some significant snow accumulation. In Marlborough, thankfully, we enjoyed about an inch of slush, which washed away over the course of the day and left only vast lake-like puddles as a reminder.
After church, Dave and Sharron very bravely visited our apartment, the first time they came to us. Ian and I had cleaned and child-proofed against their very mobile, curious young daughters to the best of our ability, but we still had a couple small casualties to childish interest. Ian and Dave hunter-gathered Indian food from the Tandoori Grill while Sharron and I sat around and bemoaned how starving we were. Then, alas, the Indian food came sans rice, so Ian heroically sallied out to the Yummy Kitchen across the street to obtain mismatched Chinese-style rice to go with our Indian food. It turned out fine, and only a little bit of hummus fell on the carpet — a masterful feat of cleanliness, all things considered. We entertained the girls with Prince of Egypt while sitting around and talking, and around 4:00 the children had gotten so droopy they had to go home.
Ian and I, still stuffed full of overpriced Indian food, watched two episodes of The Office. Then Colleen dropped a bombshell of a 16-page chemistry paper on me with the request I edit it ASAP (due Tuesday! Please help!) so I brought that on the train this morning and did my worst. I understood maybe half the paper, what with all the shenanigans and goings-on. I fell asleep to the sound of the rain beating against our window, and woke up to that same sound coupled with howling winds.
So I rode my bike and the odometer got too wet and stopped measuring my distance and speed. When I arrived at the train station — totally sopping wet, I might add; my shirt beneath my GoreTex jacket was dry only at the shoulders; my ankles up to my calves were soaked, my shoes each had half a gallon of water, my knees felt damp where the GoreTex is wearing away, and my hair hung in straggly wet ropes — when I arrived, I say, at the train station, a small reader board perkily alerted me:
Due to inclement weather and a tree fall, all trains will be delayed… More info to come
But the train only came fifteen minutes late, hardly worth mentioning. The train ride felt short as I struggled through chemistry way over my head, and I started really shivering when I had to put on my sopping gloves and helmet again. I left wet footprints behind me at work until I changed into my dry socks.
I love dry socks.