Hiatus is a good word

So following my recent resolution to not be a bum, life has been great.  I'm on track to get A's in all my classes.  I read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo, sleep has improved slightly (although I definitely stayed up until 2:30 one night finishing my book when I had to wake up at 9), I bought a piano, I've even been writing in my journal consistently, which is wonderful but has a noticeable negative impact on my blogging; this is sad, because a lot of noteworthy things have happened to me over the past month or so.  For example:

I got stitches.  I've recently commented several times on how, despite my best efforts, I've never seriously injured myself while on a bike.  This is surprising not just because of how much time I spend on bikes, but more how often I've injured myself doing other reasonably safe things things (i.e. - snowboarding, playing hide-and-seek, jumping on couches, going in the backyard, jumping off of playground equipment, playing baseball in the backyard, all of these together have accounted for three broken bones, two lost teeth, a few stitches, and a nail in my foot.)  So I've decided that biking is the right outlet for adventure.  Incidentally, Provo's winter has been surprisingly mild so far, with mostly warm sunny days and still no real snow, but the friday before thanksgiving it finally snowed.  I walked out from work with the whole friday night ahead of me to find beautiful, picturesque snow flakes falling gently on the MTC.  Some of the missionaries around were running around playing in it and taking pictures, and I thought I ought to go home, find some people, and go sledding or something like that.  So I hop on my bike as I'm leaving I think, "This could be dangerous, maybe i should take my mountain bike [which was coincidentally at the MTC also] so as to avoid slipping"  But then I figured the roads would be fine, they're only wet, and my road bike does fine on wet roads.  So I head off, and as I start heading down hill I realize that snow, while beautiful, is sort of a hassle when it flies into your eyes at twenty miles an hour.  So I decided the best thing to do would be to keep my head down, glancing up occasionally to make sure I was on track.  There's a nice bike lane all the way down the hill, and there was really no reason to worry, so off I went.  As I was cruising down the hill, I noticed I was gathering a comical amount of snow on the front of my jacket and pants.  It was about this moment that I hit something surprisingly solid.  As I was flying over the handle bars of my bike I thought to myself, "Why is there a car in the bike lane??  How dare they!?" I might have had other thoughts as I was sailing over the car, but they didn't quite stick, and very shortly after I was picking myself up off the road, slightly dazed.  I looked back to see some cars coming, so I grabbed my bike and pulled it to the side of the road, noticing the my front tire was still back by the car, and I was worried it was going to get run over.  Some people ran over and asked me if I was ok.  As far as I could tell I was, although I was having a little trouble standing, so I leaned on the guy for support.  They told me I was bleeding a lot, and my mouth hurt, but I was happy to discover that I still had all my teeth and nothing was broken.  The first thing I asked was if my bike was ok, and they said the fork was broken.  A guy had me sit down in his car, while he called 911.  A little bit afterwards I saw a firetruck pull up, I remember saying that that was lucky, in case my bike caught on fire (I said this sarcastically, not deliriously).  Anyway, so then I hopped into the ambulance and the guy was checking that I was ok.  Everyone I talked to had about the same conversation with me,

My bike(s), the day after

"How's it going?"
"So you're coming down from the MTC?  What do you teach there?"
"That's cool, I know so and so who is somehow related to missionary work"

The ambulance guy also asked me some concussion related questions, like "do you know what the date is?"  I didn't, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't have told him the date before crashing either, I did know it was friday, and I was still planning to swing by the hospital, grab some stitches, and get on with my life.   So eventually we got to the hospital, they checked me out, gave me a cat scan (turns out my now was broken too) and cleaned me up.  They put some lidocane on me to numb it up a bit, and then gave me shots to numb it some more in preparation for stitches.  Then I waited for two hours.  Then the doctor finally was free, and so he came by, but by then I was no longer numb, so they had to give me some more shots of lidocane. I'm not sure if you've ever had a needle in your lip (I hadn't) but it is quite possibly one of the most painful experiences possible.  Easily the most painful thing that's ever happened to me.  So then i got stitches and then I went home.

My face, the day after

So that was exciting, I still feel fairly fortunate to be alive and without any serious, permanent damage (I wasn't wearing a helmet, although my beanie was fairly thick), my bike is in the shop and should be good as new on saturday.  I talked to the owner of the car and she's not making me pay for anything, and it turns out she's roommates with someone from my mission, that's provo for you.

Other than that, Thanksgiving happened, that was nice.   I got my stitches out and went up to Logan to Lisa and Vic's house, I learned to drive stick shift, one more step towards becoming a man, I did all sorts of school things, made all sorts of exciting foods, carved a turkey, dissected a pig, got lots off pity, and had an all around good time.


Now I need to stop putting off my school stuff so that I can make good grades so that next year I don't have to pay for college, so that I can support my extravagant lifestyle of wrecking bikes and buying pianos.

A few great days

Check out the matching bowls.  We're so classy.

So, fun times here in Provo Town.  Saturday I went rafting on the provo river with Carly and Rich and Paula.  Me and rich bought some little rafts which turned out to be just flimsy enough to make rafting really really fun.  That night, I also went to the hot springs in Spanish Fork with a big group of people.  That was a lot more fun than I expected, and the hot springs were really nice.

Sunday we made Mango Curry, as seen here, which was delicious. I took a stab at making naan.  It wasn't the best naan ever made, but it was surprisingly good.

Today, I went with my bishop and rode alpine loop, which, all told, was 54 miles.  That's more miles than i've ever done in my life, and it by far the hardest ride I've ever gone on, a lot of up hill, and then some amazing down hill.  The view was beautiful.  I wish I'd had my camera, but i didn't really have a good place to put it anyway.  The watrer on the road past apen grove was flooding over the road, so in case anyway had their doubts, now we know that vasco can handle water.  Well I'm falling asleep a lot.  I'm going to take a quick nap.  I'll update this with pictures and such later.

It's like a tree of exhaustion

It needs a name...Carla? La Tigra? I'll work on it.

msrp: $1069.
Actual Cost: 80 Hours of surprisingly therapeutic landscaping

First and foremost, behold!  The Cannondale Caad 8 6 Tiagra, a very decent road bike and now the most valuable thing that I own, having beaten out my MacBook.

Today I was listening to Sufjan Stevens and pondering about weeding as a sort of existential allegory for life.  By any measure, weeding is an utterly futile exercise.  Nearly before you're done weeding, new weeds have already begun to grow.  This can become a bit daunting, but if everybody weeds just a bit every day, then there would be no weeds in the world.  Then of course you have to consider the moral relativity of weeding, since a weed is just a plant you don't happen to want where it's growing.  Some weeds are the offspring of plants from just a dozen yards away, where they were planted and where they are wanted and where other plants were being removed as weeds.  Even if you hate them, you do have to appreciate the resilience and determination.  I found a little plant that was growing through a stick and rather successfully splitting it in two.

Banana Muffins,  a delicious last resort

One of the most interesting things I found as I was sitting out in the parking lot waiting for Dave, the bikeshop owner who i've been doing all this for, that after several hours of weeding today, when I saw a couple weeds growing up through the cement I had this very innate compulsion to pull them out.

So i'm pretty stoked about the new bike and I can't wait to take it out.  I just realized, to my chagrin, that I only have one bike lock, so it looks like my other bike will be living on the balcony for a while.

So life is great.  I finally went grocery shopping.  You know it's been too long when your only option for breakfast food is banana muffins with an egg borrowed from your roommate.

Due to lack of interest, tomorrow is cancelled

I learned recently that May is national bike to work month.  I'm going to celebrate by biking to work like always.  I did,in fact, fix up my bike today.  The last time i had fixed flat tired I was lazy putting the brakes back in place and so my brakes were more of 'gradually slow downs'.  Last week my roommate and I went mountain biking, and it turned out that my brakes could only slow me down slightly on the down hills.  So that was a little terrifying.  I also pumped up my tires, last time I didn't have a pressure gauge and was afraid of over inflating them, so they were about half empty.  Luckily it was the top half.  I took some broken, unnecessary pieces of my bike (an old light and water bottle holder, both broken and without corresponding light and water bottle.)  I even oiled up my bike lock so it wouldn't keep getting stuck.  It was nice to finally get around to all these little things that've been piling up and slowing me down.  There's something very meaningful about riding my bike up hill to the mtc.  It seems like some sort of spiritual allegory, the long and seemingly unending climb up hill to get to a higher, more holy plane.  It's even worse/better to ride all the way up to the temple.  That said, I don't think it will mean any less if I don't have almost flat tires slowing me down.

By the way, mountain biking is a lot scarier than I thought.   The trail we went on had some pretty significant down hill, which I assumed I would love, but it turns out scarier than snow boarding.  I know how much it hurts to fall on snow(which can be quite a lot, given the concussion, two broken bones, and torn ligaments i've sustained over a few trips), but I can only imagine how much it would hurt to fall off my bike and high speeds on dirt.   I bet it wouldn't be so bad.  Maybe i should just throw myself down a hill and get it over with so that i can move a long with my life and go fast down hill.  I was having flashbacks to being a little kid and being very much afraid of falling.  

Today has been good.  I think for me the key to happiness is being busy.  It doesn't seem to matter all that much what I'm doing.  So now I'm going to go play Ultimate Frisbee and/or football.  The sun, against all odds, came out and it's beautiful outside.

Oh, a special shout out to my nephew Soren and my Dad, who both had their birthdays yesterday.  They're sort of like bookends of my family, as the oldest and almost youngest.

Ammon's Hardcore Adventure:

So today my roommate texted me and asked if i wanted to go for a bike ride.  So first we went up to Bridal Falls.  When we got there, we decided it would be a good idea to climb up to the top of the falls.  So that was fun, and we didn't even die!  After that we rode back down the canyon.  I thought we were going home, but Kevin turned down and followed the river and we ended up going all the way to utah lake, and then we came home.  It ended up being 32 miles, the whole thing took about 4 hours.  It was definitely the most hardcore thing I've done in a while, it was a lot of fun.

It's not so good to ride right through.

So it's raining rather a lot outside, and it's rather cold. I don't think i've ridden my bike much in the rain, it's really not very pleasant. At first i was like, "this isn't so bad, i can choose to enjoy this." Then I learned several things:

1. Glasses are not conducive to seeing while riding a bike in the rain, nor do they effectively keep rain from hitting your eye at roughly the speed that you're traveling.
2. Bikes, especially when moving down hill, pick up enough speed to make cold drops of rain surprisingly painful.
3. If you leave a helmet locked to your bike, and it starts raining, not only will it get wet, but the foam will absorb quite a bit of water that will slowly drain out when you strap it to your head.
4. Never underestimate how much water your back tire can put on your back side.

But luckily it was all down hill, I had my warm ski gloves, and i don't have to do anything else today but sit in my warm house in warm, dry clothes while I eat food and do homework and maybe listen to radio lab, if the mood strikes me.

the chosen one?

I think there must be some great balancing force in the universe that controls the seemingly random events in our lives. Today I got an A on my chemistry midterm, and then i walked back to find that my bike had a flat tire.

Balance restored.

Bicycle, Bicycle

I was reading some of my old blogs from the pre-mission days. I was pretty opinionated. These days I find myself just not caring about politics and things.

There's not a whole lot of blogworthy things going on in my life right now, and I don't feel like writing about every little flux of emotion I have (which I seemed to do back in the day) I bought a bike though. That's pretty cool. It's the first Bike i've owned since that one I bought in 9th grade got stolen. I've never really found a bike since than that I liked. But this new bike only cost 100 bucks, and I like that.

I think it's interesting, considering how accident prone I am, the track record I have riding bicycles. I've never been hit by a car, or fallen down and broken something, or broken my bike. Not that there haven't been some close calls. Like that time when I was five and didn't have brakes and went flying down the hill into cross traffic, missing cars by inches. Or that time i fell down in the middle of a crowded intersection in cambridge on my way to school. Twice. Or that time i ran into a girl and flew off my bike and almost choked on the jolly rancher pop I was sucking on.

Anyway, the point is, when you consider that I've broken a bone playing hide and seek and had to get stitches from jumping on the couch (or more accurately, not quite jumping on the couch), you'd think i would have more scars from speeding around on a little 21 speed. I think I should look into mountain biking. I think I might be better suited for that than snowboarding.

The Bike Lesson

I've been having a lot of fun with some of the programs that come with Macbook. One of the best is iMovie. After making a foray in the film trailer making business, i was playing around with some of the old clips of isaac learning to ride a bike. In garageband, i was playing around with audio editing, so i threw Chariots of Fire behind one of the clips to use. After that, this was sort of inevitable. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Cantabrigian

Recently I've had a shift from doing nothing to being extremely busy. This has resulted in an absolute lack of blog posting, first because i had nothing to write, and then because i didn't have time to write. I'm sure this has passed unnoticed, since i don't think my reader pool is too deep.

These days, I've been spending my time in a small corner of the music library at harvard. That sounds like the beginning of a really good story. In fact, I've just been standing over a scanner mindlessly scanning book after book on assyriology, which is the study of ancient mesopotamia. Duh.

As i've been doing this, i've been listening to a lot of This American Life, around 6 hours a day. All this has put me in the mood for story telling which is unfortunate, because there just aren't many interesting stories to tell about scanning books from 9 to 5.

In contrast to the monotony of scanning, I've been riding my bike to and from harvard with Logan. I haven't fallen yet, although no less than once per day I barely escape what seems like would definitely be certain death. The bike is fixed gear, which aside from all the lightness and simplicity that Logan loves, has the side effect of not really being able to stop. You can't even stop peddling. Both of those are things i would usually do to cope with impending death, and lacking these, i find that my only option is to keep going. Today on the way home, a car pulled in front of logan without warning. Logan was a good 10 feet a head of me, and he's a bit better at this whole thing, so he managed to stop behind the car, which was taking up all of the car lane and most of the bike lane. The car for whatever reason, stopped. I sped through the little gap the car had left and got past it, the whole time squeezing the hand brake, which was super; it didn't stop me of course, but it did add a great squealing noise that made the whole thing that much more dramatic.

This story may be reflecting an unwarranted amount of skill on my part, shooting through this tiny gap while Logan got bogged up in traffic. The truth is, had that tiny space not been there, I would have run into the car, or vice versa, and for that matter, the 'tiny space' was probably less tiny and more spacious than my memory would suggest. Nevertheless, the whole thing was pretty exciting.

Actually, as I think about it, the experience feels surprisingly similar to snowboarding, especially since it is literally freezing cold outside.

You would never guess how physically exhausting scanning books all day long is, but it really is one of the more tiring jobs I've done, but I can't complain, I'm making $10 an hour, which from where I am in life seems like a lot of money for performing menial labor, while listening to This American Life.