bike ride

I had a lovely bike ride before dinner today in the new cooler weather. I just did my Old Six Mile Highway loop of a little more than an hour. About 3/4 of the way home I saw an owl fly over me and land in a tree near the road, and I stopped my bike to look at it. It was big and brown with no ear tufts--a barred owl. It felt like a good omen.

Hurricane Katrina

I believe in the principle that if you can't help someone who is in pain, at least don't avert your eyes. But I've been slow to understand and haven't had anything of my own to say. I read some of the live blog from New Orleans. I remember the mud we shoveled out of houses north of Charleston when I went for a weekend to help after hurricane Hugo. I invited my students to write reflections on what we might learn about technology from the situation in New Orleans.

What I would like to see discussed further is the future impact of global warming. Does it make any sense to rebuild a city much of which is already below sea level if sea level is going to increase 3 feet by the end of the century? That number comes from a Japanese environmental site, many estimates are lower but at least some of those presume no increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. Could New Orleans the commercial center be rebuilt somewhere else, leaving the old city as a tourist attaction only (as when Houston replaced Galveston)?

visiting my son

My son's boarding school is less than two hours away, so we drove up this afternoon to take him out to dinner. He clearly is adjusting well. Still no complaints (though it is typical of him not to talk about problems until they are over). I asked him if the adjustment was still hard or whether it had started to get easier and he said it has gotten easier, the week had gone very fast. Progress reports from teachers are beginning to trickle in and look pretty good. The report from the math teacher was phrased rather negatively, but the learning resource teacher said my son understands his math so hopefully it is a matter of figuring out expectations. My son is rather proud that he is neater and more organized than his roommate--he is used to being the one everyone else tries to organize.

My new hero

is Sister Madonna Buder. She recently won her age group at Ironman Canada: swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles, all in 16 hours and 46 minutes. She is 75 years old and a Roman Catholic nun. She started running at age 48 and then took up triathlons. She holds two age group records at the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii and four for Ironman Canada.

August training

I started back to training after my accident about three weeks ago, but I had to start back slowly. I had only been able to do short rides on the exercise bike for three weeks before that. At swim practice I'm still doing mostly just kicking and one arm drills, but I've found a way to swim a gentle freestyle with a snorkel and underwater recovery that puts very little strain on my shoulder. I saw the doctor today and he moved my arm around and said the pain I still have is specifically associated with the AC joint(there isn't anything else wrong). He said we just heal more slowly at our age.

Swim: 5 workouts, about 5.8 hours
Bike: 14 workouts, about 10.6 hours
Run: 10 workouts, about 21 miles and 5.3 hours

sweat

As a teenager I once said something about being sweaty and my grandmother drew herself up and in an authoritarian tone said:

Horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow.

She also complained that public displays of affection were inappropriate.

come see

When a toothless-sounding late middle-aged man driving a beat up car says to me "come 'ere, lady, and see this," my defenses go up. But it turned out he wanted to show me one of these on the ground next to the gas pump:

He kept saying he had never seen anything like it. I'm not sure I've got the right species, but it was a rhinocerous beetle or hercules beetle. It was big and still alive.