Sunday, November 30, 2008
This Thanksgiving was more of a whirlwind tour than a break; whenever friends asked about my plans I summarized: "I'll see 4 states in 4 days." Kyle and I wanted to spend time with each other and with our families but this required a lot of driving. Since Kyle had school until Wednesday at noon I stayed in Charlottesville until Wednesday morning, which meant I got to meet Sabrina's mother and their dog TeAmo.
To be honest I was initially apprehensive about having a half Husky half Golden Retriever running wild in our small house. On one level I adore huskies: not only did I want to own a husky when I was younger, but two of my major childhood dreams were to compete in the Iditarod and play basketball for the UConn Huskies. But I've since met several completely crazy huskies, and golden retrievers are usually only a little less hyper. TeAmo was incredible though, possibly the calmest, friendliest dog I've ever met. Even though she was emerging from an 8 hour car ride into a strange place filled with strange people she didn't bark once, just happily let us pet her and then flopped on the floor to nap. Part of her reserve was probably due to age, but Sabrina's mother said she wasn't much crazier as a puppy. Perhaps if we choose very carefully Kyle and I can adopt a husky after all (don't tell him that I'm giving in yet though).
After bidding goodbye to Sabrina, Anna, and their families I headed north to Frederick and spent the day with Kyle. Then Thursday morning we headed to Lancaster to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. It was the usual delightful drill: catching up with relatives, watching football, playing video games and ping pong, and consuming excessive quantities of delicious food. Also my aunt brought her teaching assistant who is applying to the Spanish Literature graduate program at UVA, so we had a nice time talking about literature and the university and I was able to help her with her personal statement. Kyle and I also tried to teach her to throw a frisbee, which was going quite well until Kyle tapped it to me and managed to break it in half. Looks like my cousin will be getting a replacement disc for Christmas...
Friday morning (there would be no sleeping this break) my parents drove Kyle and I up to Binghamton. My parents planned to spend some time with Kyle's family and then leave us in Binghamton for a day or two while they continued on to their favorite vacation destination: Cooperstown, NY, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. While it may seem ridiculous since Kyle and I have been together for almost 6 years, this was only the second time that our parents have met each other, so it was good that they had time to get to know each other more. The other reason that we brought the families together was so that the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom (known affectionately as MOB and MOG) could get some planning done face to face. My mother was thrilled to have someone helpful and receptive to talk to about the wedding. I've been rather burned out on the topic lately and Kyle often turns into the stereotypical groom with no opinions. With the mothers leading discussion we decided on tuxes for the men (mostly for convenience, since I'm a bigger fan of suits), finalized the reception menu (which will be yummy, I promise), planned out the rehearsal dinner (small, lowkey, and picnic style), found a potential ring bearer and flower girl (it turns out Kyle does know people under the age of 12), and further refined the guest list (though finalizing it is still way in the future). It was a nice and productive discussion, because that's the way mothers are.
While I still think it's weird that my family vacations yearly to upstate NY, there are definitely things I love about the area. There's the food: this trip we had square NY pizza topped with spiedie style chicken and also wonderful pasta at an Italian restaurant that Kyle's father built. And there's the wilderness: Kyle's house is built into a hill that slopes down into acres and acres of forest. Not only was nearby nature a dream for adventurous little Kyle, but nature often comes to them. They've been visited by bears and foxes in their driveway, and Saturday morning we found three deer leaping gracefully through their side yard. 
Best of all the time at Kyle's house gave us time to legitimately relax. I read in the bear chair (I don't know how to describe it any other way or I would) while Kyle worked on the website and then we joined his parents to watch Iron Man (which I quite enjoyed, but then again I'm partial to Robert Downey Jr and his quirky cadence). We also ignored the fact that we had just indulged in Thanksgiving dinner the day before and sampled delicious baked goods pretty much whenever we entered the kitchen. It was wonderful. I really wish we lived closer to Kyle's family so that I could see them more often. (Although that would mean being closer to upstate NY weather; I was very confused when snow started falling on us, since nothing is supposed to freeze until at least December.)
I had a rough time of it on the drive back to Lancaster and then to Frederick, 5 hours total, but we finally made it back and crashed into bed almost immediately. Now it's Sunday and Kyle and I are spending the day in one of downtown's many coffee shops. For the first time in a long time I don't have homework breathing down my neck (only half of a play to read for Tuesday and a final in over a week) so I can sip my latte, catch up on website blogging, and ignore the 3 hour drive that waits for me tomorrow morning.
| posted at: 12:30 |
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
Meeting two was painless. It was even so good we had another meeting today. So that marks three times our parents have met in six years. Not so bad, until you consider that all three times have been in the last year.
Weddings remain a lot of work. But the good news is that we may have found both a flower girl and a ring bearer. Details later.
| posted at: 22:00 |
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
So Jillian and I need to train for this bike tour. Or at least that's what everyone keeps telling us. But training in the winter is hard, and sometimes I just don't want to make myself go climb on my trainer and pedal to nowhere in my living room. So that's why we're going to do the thousand mile challenge.
We've each challenged the other one to ride 1000 miles. Jillian and I are the type of people that compete at everything - in fact, in asking her for an example of something pointless that we compete at, she refused to give an answer, on the grounds that it might make my half of the blog better than her's. So we're hoping that a little race will motivate us.
Every day we'll log our training miles on the computer and the little bicycles at the bottom of the page will move slowly to the left. As per the somewhat amateur graphics, this was my first attempt at Inkscape, and I did almost all of it with a touchpad. So think of it as practice for later attempts.
Anybody up for challenging us to a training mile race?
| posted at: 08:21 |
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Thursday, November 27, 2008
For Thanksgiving, Jillian and I are going to Lancaster to have Thanksgiving with her extended family. Since Frederick is on the way, she came up on Wednesday so that we could have an evening to hang out. After a delightful dinner we decided to walk around town a bit and get some hot chocolate. On our travels, we saw this head sitting quietly on top of a little wall. We're not sure what to make of it.
Thanksgiving with her family was delightful. I ate a ton of turkey then fell asleep. What more can you want out of a holiday? Oh, and Rock Band taught me I should not give up my day job and become a professional drummer.
At the moment, I'm camped out on the couch at her parents house, watching the Maryland basketball game, and watching the Eagles during the commercials. Tomorrow we hike into the great white north to have our parents meet for the second time.
| posted at: 20:30 |
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Saturday, November 22, 2008
As mentioned under our routes, we're considering stage one of our ride to be from the Jersey Coast to Frederick, MD. This is mostly flat terrain, over areas that we're somewhat familiar with. Stage two will be to our friend Anne's house, out in Ohio. That means stage two has our first real climbing. I thought it might be time to actually pick a route.
We have a few choices for this part of the route. Our first, and original, option is to ride from Lancaster, PA to Frederick MD. From there we'd head west to Cumberland, MD. From there we'd have 250 miles to Anne's, mostly through western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania.
Option two would be to ride from Lancaster to Chambersburg, PA, completely skipping Maryland. From Chambersburg we'd go west on US route 30, through all the hills, until we reached Anne's sometime later. We'd be saving about 50 miles of travel this way.
Option three is the combination. Go south to Frederick, then go northwest, through Hagerstown, and into the PA hills.
My original plan was option one. Staying in Frederick is free, since we live there. While we're in Frederick we'd also have the opportunity to reevaluate our gear, changing stuff based on our somewhat improved level of experience. The ride to Cumberland would be our longest of the trip up to that point - 90 some miles. We want to check out Cumberland some time, since it's on highways, has hills, and has a real downtown area. Plus, the hills in Maryland aren't quite as high as the ones in Pennsylvania.
Option two is more interesting. The ride from Lancaster to Gettysburg isn't much fun, but once you're west of Gettysburg there's a nice, wide shoulder on good pavement. We'd get to ride through Gettysburg, where we both went to college. We'd need to ask our friend Tammy if we could stay with her family in Chambersburg, which could be awesome, since they're a lot of fun. But after we left Tammy's we'd be in for some hard riding. Our goal would be to do one hundred mile days, and do three in a row. Plus, the day after Tammy's gives us some terrible hills. The first bad one would be 1200 feet of climbing over four miles. However, we'd probably take a detour and ride through the former PA turnpike. This really, really cool project lets you ride on an abandoned four lane highway in the middle of the forest, and lets you skip a major hill by riding through it in an old tunnel. Plus, since this would be a four day route, we'd save one day's expenses.
Option three gives us the advantages of hitting Frederick, and still lets us ride through the cool tunnel. We'd also go through Mercersburg, which is a town we'd like to visit some time, and lets us see Buchanan's birthplace. We'd still hit pretty big hills, but we'd probably be able to do 80 mile days every day, which would mean we were gradually increasing our daily mileage, instead of it leaping upward suddenly, like it does in option 2.
I think that right now I'm leaning toward option two, since I think it'd be fun to ride through Gettysburg and see so much of US-30. But I'm waiting for Jillian's input. Sadly, she has a paper due Monday, so it will probably be after Thanksgiving before we make any real decision.
| posted at: 15:23 |
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Thursday, November 20, 2008
When we originally decided to do this whole bike ride as a honeymoon thing we thought we had a completely original idea. Then I started reading travel journals by other bikers, looking for ideas.
It wasn't long before I came across crazyguyonabike, which hosts more than 2900 travel journals by cyclists. These journals cover every continent on the planet and some of the journals make me want to do nothing but climb on a bike with my camera and never look back. Naturally, I did a search for honeymoons. Soon I was reading Fine, It's a Honeymoon! by Sean Copans and Margaret Garnett, who rode across the southern part of the country in the spring of 2005.
Over 70 days, Sean and Margaret rode 59 days for a total of 2789 miles, averaging 11.16 mph for roughly 7 hours a day. At their best, they did about 50 miles a day. Impressive numbers. But there are some other, more interesting ones that I won't be mentioning to Jillian: they spent 1.5 days vomiting, they spent 6 days riding in the rain, and Margaret had 7 flat tires. Sean had none.
Their journal really is fascinating to read. I read it start to finish, over a period of a few days. But they took solo bikes. We're taking a tandem. I wanted to hear about how tandems are different.
Team Angell. While not a honeymoon ride, this husband and wife team quit their jobs, sold their house, and rode a tandem bicycle from the Arctic Circle to the southern most point in the continental US. Some 7100 miles, all in the name of Habitat for Humanity. Perhaps the most important lessons they taught me? Pack your bicyle frame in plumbing insulation when you ship it and always buy Kevlar tires. This couple probably averaged around 80 miles per day, taking every 7th day off, for about five months.
For comparison, I'm hoping Jillian and I can average close to 100 miles per day, every day for a month. Sadly, faster touring = cheaper touring.
This weekend I'll start Sean and Erin Barkley's journal, as they ride for 505 days through most of Eurasia. Now, if only I could find a way to read these while I ride my trainer in the living room...
| posted at: 21:59 |
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Friday, November 14, 2008
We had our first argument as an engaged couple yesterday.
Essentially, what started as us both really wanting to talk to the other, but never having time to talk when the other was available, turned into Jillian getting very frustrated with the blog and worried about her ability to ride across the country.
The not having time argument was stupid. I tried to make time by talking to her while programming the assignment for the next day's programming class. I wasn't really paying attention. Totally my fault. We acknowledged that pretty quick, and moved on.
But that turned into some other frustrations. First, some back story about the blog. When I first set the blog up, I was using Blosxom. But I felt that the development community wasn't very active, and that many of the plugins weren't being maintained. But I loved the way we had complete flexibility over appearance, could configure absolutely anything, and could do multiple blogs on the same install. So I set this blog up using Pyblosxom, which is just Blosxom rewritten in Python. I spent quite a bit of time getting the template right (flavour, in Blosxom speak), and quite a bit of time making sure we could easily add comments and such. There was only one catch.
When you load a page here, Pyblosxom does a multistep process to assemble the webpage for you. First it loads the header. Then it determines which entries should be displayed, and loads each of those, then it loads the footer. Finally it writes that whole mess of stuff out and you see the page. This is a really flexible system. But it means that each entry needs to be written in HTML.
Now, I've been writing HTML since version 2.0, way back when I was in 5th grade. It's totally natural for me to put my paragraphs inside <p></p> tags. Sometimes when my class is talking, I just want to put </talking> up on my whiteboard and have them magically stop. Aside from a brief foray in college, Jillian has never used HTML.
I didn't think this would be too hard. After all, she wouldn't need to learn all the tags. She wouldn't need to learn css. She'd never need to tell anyone what our DOCTYPE is. But she would need to wrap paragraphs in paragraph tags, properly use link tags, and use image tags for pictures. But I wrote some CSS to make life easy. For example, all she needs to do is add class="pictureLeft" and the picture magically floats on the left side of the screen, at 30% the width of your browser window.
But we've discovered that we write things differently. I'm a computer science person. I write an entry, reread it once, post it, and then spend some time making sure everything looks exactly the way I want. Jillian is an English person. She writes an entry, edits it four or five times, and then posts. She wants to always worry about content, and never about presentation.
She got the link tags down, but the image tags are a little harder. Hosting images on our server costs us money (though not much, thanks to our hosting provider). To save a little money, we're hosting images on flickr. I had shown Jillian how to use image tags with locally hosted images, but never with flickr images. She needed an example that used an image stored on Flickr. So she emailed me. I emailed back that she had an example, not realizing that she wouldn't be able to translate the relative url in the example I had given her for local images to the absolute url that Flickr uses.
We resolved that a little later. I've since sent her an updated cheat sheet. I think the fundamental problem is that she doesn't want to go through all the little steps - resizing the images, uploading them, getting the url from Flickr, putting the tag in the post, uploading the post, and verifying that everything works. Hopefully some of these problems will be resolved when we're posting from the same computer. Gnome on Ubuntu makes it very easy to resize and post photos to Flickr. It's a two step process that doesn't even require opening a browser window. But until we're in the same place, that won't happen.
So on to the second, much less technical part. I think Jillian finally realized that the country is big. Not that she didn't know, already, but it finally hit her that crossing it on a bicycle takes a lot of time. We're looking at something like 3300 miles. Jillian has never done more than thirty-some in a day. We're looking at more than three times that, every day, for 40 days. You don't realize how monumental of a task that is until you really think about it. It seems impossible.
I've done long rides before. As a challenge to a complete stranger I met on an MS Bike ride, I rode from Gettysburg, PA to Lawton, PA, just 23 miles short of my goal (I quit due to safety concerns). I didn't ever think about the entire distance - 232 miles is too long to think about. I thought first about riding to Harrisburg, and trying to make it by dawn (I did, and the sun rising over the river was beautiful). Then I thought about making it to Sunbury before my support car did (I did), and then I thought about making it to Bloomsburg before my support card did (I didn't). The ride after that was easy, mentally. I was more than half way. All I needed to do was think about reaching the next major landmark. I never thought about the entire distance, never even thought about how far I'd come (except when my cheap cyclocomputer stopped registering new miles because it couldn't go more than 12 hours without a reset). I don't think Jillian has learned this trick yet, and it is a hard trick to learn. For this ride, I'm only thinking about the three days between the New Jersey coast and Frederick. None of the rides are long. All are fairly flat. But if we make it through that shakedown stage, then maybe we can think about riding to Ohio.
Anyway, Jillian was worried that we wouldn't be able to make it. And she has a point. While she is a ridiculously amazing athlete, she's not an endurance athlete. She doesn't have a lot of time on the bike. But she does think that this is a wonderful idea, and she does think that this ride will improve our marriage. Her most serious concern was that she'd get injured (remember, her nickname is Stitch). Injury is a distinct possibility, and there was nothing to do but agree to have a discussion about the circumstances under which we'd actually quit the ride. And to reassure her that a properly fit bicycle doesn't usually cause injuries. And to remind her that she'll probably be the stoker for most of the ride (the stoker is the rider on a tandem who isn't steering). The advantage of being a stoker on a Pino is that you get a rather comfortable recumbent seat.
So anyway, it was a minor argument. It wasn't even about the wedding. But it was definitely helpful to vent some concerns about the ride.
| posted at: 17:00 |
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Monday, November 10, 2008
 |
Everyone signed the back of this disc decorated by Waldo (who also made the invites and used the final pages of her photo album gift to scrapbook about the party as it was winding down, which was pretty impressive.) |
No wonder brides get more excited about weddings than grooms do: we get an extra ring AND an extra party. Forget waiting until the wedding weekend for partying and gifts, we also get a bridal shower beforehand. And thanks to my generous and geographically widespread friends and family, it looks like I'm going to have two or three. I feel very lucky and excited.
My friends from Hydra - aka the University of Virginia Women's Ultimate Frisbee Team, the #1 team in Virginia and Tennessee and one of the best decisions that I made last year - were ridiculously on the ball (on the disc?) and threw me a bridal shower the first weekend of November.
We started by consuming large amounts of delicious food - and I learned that the best dip recipe comes from the back of a cracker box.
Then the girls took slips of paper and compiled marital advice and pillow talk for me. By pillow talk I really mean frisbee euphemisms; there is a lot you can do with the common frisbee terms "score," "deep," and "handle." (Attempts to use "dump" led to some interesting results.)
Next Skinny Pete the skeleton stood in for Kyle as we played "Pin the Chore on the Husband." Krispy upped the ante by laying down her crutches to take a spin, and then Ducky and StaceMichelle showed off their two-person pinning skills. 
It was a good time for us, and probably for Skinny Pete as well: I imagine that decorative skeletons don't get much attention after Halloween.
The official theme of the party was "Martha's Secret." The idea was that gift buyers could think like Martha Stewart or like Victoria's Secret (or, as a number of people did, could combine underwear and kitchenware in creative ways). I really, really love all of the gifts that I got. They were awesome. Even the repeat or similar gifts were useful in multiples and made me impressed with the amount of Hydra ESP going around. The Bed Bath & Beyond registy seemed to be helpful too, though I have to warn eager registry watchers (and especially Pat who tried to claim them) that McVey and Henni snatched up one of the most amazing items: the monkey pot holders that we will use just as often as hand puppets. In other the-internet-is-awesome news, thanks to GoodReads - one of the best websites ever and a major obsession of mine; check it out as soon as possible if you like books and organization even a little bit - Gonzo and Krispy could stalk my bookshelves and find out what I wanted to read but didn't own. I am now the happy owner of
Everything is Illuminated and
Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style. (For those of you who haven't encountered my girly side much you should know that I am a huge fan of Project Runway and its resident fashion mentor Tim Gunn, the man who brought us "Make it Work." He's an endearing gay man with fashion sense and an impressive vocabulary...how can you get any better, really?) I can't wait to read both when the semester ends.
So yeah, it was a really great party. As an added bonus I tagged along to practice afterward. I've been taking the fall off from ultimate - now that I'm out of UPA college elligibility it seemed like a good time to rest my ankle for a few months - and wow do I miss it, especially with Hydra. It was great to be out on the field with them again, and a perfect end to this celebration.
Thank you so much Hydra!
| posted at: 08:06 |
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Sunday, November 09, 2008
People keep asking me how much is done, so I thought I'd share.
The church is booked. The reception location is booked. A caterer is hired. A photographer has been hired. Jillian has bought her dress. We've registered for a total of 60 gifts.
And that's it. There must be a billion things left to do, and I can't quite keep all of them in my head. And don't even get me started on the honeymoon - I only have the route mapped out as far west as Frederick, MD. That's just 2,975 miles short of the ultimate goal, give or take 200 miles. Plus, we haven't even purchased the bike yet.
After I took her to see West Side Story on Saturday, I did get Jillian to agree to ride a series of progressively longer charity events. So hopefully this spring we'll start with a half metric and gradually move up to a full century.
Too much to do, not enough time.
| posted at: 16:25 |
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Sunday, November 09, 2008
When something shows up on Facebook, that means it's real, right?
We've officially opened our website up to the public. The pages related to the wedding are password protected, since we're not quite ready to share those details yet. Don't worry, you're not missing much. Expect more details as we get closer to the date.
| posted at: 15:56 |
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Saturday, November 01, 2008
Don't get me wrong, buying that $100+ coffee and expresso maker for only $17 was definitely worth it. But we'll need to practice a lot before it actually becomes useful. I'm currently in possession of the persnickety machine due to our custody sharing arrangement - Kyle and I decided that I would take it back with me to assist with papers due before Thanksgiving, and then over the break I would give it back to him for grading and recommendation letter writing season. Since Kyle did most of the initial experimenting, he was kind enough to dictate detailed directions that I could take with me. Too bad I suck at following directions. The first (and so far only) time that I attempted to use the coffee and expresso maker I managed to mess up most of them. I'm willing to blame some of my problems on poor scheduling, however; why on earth did I think that trying to figure out the coffee and expresso maker utterly exhausted at three in the morning would be safer and less time consuming than driving to 7-11? Poor planning Jillian, poor planning.
Here is a step by step summary of the disaster:
1. Step one is to pour water into the top compartment, making sure that the steam vent is closed. I forgot about the second part, which meant I essentially poured water through the machine and onto the counter.
2. After closing the steam vent I poured more water into the top. Apparently in my frustration I overpoured and some of the water splashed up and onto a different part of the counter.
3. I then loaded the expresso grounds. Of course I made a slight mess with them but honestly it was better than I thought it would be given the way things were going. And the trash can will smell better with a dusting of expresso around the rim. I'm counting this step as a success.
4. I checked and double checked the confusingly labeled dials until I was reasonably sure they were right. It was only at this point that I realized that the maker wasn't even turned on. I fruitlessly searched for a second power button or a safety switch or something else that I might have overlooked. I also cursed myself for starting this process at an hour when I couldn't call Kyle for assistance. Finally I decided to try a different outlet: problem solved. I had no idea that an outlet in our kitchen didn't work; apparently I never use the upright toaster.
5. As the machine churned out expresso I got the milk ready. Kyle had warned me to shut off the machine once it reached a certain level, because if I let it keep going the expresso would be very watered down. I kept what I thought was a close eye on the machine, but apparently in the time it took to vacillate over which mug to use the amount of expresso had jumped from 1.5 to 3.5 (the goal being 2). This did not bode well.
6. Soldiering on, I put the steamer attachment into my cup of milk. I was careful to fully submerge the end so that none of the milk would splash - at least I learned one lesson from Kyle's mishaps. Suddenly I heard a bloodcurdling scream, as if a cat or a high-pitched robot were being tortured. OH WAIT, that was the steamer. I tried to submerge it more or less or to the side but nothing made the horrible sound go away. I would have put up with it (note to self: buy earplugs) but I imagine Anna and my neighbors didn't want to hear it (and they definitely could have). I held on until the milk was slightly warm but it was definitely not fully steamed when I shut off the scream.
7. I then combined the watery expresso and lukewarm milk. Mmmmmmm, doesn't that sound good. Partly because I was apprehensive about tasting it and partly because Kyle's instructions emphasized quick cleaning to avoid stickiness, I decided to wipe down the machine first. I therefore had the pleasure of burning myself on the expresso holder right before I remembered the neat cover that could have protected me.
8. Not content with one injury, I proceeded to burn myself on the steamer attachment as well. I didn't even manage to get all of the residue off of it. Fingers crossed that the residue wasn't in fact my skin.
9. Then it was time to taste the creation that had caused me so much pain and frustration. I covered up the pale mud with a layer of whipped cream and took a sip. Yup, about as bad as I expected. But I needed caffeine, and I certainly wasn't going to try to make a new cup, so I forced myself to chug a good deal of it, helped along with liberal reapplications of whipped cream. No amount of determination could make me finish the whole cup though, and there will be no photo of me cheerily toasting to anything.
10. Summary: Epic expresso fail. Reason #327 that I look forward to moving in with Kyle: the man is a much better barista.
| posted at: 12:50 |
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