From the road - getting around town

Tonight, I am staying in the Fairfield Inn and Suites in St. Charles, MO. The city of St. Charles seems quaint and nice but there's always the ugly side of the city. This other side of the city is home only to hotels, Cracker Barrel, and pavement. Trying to go for a run is nearly impossible when leaving from hotels on the other side. Typically, as is the case today, your only option is to run on the access road parallel to the interstate. Sure, you'll keep a good pace knowing that you have to be prepared to dive to the safety of some corporate lawn should a Ford pickup careen around the corner, but it's not very relaxing.

Today, I drove to Lindenwood University's campus to run. This proved to be a good idea but it left me a bit disappointed. Is there such low demand from pedestrians for basic accommodations (i.e. sidewalks)? It seems as though we have, as a nation, tacitly decided that we need cars, buses, or trains to get us from point A to point B, even if point A and B are a five minute walk apart.

Now that Laine has relearned how to ride a bike, we have been trying to make the transition from biking for fitness to biking for transportation. We spent Sunday morning and afternoon biking from place to place. We even biked out to Buffalo Wild Wings, which is on the "other" side of Bloomington-Normal mind you, to watch football. It seemed like an odd thing to do and it wasn't easy. We had to take back roads to avoid four lane traffic and all that comes with it (people lashing out with insults of all kinds (people really resent foot and bicycle traffic to an unhealthy degree)) to make it to Buffalo Wild Wings. I should point out that there was another bike chained up when we got there, so this is not an original idea, just rare.

I hope that we will move toward, instead of away from, urban planning that takes non-motorists into account. Although it was not very easy to get where we needed by bike, it was fun. We enjoyed the sunny fall weather and I feel like we added something to our day that had been missing. It's so easy to never go outside anymore and I'm realizing that we should make a conscious effort to get outdoors more in the future. Maybe one time I'll bring my bike with me when I travel. I'll lock it to a rocking chair when I eat at the Cracker Barrel.

From the road – speech to text

My new fancy phone - the HTC Incredible - has a feature where I can speak into the microphone and my words will be put into text and sent via text messaging. Last night I was leaving the hotel and driving to a college fair and I thought it would be a good time to send Laine a text. Since I was driving, the speech-to-text function made a lot of sense. I spoke into the microphone, "On my way to the college fair" but what the phone sent as a text message was "hey on my way to the college fair honey." I must have had the sweet husband feature on as well.

From the road - piercing

Well, I'm back on the road.  I had my first two high school visits this afternoon and will have my first college fair this evening. Since I'll be alone with my computer more than usual over the next couple months I am hoping to create more frequent blog posts. This first one will be quick, just to ensure that the bar is set low.

My very first high school visit of the 2010 - 2011 recruiting year was Edwardsville HS and the first two student hands I shook were abnormal. I didn't notice when I shook the girls' hands that anything was unusual but I overheard one girl comment to another about how anytime she shook someone's hand her hand hurt. I looked over and noticed that she was looking at her hand and the next thing I noticed was that she appeared to have a floating gem on her right ring finger. It turns out that it was a piercing. In her finger. It didn't go all the way through - it was simply a stud. Both girls had this piercing, as they explained, because they are best friends. Now I have never had a piercing but I am typically in favor of them. This one, however, struck me as a poor decision. I hope that this poor decision is a lesson to these girls and not the first of many poor decisions over the next few years.

I've posted a picture that I found online for those who can't quite picture what it is I saw.