Week 82 - DUIs

This week marks one year since our ill-fated attempt at awesomeness in the hills of Brown County, Indiana. And unfortunately, with an impending birth signaling my uncledom, I will not be participating in this year's death march. But not for lack of wishing. This year they're even going to include horses in the competition! 'Cause that's what everyone wants - to top a hill on a mountain bike going 30 mph and run smack into a 1500 lb. horse. But I will miss it and I look forward to participating again next year. In honor of all those that will struggle through the mud and glory of it all - here's a picture from the website this year. Yes, that's right, the old hickory tower climb has been ended. Good thing, too, because it was pretty rickety last year with big guys rushing up and down it for the 45 minute time bonus. I guess either the park service or the organizers of the race started thinking that having hundreds of people running up the stairs and back down again wasn't such a great idea.

The view from the top of the table last year.

This week after work I chanced into a great evening of Red Wings. Our IT guy (who is a true blessing to the department for all his hard work and enthusiasm) really likes hockey and particularly the Blue Jackets. With them playing the Red Wings this week, I was looking forward to watching the game on TV because their series has been good for a few years now and they are likely to be competing for the last couple spots in the playoffs. Imagine my surprise when he texts me and asks if I want to go to the game. It then followed that he was also short two other seats and asked if I knew anyone else that would want to go to the game. So three of us Detroit fans got to go with him to the game on Tuesday night, but he got the last laugh. He got to sit there and cheer about all the goals scored on Howard right in front of three disappointed fans. Still, the experience was classic. I don't need to go to very many games but it's nice to see a pro hockey game in person every so often.

View of the game from our seats. The crowd keeps getting more excited and louder.

To get me in the hockey spirit, someone let snow blow in my office window?

At home this week, my wife and I had a bit of a power scare. We came home one night and I put some stuff in the microwave to heat up for making dinner. There was a pop and then the power on the whole back side of the house went out. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the microwave but then we noticed the refrigerator was out, too. The more we searched the more stuff we realized was out. And then the search for the breaker began. We looked everywhere and couldn't find the source of the outage. The next morning our power company came out to check things out. Found a burned out connection from the lines to the house. Betsy made friends with the repair guy but I was just glad they didn't ask about what our little power sharing scheme with the neighbors back in the winter might have done to the connection. Now we'll never know...

A new experience this week was being an invited speaker to a lamb clinic to talk about club lamb nutrition. I prepared a nice powerpoint, drove over an hour to get there and was all jammed up to influence some kids down the right path to healthy lamb nutrition. I think we still got down that path a bit, but the fact that the clinic wasn't equipped to run powerpoint and they forgot to mention they didn't have a computer compatible with screen projector plugs might have negated a lot of my hard work. Shame but I think I still got a few main points across to the kids.

1) There are five main nutrient categories: Energy, Protein, Water, Vitamins and Minerals. Each one is important for nutrition.
2) Lambs have one stomach, just like pigs. The difference is the compartments of the stomach. Sheep have 4 and each serves a different purpose.
3) Hay is vital to balancing the microbial environment and keeping all the bugs happy. Too many kids (or their parents) try to nix hay without thinking about the consequences on the productivity, health and appearance of the sheep in question.

On the way home, I passed by a bitter memory. Six years ago I was in a fight with a girl, arguing back and forth as we drove home from seeing Jake Owens and Blake Shelton for free at a county fair. Lots of people came that night and the traffic was just letting up. As I accelerated down the road, I was distracted by the fight and barely noticed a pair of headlights swerving towards us and then banking hard the opposite direction. I barely had time to breath a sigh of relief before the truck with snowplow skipped off a tree, blew through a mailbox and embedded in the embankment. My mind raced as I realized how petty our argument was, we had almost just been killed by a drunk driver.

One place where my guardian angel came through for me in 2008.

My head boiled with rage as I swung the car around into the driveway adjacent to the truck. The guy was lucky I found his door open and him on the run. I was seeing too red and the chase down to a creek gave me a bit of time to cool off. Two highschoolers followed me down the hill in the dark and I had to talk the kid back out of the bushes to take him up to his doom. We dragged him back up to the house where the police were waiting. As we filed official statements and the family thanked us for stopping (just doing my civic duty - and making sure adequate punishment was reaped), the dude emptied his pockets of beer and passed out in the cruiser. The moral of the story...  Folks, please don't drink and drive. It's dangerous for you, deadly to others, royally pisses me off, and it will ruin your life forever. It's just not worth it.