The Coming Century

I did it. I signed us up for TFCE - The Flattest Century in the East. Yes, normally it's Deb who gets us into these things but it was me this time. A Century is, of course, a 100 mile bike ride and is roughly equivalent to a Marathon for runners in terms of goals and relative difficulty.

I did one once before, back in California, a little over 20 years ago...Hmm.

I had heard about this one last year and wanted to do it but they only allow a limited number of signups and I missed the cutoff. This year, I marked the signup day on my calendar and got in. I signed up both Deb and I so that we could ride the tandem but kind of neglected to tell Deb that I was going to do this. When I told her we were signed up, well, let's just say she did not jump for joy. The draw for this ride is spelled out in the name - Flat. As I think I've mentioned before, tandems don't do hills very well. Actually, they do downhills very well. It's the uphills that they struggle with. OK, it's the riders who struggle with the uphills. The bike doesn't give a crap.

Anyway, tandem riders really like flat rides so I figured this should be easy. Right?
Yeah, except that I happened to mention my plan to another guy who had ridden this ride. He said that "yeah, it's flat. But it's along the coast and it's rather windy." Great.

Whatever, we're signed up and we'll give it a try.

In order to do this, we've got to start riding - the ride is on September 13 - so I got the bike down and enlisted Kyle to help me do some clean up. We removed the chains and cleaned them and the gears and generally spruced things up a bit. I don't know if I've ever posted a picture of this bike so I found a stock photo of our bike. If you click on the picture of the bike at the top, you can get a larger picture of it. It's got fancy "aero" wheels with minimal spokes that are "just as safe as regular wheels". Notice the rear seatpost. It's got a little shock absorber for the Stoker's (the rider in back) bum. On a tandem, the Captain (the guy in front) is suspended between the wheels and gets a pretty smooth ride. The Stoker on the other hand, sits right over the rear wheel and takes the brunt of rough roads. The road shock is made worse by the fact that the Stoker can't see approaching potholes and therefore can't "brace" for the impact. The seatpost shock helps to lessen some of the punishment. You can't really see it but the brake levers on the front handlebars double as gear shifters as well. You squeeze them like normal to apply the brakes and push them side to side to shift gears. It's pretty much the coolest invention for bikes ever.

Speaking of gears, this bike has ten sprockets on the rear wheel and three on the pedal for a total of 30 gears. Some gear combinations aren't useful but it's still a huge range, and it's needed for the extremes the tandem faces - very low gears for grinding up steep hills and very high gears for bombing down the other side.

It's a really nice bike and we really enjoy it (but check back again on September 14th...).

Do the Zoo

As you may know, Carly was "laid off" from the Whitin Community Center early in the year. She had been working in the Fitness Room cleaning equipment, washing towels, and giving tours to prospective members. The Center is struggling so they had to let a bunch of people go and Carly got the ax.

This was not good given the current economic situation and the fact that she needed to build up some cash for next year's college expenses. I was anticipating an agonizing job search process but one day she came home and said she got a job at the Zoo (or at least had an interview lined up). The Zoo, is the Southwick Zoo, located in the next town over - Mendon. It's just about the most unlikely place to have a zoo but it's actually quite well known and very large and well done. Carly had her interview and they hired her on the spot!

She mostly works in admissions and the gift shop and regales us with tales of kids who pull all the plush toys down from the shelves and the people who spend 15 minutes trying to figure out if they should get the "All Access Pass" or buy individual tickets for the various attractions (or some such calculation). One time she was working in the "Build an Animal"-type area where the kid picks out an animal to make and they fill it with stuffing and decorate it. I guess it's like "Build a Bear" at the Mall (I've never been there). Anyway, she said she was getting ready to fill the animal with stuffing which involves holding the empty animal "skin" over a nozzle that spews (apparently at a rather high velocity) stuffing into said animal. She told the girl to WAIT until she got the animal completley over the nozzle before she (the girl) pressed the "Fill" button. Of course, the girl hits the switch BEFORE Carly has the skin on the nozzle and Carly ends up being blasted in the face by animal stuffing as the girl shrieks with laughter. The girl does it one more time before Carly thinks to turn off the master switch to disable the "Inject" switch so she can get the animal lined up properly.

She seems to enjoy the job however and is happy to be making some money again. She said tonight that her little stint in unemployment has taught her to be a little more frugal than she had been so I think that's a good thing.

Mass Historia

One of the cool things about Kyle's Scholarship is the stipend that he can access to support a summer as an unpaid intern at some company, presumably to get experience related to his major. Basically, they will give him $4,000 so that he doesn't have to work at Wal-Mart or some such place to make spending money for the upcoming school year. This being "technically" his last summer off from school, he had to access it or lose it. Back in January, we started to periodically ask him what he needed to do to set that up. Of course the answer was always "I've got plenty of time".

Well, it turns out that there was a deadline to getting all the paperwork turned in - including finding the place that you were going to work at - back in April. He actually realized it about a week beforehand and tried to meet with his advisor and people at the career center but with tennis matches and practice, he didn't make it.

I was none too pleased with his procrastination and I sure as heck didn't want to leave $4,000 on the table so I called the career people to see what we could do. Well, after explaining that most kids get their summer internships lined up in February, the lady said that the deadline wasn't that critical and he could still access his stipend. He just needed to find something - quick. He got a list of potential places and sent his resume around to them. I also contacted some people that I knew to see if they needed anyone. It wouldn't have anything to do with History but the lady said it didn't have to be directly related so I figured what the heck. Kyle even asked me if maybe EMC might "hire" him so I checked there too. My other sources didn't need anyone and EMC doesn't do unpaid internships. He hadn't heard back from anyone either so it was looking pretty bad.

One of the things our group at EMC does each year is volunteer in some community project. Last year, we worked on houses for the Habitat for Humanity and this year, we planted crops at the Community Harvest Project farm that feeds many hundreds of people in central Mass. They are always looking for volunteer coordinators - people to manage the volunteer planters and workers that they have come in and help - so I mentioned it to Kyle. He was interested and, since it was the only game in town, called them up and arranged to meet with them. A couple of days before he was to head to the farm, he said that he got an email from the Massachusetts Historical Society saying that they could use an intern! After a few negotiations back and forth he was in (and told the farmers to pound sand).

Well, the Mass Historical Society is conveniently located in downtown Boston so Kyle had to figure out how to get there... We found their website and got directions (which say, by the way, that parking is horendous and you really should take public transit). We plugged the location into the GPS and it says it will take about an hour to get there. We figure he should leave at 7:00 am to get there for his 9:00 appointment.

The next day, at 6:50 am, not hearing Kyle stirring, I went into his room to find him fast asleep. "What's up" he says. "It's 6:50." "Crap. My alarm didn't go off." So, he ambles out of bed and proceeds to leisurly get ready. I'm practically helping him put his clothes on and he's just casual as can be. He finally says "Would you just relax. I've got plenty of time." He finally rolls out of the driveway at about 7:20.

I head in to work and Deb calls me at about 8:30 asking if I've heard anything from him yet. Nope. I send him a text message asking if he found it OK. At about 9:13 I get a reply "Just finished parking." It took him another five minutes to walk from the parking garage to the building so he was about 20 minutes late. Hmmm. Luckily, it was not a big deal (he is unpaid afterall). He said they are very laid back and very accomodating. His first day was spent unfolding letters (bills) and placing them in other folders. He was a tad bored but he wasn't complaining - much.

After navigating the Mass Pike and Boston traffic he figured he really should find another option so we plotted his trip via the commuter rail system. The next day, he rode the train in to the Back Bay Station for a short walk to work. I got a call a few minutes after his train was due to arrive - "I'm not sure where I am". Great! I quickly pulled up Google maps and we figured out where he was and I got him going in the right direction. That day he did more unfolding and some transcribing. At the end of the day, they happened to get a shipment of old books from 1812 or something, written by a French speaking guy and they wondered how they would translate it. Kyle said "Um, I speak French." So the next day he was researching the information in these letters trying to figure out where this guy was and what he was doing. Based on Kyle's translation and research, he figured out that this guy was in the Dominican Replublic and logging the cargos of incoming ships from around the world. Pretty cool for his third day.

We still haven't gotten the stipend payment sorted out so I hope we actually see this money. I'm racking up the commuter rail bills so I sure hope this works. I think Kyle's actually going to see about $100 of this $4000 by the time all the expenses are accounted for.

The Last Prom

It doesn't seem possible but we are almost done with High School. Carly went to the prom the other night so about the only thing left is Graduation.