Ben Collins

Here are some things that made my day get continually worse after getting out of bed this morning (that was a huge mistake).

1. I accidentally poured about a 1/4 of a bottle of hot sauce on my breakfast burrito because I’m used to the bottles with the drip top and this one didn’t have that little drip hole so when I turned the bottle over it just came pouring out. I admit that this was my fault, but my belly still hurts from eating so much hot sauce.
2. I sat next to a woman from LA that only wanted to talk about how rainy Seattle is and how she comes here for business several times a year and “it just rains every time I come here” and she thinks that makes people in Seattle grumpy. WE’RE NOT GRUMPY, WE JUST HATE LA!!!
3. When I finally got to the IMA (intramural athletics building at UW) I found that the pool, which is an L shape, was set up perpendicular to the normal direction, so rather than swimming laps on the shallow side, we swam from the shallow side to the deep end, and the lanes were set up double wide, with no lines of the bottom of the pool,  and no backstroke flags. Basically the facilities manager of University of Washington’s IMA is an idiot. This is the most dangerous swimming pool conditions I have ever swam in. People were swimming in diagonals, hitting each other, ramming into the wall because there’s no T on the bottom to gauge by… It was awful. And tomorrow I’m supposed to do a workout with Aaron Scheidies, who can barely see, and who uses the black line to know if he’s going straight and the T for his turns because he can’t see the wall.
4. Plus the clock is not positioned for the lanes like this, so I have to bring a wrist watch if I want to know my intervals. They said they would keep the pool like this until the other campus pool (where they give swim lessons) opens again. Until then they say they need the shallow end to be open. HELLO! IDIOTS, you will have more injuries from lap swimmers running into each other than from swim lessons learning to use deep end!  I’ve taught beginners in water over their heads, and it’s not that hard. AAAH this was by far the worse part of my day.

   After that I went and ranted to my new boss, Carrie, who really only cares that I have a song list together for my spin class tomorrow. (Maybe I should be doing that instead of ranting on my blog.) Ok, then I ran and got ice and then saw two people I knew while I was trying to get to a bus stop to get to class, and

5. one was Brian (who was dressed exactly like he is in the picture to the right) and he had the nerve to tell me I looked like someone from a bad 80’s movie (See the picture of me above), but I kind of like my new K-Swiss sweatshirt. Even Courtenay complemented it, and she’s always the fashion critic. When I finally got to the bus stop to catch the 852 bus (which I had never heard of)

6. it turned out that the Metro Trip Planner was WRONG about the bus stop and that bus didn’t actually come there. But then the bus that goes to my house came, so I hopped on it thinking I might have time to get home and borrow a car and get to class.
7. But Seattle rush hour (despite what the LA woman said this morning) SUCKS, so I didn’t get home in time and when I did
8. there was a downpour of rain (I still hate the LA woman) and I was soaked and
9. hadn’t eaten anything all day, and was
10. too late for it to make sense to go to class, so I was
11. GRUMPY! REALLY GRUMPY!!

(See, most lists go to ten, but mine goes to eleven.)

Saturday was the Ironman World Championships, which is the one day of the year where I don’t have to pretend to care about ironman, and will actually sit and watch the coverage, by choice, and with enthusiasm. The Kona Ironman is is inspiring. I almost raced it in 2006, but (luckily) I broke my wrist and collar bone about a month before the race. So instead, I went with my friends on the UH Triathlon Team and volunteered for water patrol, then stuck around and watched a bunch more of my friends finish the race.

One of those friends was Neil Samson, who finished in a little over 11 hours. At the time, friends were still allowed to run over the finish line with competitors. When Neil finished, we followed him across and handed him a beer. Well, we tried anyway. Check out this finish video, it’s kind of funny (don’t worry, we run across within the first 10 seconds of the video).

It seems pointless to give any more recap of this years race from my point of view. Everyone already knows that Craig Alexander kicked ass, and the awesome cyclists all blew up in the heat. Potts came in 8th and top American after racing in Dallas last week at the US Open. That’s probably the most impressive part of the race to me. Of my Hawaii friends I saw that Rachel Ross had a good race, but I was hoping she would be the top amateur and she was fourth.

  Not Gonzaga. Garfield High School, which is where I spent four wonderful years. If you want to get an idea of what my high school was about, rent the movie Heart of the Game. It’s a documentary about the cross town rival HS basketball program and it’s an inspiring movie. But they also show some scenes at Garfield, and their description of us as being ghetto is pretty accurate.

No more. Garfield just reopened it’s doors after a two or three year renovation that cost $107 Million. I haven’t been by to see, but I think Quincy Jones and even Jimi Hendrix (both went to my high school) would be just as proud as I am to see what a great job the city of Seattle did on this project.

I bet the bathrooms even have doors on the stalls now!

[photos:

Top: Ben and Noah after Graduation

Middle: The old front of Garfield HS

Bottom: Yes, I really did wear that jacket everywhere. And no, I really don’t look any different. And yes, our school was really ghetto on the inside.]

I signed up to teach a spin class at U of Washington. It starts in a week, so I have until Tuesday to build a repository of good spin music. Anyone have suggestions? (What I mean is PLEASE HELP ME!!!)

I’m also trying to figure out what I should be for Halloween this year. The only rule is it has to be better than my cookie monster outfit last year.

OOh! and check out the new comment notification feature, so after you leave a comment (hint hint to all you silent readers) you can be notified via email when someone else responds.

If everyone else didn’t suck, life would be easier. Ok, maybe that’s a little harsh, but sometimes the interactions I have during morning lap swim (or lap swim at any time really) can put me in a bad mood. Here is a short list of things that annoy me at the pool: (if you disagree, or feel that you may fit nicely into one of these items, please leave a comment and help me understand.)

1. Being told I’m too fast for lap swim, or that I should swim slower to accommodate other people who are in the fastest lane.
2. People who don’t cut their toe nails and kick you as you pass.
3. People who can’t swim butterfly, but try.
4. People who can swim butterfly, but refuse to do a single-arm stroke when they see you passing somebody in the other direction.
5. Breaststrokers in the fast lane.
6. Slow centerline swimmers.
7. Slow swimmers with bad form in the fast lane. (slow swimmers with good form are WAY easier to deal with).
8. People who swim sort of fast, but do it with such outrageously bad form that it’s impossible to get by them in a crowded lane.
9. Knee kickers (These are people who kick from the knee, rather than the hip, it doesn’t actually propel them forward, but it does increase the likelihood of me getting kicked in a way that will draw blood (see number two).)
10. Antisocial swimmers who won’t talk to you for two seconds to negotiate some lane etiquette.
11. People who know you’re doing a sprint set, but don’t ask when you’re leaving before pushing off in front of you.
12. People who ask when you’re leaving and then push off three seconds before you anyway.

That’s about all I can think of right now. What spurred this on was Saturday morning’s workout. I went to the Greenlake pool, where Brian Davis and I used to swim almost every morning. I haven’t been there to swim in months, but I slept through the 7am lap swim I normally go to on Saturday. I brought a set that was planned to the minute, so that I would have only about 120 seconds to spare in the 90 minute lap swim session. I was in the lane marked “very fast”, and flowing through my set when a few people tried to stop me and see if I could change the sendoffs to accommodate them. In December and January I probably would have agreed, but slowing from a 1:15 base sendoff to a 1:25 or 1:30 base sendoff would eat up my 120 seconds in no time, and take away from the purpose of the set. It’s October, and the season’s almost over, so I really can’t stray too far from my plan right now. So I said “no” and kept going. I guess the misunderstanding was that the group wanted the whole lane to do a workout together, and nobody wanted to do my workout. I didn’t really mind, I’m used to staying out of people’s way (or trying to) and going five seconds early or five seconds late every few intervals isn’t the end of the world. I just don’t understand why a group of seven swimmers wouldn’t just go to the masters workout held at the same pool, where 20 other swimmers of similar ability are doing workouts that are similar to what they write for themselves. If the masters group had a lane of people going my pace and doing workouts similar to mine, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Bottom line is, however, everyone that pays admission has the same right to be in the pool. I just don’t want to hear somebody tell me I need to leave because I’m going to fast for the “very fast” lane.

The seven day forecast for Seattle says rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. There might be a “partly cloudy” and a “showers” in there, but those are just to make Seattleites feel better about the looming grey and darkness that will take over the city soon. This forecast is usually the first sign of Fall in the emerald city. Then again, it’s also the first sign of winter, spring and summer. One year it rained 100 days straight (I swam indoors, so it didn’t really matter to me. Plus, I liked driving in the rain because it was easy to make my car do drifts – now I hate driving and prefer to train outdoors.).  Today a storm is blowing through, so I decided to watch a couple episodes of Dexter while I rode my bike indoors. Then the power went out, so I listened to my iPod while staring at a blank screen with no fan on. After that got boring I called Victor, Chris Tremonte and Kevin Collington hoping that I could get a report on Scott Tinley’s Triathlon, which happened to day. Brian Fleischmann won, then Ethan Brown, and Victor Plata was third.  Chris was 10th and Kevin ended up 11th after a rough day. I would have been stoked to race, but at this point I probably would have had an even worse day than Kevin. I’m just happy to be riding my bike again, even if it’s only a limited amount. Loren suggested I just claim victory because nobody that beat me at the race last year showed up this year. True, but this year it rained and was miserable and even with bike splits over an hour the top two times were faster than the Greg’s winning time in 2007. I guess I have my work cut out for me at Tinley’s in 2009.

[Note about the photograph: I love this image, but I can’t seem to figure out who took it. The site I got it from is under construction, but when I figure out the artist, I’ll certainly link to him/her]

I don’t like to write about political events (it doesn’t really fit under the mission statement of my blog), but last night’s VP debate is all that’s on my mind today. I was fired up at the pool this morning, but I had the lane to myself, so I couldn’t even swim butterfly over someone to free up some energy. I know the biggest issues in this election are the war and the economy, but I figure we’re pretty much up shit creak with either candidate on those fronts. What really bugged me last night was the question about same-sex marriage. Biden had a great answer, albeit he avoided the question at first, but insisted that same sex couples should have rights akin to straight couples with regard to taxes, property, and whatever-you-call-it-when-the-spouse-says-let’s-pull-the-plug. Then Palin chimed in the classic telltale of an intolerant [I’m really trying to keep this post PG so I’m not going to write the word I just said in my head], “I am tolerant. And I have a very diverse family and group of friends…” REALLY?! She pulled the “I love [insert minority group here], I have TONS of [repeat minority group] friends.” Really!?! Do you? So you have tons of gay friends? People you consider a positive part of your life, and yet you don’t believe they deserve the same rights as you? What an elitist [in my head I’m repeating that same word from above.]. She probably thinks crying at the end of Brokeback Mountain means she’s “tolerant”.

Bottom line, marriage is a religious ceremony and the government should butt out. Biden doesn’t have to believe in gay marriage, so long as he believes in honoring the rights of couples equally.

Oh, and drilling in Alaska is not the solution to the energy crisis. How about we take all those bright minds that are trying to get into med school and get them to believe that engineering clean energy is just as rewarding of a career path. Pump money into grad schools and math and science programs and spur the economy with high tech jobs that actually help the world. Kind of like my friend Noah who works for NREL (National Renewable Energy Labs). He’s saving the world a lot faster than the average doctor. (Not that I don’t appreciate the handful of doctors I’ve visited the past 5 weeks about my knee, it just that there are bigger problems in the world than my ability to ride a bike.) Ugh, will somebody hire me as a part time mechanical engineer? I want to make the world a better place.

I woke up this morning and said nothing for about 25 minutes, then as I drove into the parking lot of the swimming pool it hit me: September’s over! “RABBIT RABBIT!!” I screamed to no one in particular. That’s right, Rabbit freakin’ rabbit.

Today was supposed to be recovery, but I got a little excited with this double descend set that Victor gave me, and I went kind of fast for a set of nine 300s. At least I consider it fast, I guess Brian Davis would probably call me a big wimp if I told him I was barely under 3:00 in a short course pool. He’s an ass.

Also, this month will be the beginning of the first serious group ride in Seattle. It’s being called the Rocket Ride and being put on by Todd Herriott and HSP. The best part, the ride leaves from Log Boom Park, which is a mile from my house, so I’ll be able to get in a swim and breakfast before I show these jokers how to ride a bike (ok, truthfully, the one time Todd had enough free time to do a hill workout with me I was owned in a way that still hurts to think about.). The ride route will be the same every week, but it will not be published. This is with the idea that people will go as far as they can before being dropped, then will have to come back the next week and try to hold on a little longer. So you have to earn the knowledge of where the ride goes. I hear it’s around 60 miles, but I’ll probably post the map on my Garmin Connect account after I do it on the 18th. Why the 18th and not the 11th (which is the first rocket ride)? Because next week I’m out of town. Which will be SUPER fun, but more on that in a later post.

Ok, I really didn’t think I”d write again before October, but since my last posting I’ve had a change of fate. Unfortunately Aaron Scheidies still has a lost wallet and feels that the universe is conspiring against him, but I had a great weekend.

Aaron stayed last night and we went to a Juju party where everyone brings an object that has brought them bad Juju this year and throws in into a fire. I threw a representation of everything bad that’s happened this year: The complete lack of energy from trying to lose weight by fasting on lemon juice last winter, the bruised heel that kept me from racing fast at Alcatraz, the lack of preparation for the heat in Mazatlan, and the condramalasia in my knee. All those things really sucked (and were probably avoidable if I didn’t lack good judgement), so I burned them.

Today Seattle had one of the sunniest fall days I can remember, I had an awesome bike ride with no knee pain, and I had my best long run since… well… It may have been my best long run ever. And with no knee pain. So, one day at a time with injuries, I’m going to keep babying myself to make sure that the progress I’ve made towards recovery is not reversed by bad choices.

Oh, I also went sailing this afternoon with Brian and his wife Marijana (have talked about her enough on here that I can drop the “his wife” introduction?). I got to drive the boat under two draw bridges, and we made the Fremont bridge open for us, which is surprisingly empowering. Sort of like pushing the button at a cross walk and making all the cars stop just for you – only bigger. We only had about an hour of daylight by the time we were on Lake Union, but it was enough time for a casual sail around Lake Union, during which time we saw the sun set behind Queen Anne Hill and the Space Needle.

So basically I worked out a ton and then my friends made me laugh enough to pump my system full of endorphins. So - though I’m still sad about Troy - I’m not quite so depressed about the month of September. It’s nice to have friends around.

Troy is missing!

We got home Sunday night and haven’t seen him at all. His food wasn’t touched while we were gone. He was in the TV room when my parents left on Friday and that’s the last we’ve heard from him. I’m going to go post pictures at the Sheridan Beach Club and hopefully he’s just camping out at a neighbor’s house.

He’s such a friendly cat that most of the neighbor’s know him, but a week ago he lost his collar, so if he’s with somebody that doesn’t know him they won’t know where to bring him! I miss my kitty.

The problem with posters is that I don’t have any regular pictures of Troy, it’s all funny pictures b/c he’s always doing something funny.

[above: Troy at my 4th of July party in 2004. he doesn't know his limits.]

[left: This is Troy humping my jacket. Yes my room is really that messy, though I have put away my suitcase.]

[lower left: Troy with my brother-in-law, Matthew.]

[lower right: Troy in the bathtub because he likes to be clean.]