Geeky Yet Waterproof

As you probably know, tomorrow is iPhone Day (known in the past as June 29th). Unfortunately, I won’t be there to experience the madness firsthand — I have a swim meet in Bend this weekend. But it’s probably best that I stay at a safe distance… A study showed that there’s a 20-1 chance that someone will get trampled in the line!

VO₂ max refers to the maximum amount of oxygen your body can process during exercise. To test your VO₂ max, you have to exercise at an increasing intensity, until you basically drop. This is usually done while breathing into weird Martian tubes connected to a computer so it can measure how much oxygen is left in your exhalations. Normally, you have use a machine relevant to your sport; i.e. runners use a treadmill, cyclists use a stationary bike, and swimmers use… an arm crank.

The arm crank is supposed to simulate swimming, but it doesn’t (unless your sport is dog-paddle). So a new machine has been developed which is supposed to simulate swimming better than the arm crank.



Ten of us Bearcats have been selected to test the new machine, to find out whether it really does simulate swimming more accurately than the arm crank. We’re doing two VO₂ max tests: one with the arm crank (Monark) and one with the new machine (Vasa). The Vasa is supposed to give a higher VO₂ max value, since it uses a wider ranger of motion and therefore more muscles.


My first test (with the arm crank) lasted about 12 minutes, and the second one (with the Vasa) lasted about 23 minutes. The first test wasn’t all that hard, but the second one was almost as bad as in the movies.

As it turned out, the arm crank yielded 3.8 liters per minute in my testing, while the Vasa showed 4.6 liters per minute. (That doesn’t mean I have any idea what these numbers mean.) But anyway, what they were trying to prove was true: that the Vasa is a better swimming simulator than the Monark.



And as our reward, we’ll be recognized in some document saying “…ten swimmers have been selected for a study…;. We know who we are.

Veni, Vidi, Voravi.

I came, I saw, I ate it all.



Non puto me illud edisse debere.

I don’t think I should have eaten that.



Quod facitis me non iuvat.

That which you are doing does not please me.



Postulo dicere cum administratore.

I demand to speak to the manager.



Non artem currus tuam amo.

I don’t think much of your charioteering skills.



In posterum navigabo.

I’ll do the navigating from now on.



Pingere calvam maculam potes?

Can you paint over my bald patch?



Non dulce est cum seminibus olivarum eum ferire dum dormit.

It’s not nice to pelt him with olive stones when he’s asleep.



And finally…



Dens eboris meus iterum excidit.

My ivory tooth’s fallen out again.

We drove home from Walnut Creek, California (in the Bay Area) yesterday, and it took about 10 hours. I did some of the driving, and let me tell you, California freeways are fun.


There were about 400 people at the wedding — all of them relatives. They all seemed to know me, and I pretended to know who everyone was, but I don’t know if I fooled them.



When the time came for people to give toasts, there was a problem: they wouldn’t stop giving toasts! And some of them sounded like they were making it up as they went along, so it lasted forever.



Also during the toasts, people kept yelling “Banzai!” because, as the DJ explained, it means “10,000 years” — as in “Live 10,000 years!”. What he didn’t say was that the Japanese would say “Banzai” when they were killing people in WWII.



But of course, since most of my readers are swimmers, you want to know about the food: the cake was about three feet high, but I think what we saw was only a model, because the servers seemed to be getting the slices from the kitchen. But I don’t care where it came from; it tasted good.



I had never actually been to California in the summer before, so this was a fun trip. The oven-hot weather just made the outdoor pool even better.



Below are more photos from the trip.

I may be missing the Amazon meet, but that doesn’t mean I’m missing outdoor swimming.

We visited Rivendell Bicycle Works today, and we got to meet the people who run it. It was 104° outside, and they have no temperature control at their shop — it must be crazy working there in the summertime.







Also, I noticed this in the shop. It’s a hippie iMac!











And finally, to prove we really are in California:

I took these on our drive down to California yesterday.

As you may know, Steve started off WWDC yesterday with his Keynote. I listened to a live audio stream from iPhone Alley, which was really cool; it was hard to understand because the audio quality wasn’t very good, but it was still cool to hear “One More Thing…” happening live.

There weren’t any new product announcements, but as The Apple Blog pointed out, it’s the developer conference, not Macworld. We did see some cool demonstrations of Leopard and the iPhone. We also get to download the public beta of Safari 3.0, which, as Steve announced, has been ported to Windows. The End for IE looms!



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We’re driving to California tomorrow for a wedding, and we’ll be back sometime the middle of next week. I’ll finally be able to test my server from behind a foreign modem.

Yesterday we, the Bearcats, threw a surprise birthday party for Sarah at Bush park. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any of my own photos. Fortunately, I didn’t bring a camera (although somebody else did). Why, you ask? Because cameras + flying frosting don’t mix. That’s right: we had a cupcake war. As in, cupcakes flying through the air and eventually reaching their ultimate destination of somebody’s face.

We also played some running games such as Capture the Flag, in which Andrew hid the flag in a tree 10 feet above the ground, and then sat in the tree so nobody could climb up. That eventually led to our playing a new game: Let’s See Who Can Find The Messiest Way To Eat Ice Cream Without A Spoon!



The Winner: Tori.

The Winning Solution: her face.



But of course, at every party, something has to break, or it’s not a real party. In this case, a window. We were playing soccer, and I just happened to kick the ball, and it just happened to go straight toward a building (namely, the window), which, alas, didn’t stop it. Fortunately, it was just one pane, and it was cheap glass. The ball probably costs more than the window.

Yesterday my dad and I did the Strawberry Century: my first 100-mile bike ride. The ride had 2600ft of climbing, about 1000 of which were in the first 25 miles. We finished it in 8½ hours (including stops), averaging about 15mph.



A few days before the ride, we decided we were going to cancel because rain was predicted. The next day, the prediction changed to no rain. Then, the night before the ride, it was back to rain, but supposedly it would hold off until the late afternoon.

Well, it rained for the whole ride, but that just made it so much more awesome. The rain also kept the pollen down — I’d rather ride in the rain than have allergies the whole time.



Despite the rain and cold, I was feeling fine until mile 80. It was at that point that the water on my jacket succeeded in soaking all the way through. For the last 20 miles, every 15 foot rise felt like a mountain.



We finished the ride in Lebanon, where we started, and we accepted our bounty in hands full of desire: strawberry shortcake!



Before the rain…



After the rain!



The Reward