Spring Lessons

I know I've been away for a long time and haven't exactly made good on my promise to write a few times a month. I picture most people eagerly visiting the blog each day in anticipation of something, anything, from me. But obviously that hasn't happened, and now our dynamic is on shaky ground, "he said he would write but every time I check there's never anything there! It's almost like he doesn't care about me anymore!". No need to worry, it's time to mend this neglected relationship and work through all those hurt emotions you must have been feeling.

As the semester has moved along it's provided me with ample opportunity for observation and introspection and from these things I have gleaned some new knowledge I would like to share (the semester's also provided ample frostbite opportunities which can also lend itself to new knowledge... in pain).

1) Flying

Over spring break the teams made their annual trip down to Florida for a week of matches and a welcome lack of school. It became necessary for reasons still unknown to me to return to work and school and so on Saturday March 8th we arrived at the airport for our flight back to Cedar Rapids... and waited. We ate breakfast and waited some more. Then came lunch followed by more waiting. We got bored and played state capita trivia (Maine's capital is Augusta in case you were wondering) and waited some more. After all that waiting the airline decided we needed to wait a little more and cancelled the flight for the day. Come back tomorrow and we'll do this all again!

The lesson I took from this experience? Don't fly Allegiant. I know that may sound harsh. Flights get cancelled all the time for a variety of reasons, but that shouldn't exclude them from future flight options. All that makes sense because I just wrote it, but I don't care. Flight cancelled in this case equals losing my business. And sure they gave me a hotel room for the night with no meal vouchers and only 1 van to ferry an entire plane's worth of passengers to and from the airport, but I just can't accept all these great gestures as equal payment. It makes perfect rational sense to my irrational mind so: Allegiant is on my no fly list.

2) Biking Rules

Spring is here as evidenced by the calendar and with that come new rules for what is acceptable clothing to wear. After careful mathematical calculation I have arrived at an answer for the question vexing philosophers for at least the past century: at what temperature is it acceptable to wear shorts again when biking. The answer is straight forward- 20 degrees.

I arrived at the quite simply. One day I was tired of putting on layers upon layers just to ride to work, so I said "egh", put on my shorts and rode to work. I survived and saw that temperature was in the 20s and thus came to my new rule. Anything above 20 is perfectly acceptable for wearing shorts while biking. I plan on submitting this as part of the official platform of the American Biking Association as soon as I check out if such an association even exists.

3) Roger

Obviously I'm talking about Federer here. Yes he's been in decline for a few years now. According to some people since 2008, nevermind the 4 grandslams he's won since then. As much as I hate to admit it, the last few years have definitely seen a drop in the Fed's game. Until this year! Give the man a clean bill of health and a new racket and he's suddenly on fire. New rule for spring: Fed's still go it.


I know, he just lost in Miami, but I'm talking about his year as a whole. Federer followed up a title in Dubai by going all the way to the final at Indian Wells. He lost in 3 sets to Djokovic but it was a truly great match to watch. I was fully entertained the whole way through. I'm not saying the guy is going back to number 1 and winning 3 slams this year. But he's shown that he may be a factor again at the major tournaments which makes things much more interesting.