Not much riding this week. Yet. There's still hope though. The weather doesn't look terrible. If I can keep work from totally blowing up on me... it's a little hard for me to get going right now. Once again, I'm at the bottom of the mountain, this time with a crummy back. It's not a thrilling prospect. I suspect the only way to get going, is going to be getting going, and hoping the motivation and the joy finds me somewhere along the way.
It'd be a damn sight easier if it wasn't 45 degrees every day, and windy...
-----------------------------------------
Somebody somewhere is wondering, "what would happen if I ran a freight train into a tornado?" Well, somebody... wonder no more!
-----------------------------------------
Hey, check this out. Y'know Zdeno Chara, the oversized defenseman for the Boston Bruins? Turns out he's a total bike fiend, leaving bikes stashed around the world so he can go riding when the opportunity presents itself. He spends his summer vacations doing the hard climbs on the TdF. How big is he? 6'9", and at least 260 pounds in peak shape. And says his favorite ride in the world is the Col du Galibier. Amazing.
-----------------------------------------
Bill Strickland and Dave K. both write about the same thing today - riders whose ego gets the best of them, much to the amusement of everybody around them. Don't be that guy.
-----------------------------------------
Okay, math geek crap to follow.
I recently picked up a "how to do algebra" book because my math skills are getting rusty, and if Son of Rouleur is anything like me, he's going to have strong innate math ability, but will also prove to be in severe need a total kick-in-the-ass to get him to do the work to take advantage of his talent. Nobody kicked me in my ass until I was in engineering school, and Differential Equations kicked me so hard that I took a slight break of about 18 semesters before returning to college. The reason for it, besides the fact that I was polishing off a fifth of Two Fingers every night, was that my algebra ability was Teh Suxxor. I never had a very good teacher who could engage me, and because I could float through grade and high school on autopilot, I did. So by the time I was taking AP math in 11th grade and an advanced math theory class in 12th, I was one of the few students in the history of the world who could understand some pretty complex math yet still periodically fail a test based on simple figuring errors. So I want to remedy that while I'm getting prepared to handle Son of and his homework needs. I have forgotten just about everything I ever knew about math, mainly in retaliation for the engineering school debacle but also because if any of the other lawyers figure out I can do math my legal ability will immediately be suspect.
The book I chose had a pre-test in it. This included a lot of basic arithmetic, including my old foe, long division. Very, very complex long division. I always had the worst time trying to figure out how to guesstimate how many times the divisor goes into the dividend. It's time consuming, and frankly one never knows where to start when figuring out how many times 232 goes into 17650 or somesuch. Faced with a really grotty number - 635,745 divided by 173, out to three decimal points, a thought struck me. Rather than try to guess how many times 173 goes into 635 (and each successive remainder), why not knock out a quick times table and avoid the guessing? Because you're only working on one decimal place at a time, you never need to know more than 9 times 173 (and even if you needed 10 it's 1730). It only took a half minute to knock out a short times table for 173, just mentally adding 173 down the side of the page. 173, 346, 519, 692 and so forth. This made each division operation *way* easier. I knocked out the 6 digit answer in about 30 seconds after that. It made it *so* much easier and faster - no guesstimates, just look at the times table, put in the quotient, use the times table to provide the number from which you'll generate the remainder... I'm not explaining it well but I suspect the math & science geeks who frequent this blog know exactly what I'm talking about. It's like a logarithm for morons, which I am, generally.
Anyhow, it felt cool figuring out trick #1 for when the kid learns long division in a few years, but more important I enjoyed intuiting something that will be helpful for me when there's no calculator handy - and it will help me rebuild my shattered confidence in my math abilities. Just don't tell any of my lawyer friends I'm doing it. I'd hate to lose my street cred.
6 comments:
I was enrolled in engineering straight out of high school too. Half a gallon of rum a week put my semester behind me in a very blurry hurry. My 15 year hiatus ended when I enrolled in a physics/education degree in 2005. I'll be damned if I'm not the teacher I hated 25 years ago.
And stop bitching about the weather. We're suffering through 70 degree maximums here, but on the down side... we've averaged quarter of an inch of rain an hour, every hour for the past 3 days.
p.s. That stupid division is a touch under 4000, no tricks, no calculators. 173 x 4 is just under 700, but not quite as far down as 635.
Here's the grade 11, first day problem to "engage" them... estimate how many pairs of shoes can you make from a cow.
In case you would like your math in a different format:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/steven-strogatz/
Mike - Adult Onset Math is a terrible disease. Only you can help prevent it. So give here and help send a kid to liberal arts college.
Mayhem's Wife - thanks, that's pretty interesting.
I've been on and off the exercise wagon at times myself. Here's a blog post that i think provides a good way to look at it as we get back to it
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/28/the-big-question-are-you-better-than-yesterday/
Bottom of the mountain comment. I mean this in a nice way no matter how it sounds coming out.
You're a nice fellow (even though you won't hug tree's with me). You laugh at yourself and you keep getting up and trying again. I really like that. But in my opinion a lot of your maladies are caused by weight. So it's quite a cruel joke that the one thing that you're trying to do (I'm not going to poke at those cheese, meat, and liquor posts)to remedy the cause of all these symptoms....is the one thing the symptoms aren't allowing you to do.
My cure of course for all of this would be for you to give up consumerism, hug trees, and leave the furry creatures alone.... But then your blog would turn into some silly talk about your bark dinner and hemp sandles.
So I suppose keep on keeping on Jim. I'll be here cheering in the background, laughing when you fall, and taking credit as though I contributed when you start soaring again.
Terry, the irony of this situation has not escaped my observation.
Post a Comment