Djinnius : Picture of the Day

As in a tonne (that’s metric) of stuff to talk about.

Thursday night people met up for one guys birthday at a local Irish bar. He was turning the big 2-8! Yikes. He is kinda an older crotchety grumpy receding hairline guy. He seems to be a nice guy but I haven’t had any “fun” experiences around him. That really made me feel like a young guy. I hope I never get old and crotchety like him. I’m such a stark contrast to that guy seeing as how half the time the kids I hang out with totally forget how old I am compared to themselves. Good thing age is only a number and you really are only as old as you feel.

Last Friday was the day of the Pub Crawl. I decided to make one last pit stop at Goodwill to see if they had a kids golf club and some golf cleats. Well they had neither. But they did have some really kick ass Legos that my eyes fell upon. Really it must have been my lucky day. How did Goodwill end up with slightly beat up Star Wars Clone Wars Legos and how was it that no one else had gobbled them up? There were two of the one set and I figured “Hell for this much of a discount why not get both!” So I grabbed three huge boxes of Legos and got in line to checkout. While I was in line a woman behind me asked where I got the Legos and if there were any more left. I told her that I got them back in the toy section and that no there weren’t anymore left. She told me how her one son’s birthday was on the 28th of April and that he had been showing her the Lego Star Wars section every time that she went to Wal-Mart. Seeing as how I had two of the one set, I gave the least banged up box to her. She thanked me a whole bunch. I didn’t need to be that greedy or to spend that money on toys so what the hell. I hope the little kid got what he wanted on his birthday. I looked up the prices on the sets. I paid $14.99 a piece for the banged up boxes that hopefully have all their pieces. The Lego Store lists them at $60 and $90 a piece. What a steal.

Friday was also the day that I made a trip down to SE side of Indy for a wine tasting and tour. I needed to do it as part of my wine appreciation class. That was an interesting trip. Indianans don’t like “real” wine. They like super sugary crap. The characters that Blake and I saw while doing our own tasting. Redneck city. I felt like I was damn near dressed up and classy in my T-shirt. One older lady rolled in with her husband. She was tasting the blueberry wine and shouting her commendations about the wine to the entire tasting room while her husband examined the wine racks (to get away from her). Two “ladies” came in. One was pretty rough looking with some fine tattoos and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t a dyke. Not to say she can’t go and enjoy wine…but man it was a slice of Indiana culture at Buck Creek Winery.

The Pub Crawl went pretty well. No winners. Only survivors. I don’t think that anyone made it past the 4th hole. I didn’t. I had added some gimmicks to the pub crawl. Gummi bears and Oreos were taken to the bars. One guy got girls phone number written on his shirt in exchange for girls numbers. The only bad thing was that everybody was pretty much cashed out at 12:30 am and people had kinda gotten split up anyway. All in all I think everyone had a pretty good time.

Don’t Look Mom!

Sunday the triathlon team hosted a duathlon.
I rode my motorcycle and helped lead the bicycle course. That was pretty fun. A group of people who felt like procrastinating ended up washing and waxing cars Sunday afternoon since it was so nice.

On Sunday people egged me into entering the Tri-The-Illini sprint triathlon. I signed up and figured that so I didn’t make a complete ass out of myself I better get into the pool and do one of the swim workouts. Well I think the best that can be said is that I didn’t drown. I did ingest some chlorine flavored water however. My “coaches” mentally shook their heads seeing my poor swim form and how I didn’t really stick my head under the water. I swam over 1000m on Wednesday. Lifted on Thursday. Got back in the pool on Friday morning and did another 1000m. Then on Friday night I did just about 11 miles on the stationary bike before doing a couple laps right after getting off the bike to see how it’d feel. The getting off the bike felt fine. The getting out of the pool after 1000m didn’t. My coaches think that I hyperventilate and that’s why I can’t stick my head in the water. I kinda agree since I did the drunk guy swerve to my sandals and keys after jumping out of the pool. I told my friend how I kinda had worked out a bit more than usual and she just laughed stating that I’d be fine. It’s not that I didn’t think that I’d do fine its just that I at least wanted to knock some rust off seeing as how I hadn’t a) swam the past decade b) run recently much and c) had been at least 2 weeks without a decent bike ride.

Tri-The-Illini (300m swim, 11 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) started at 8am so we left West Lafayette around 5:30am. We got there with plenty of time. I took one guy around the run course, which went around the Quad, on our bikes. We knew we weren’t going to start for a long time due to our bib numbers. We still almost were late as they were closing the transition area where you change when we were finally getting ready. Myself and the other guy, Scott, got yelled at that they were closing the transition. To guesstimate how much time you get to wait after the first person gets in the pool just multiply your bib number by 10 seconds. I was number 315! That is all based off of the swim time you submitted for the 300m. Seeing as how when I signed up on the previous Sunday that I hadn’t even been in the pool, I had no clue what to put down. I can’t remember if I put down 10 minutes and then changed that to 15 or not. One of my friends said that I stuck down 15 minutes.

Needless to say she said she put down 4 minutes for herself! Although she did swim at Northeastern in Boston in undergrad. Anyway most of the people I was with were bib number 50 or lower. So I got to hang out by myself and take their pictures. The time went by quick especially when you get to people watch people in their swimsuits I got pretty damn excited and jittery standing in line to jump in the pool. I actually did pretty well with it all. I was pretty far back so I passed a few people on the swim (but many more on the bike and run). I didn’t even get my hair all the way wet until I had to go under the lane line for the first turn around in the swim! I floated on my back a very short bit but for the most part actually swam the whole thing which I hadn’t really done before on my two previous workouts. I got out of the pool and jumped on my bike. As I got on my bike and headed out one of the girls from Purdue was all ready coming in to the finish! I yelled some words of encouragement and zoomed off on the bike. The bike was a bit of a tour of some old stomping grounds including the rugby fields. Sadly they weren’t playing. Well it was 9ish in the morning. I felt like I had some jelly legs after getting off the bike and trying to run. It took a while before I got into a running rhythm and wasn’t so fatigued from biking. Running through the Quad was a challenge as it was Math Bowl day and the place was crawling with high school students. They were swarming like ants and the race volunteers couldn’t keep them from getting in the way. I got some cheers as I wore my Illinois cycling jersey, although my Purdue buddies made fun of me for not wearing Purdue stuff.
All in all I did damn well and am glad I did it. I just need to get in the pool more and learn how to swim again.
I finished top ten for my age group (!) and 72nd overall.
Age Group Stats
Overall Stats
Afterwards we stuck around as the girls kicked some ass. The girl I saw coming in when I was leaving on the bike won her age group and was the top female finisher overall. The two other girls came in 2nd and 3rd. The guys did really well also. Look up Robin Bauer, Sara Underwood, Mandy Scheinfeldt, Andy Jessop, Brian Pomeroy and Ethan Brush.

This was all at the new UI athletic facility. It was pretty and nice although they laid some things out really weird and not really efficiently if you ask me. Campus was booming and I noticed a few more parking garages and other additions that weren’t on campus when I left. Seeing that campus just goes to show me how much better of a school UI is over Purdue. I know buildings don’t make a school. But they sure are a reflection of some of the success they’ve had.

We made it back to West Lafayette after getting a burger on campus (which was crawling with the said Math Bowl HS students and UI students on a 15 hr – 21 bar pub crawl. Sniffle and my pub crawl could barely scrape together 7 bars). I took a quick nap and then was off to the end of year triathlon club bbq. They handed out fun awards. All the awards started out with “Most likely…” Here is mine: