<- Left Turns Only!

This winter has been full of snow storms, which is a big reason why I’ve been loving the last couple of days here in the Chicago area.  Seventy degrees and sunny, you can stay for as long as you’d like. 

I did a bit of searching around on the internet, as I was curious as to whether I was just imagining this winter really being this bad, or if there was some truth to it.  The search started after a friend forwarded this link, showing pictures of this odd Frozen Wave Phenomenon, in Michigan…. who knew?!?

Anyway, I was able to find a couple of charts that proved what I’d hoped — I’m not just imagining things, because I’m older and my apartment in Milwaukee actually requires me to help shovel the driveway, sidewalk and when my jeep gets stuck.  First up, the season-to-date snowfall in Chicago - compared to the long-term average annual snowfalls.  As you can see, this year we’ve had approximately 25 inches more than the long-term average, at the end of March.  I am pretty sure we had snow in April… but I’m not looking it up as I am trying to block it out of my head.

This second chart I stumbled across shows the Total Chicago Snowfall, by Season.  Looking back over the 10 years that I’ve been in Chicago it’s easy to see that winter really has been quite mild.  Even during the first year that I was here for winter, 1998-99, it didn’t seem that bad because 20 inches of the snowfall that year occurred on one day.  And I didn’t have to go to work that day! :)  If you look at the big picture though, the snowfall by the end of this March put us in the top 10 snowiest winters in the last 120 years.  If we had 5 inches in April (again, possible but I’m not looking) we’d crack the top 6….meaning 95% of all the winters on record were better than this one.  And here I thought I was just getting old and whining.  (No comments required from the peanut gallery)

Next post will be coming from Disney World!  Heading down to Orlando for work, but looking forward to getting some fun time in on Friday.  Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering, the forecast is calling for 85 and partly cloudy…   

Well, as many of you know there was an earthquake in the Midwest on Friday morning.  The quake was centered in West Salem, Illinois - which is a little over 250 miles south of Chicago.  News on the quake showed that people felt the tremors as far as Milwaukee, Des Moines and Atlanta (nearly 400 miles Southeast).  While I usually sleep through anything, I did wake up on Friday, with my bed shaking for about 5 seconds.  I felt a small after shock a few seconds later.

Regardless of the fact that I live on the 2nd floor of an old two-story walk-up, I pretty much rolled over and went back to sleep.  Here’s a quick pic of home sweet home, in Chicago:

 

I’ve heard of the New Madrid fault line before, and having known about it, this was actually the third time I thought we were being hit by an earthquake in the Midwest.  The first time I was a little more jumpy… got up and looked around outside to see what was happening.  By the third round (Friday) I feel like I’m living in California… didn’t phase me. 

The first two times I woke up thinking there was an earthquake, and the apartment was rocking, it turned out to be construction.  In my neighborhood they’ve been knocking down a lot of older buildings to build three story condos, or huge single family homes.   Here is a pic out the back door of my apartment.  There used to be three condos/rowhouses where they are building these two single family homes (this pic is from March of 2006, the buildings are now complete and occupied). 

 

SPEEDSKATING UPDATE - Not much to report right now.  We are still technically in the off-season, as team workouts don’t start for another 10 days.  I’ve been picking up the pace at the gym, but still nothing that would be considered strenuous - still focusing on light weights with higher reps to build a base for when we get going. 

While I take a break from speed skating for the next month, and look forward to the Yankees next championship season opening up in two weeks (that’s right, they’re bringing the title back to where it belongs), the next few days will be clouded with the likes of ”bracket busters”, “cinderellas”, “office pools” — that’s right, the NCAA Tournament is here!!!

As a Temple University graduate, I’m proud to see that my school is back in the Tourney!  After winning the Atlantic 10 Championship, the Owls enter the tourney with a seven game winning streak and they’re poised to take down Michigan State (and believe me, watching anyone beat a Big Ten school is music to my ears…)  I understand that I live in the heart of it, but one can only listen to Big Ten babble so much… 

Below are two good articles about the tournament.  Dan Wetzel is one of the better writers for Yahoo! Sports (in my opinion).  He’s rarely biased and usually gets creative with his writing.  First article, talks about ”The Boss Button” - I have to find this thing!!!  The second article hits on a topic that should be screamed out loud during every game of the tournament… college players that leave school with no education, and no hope for a job if they don’t make it in the pros.  The TV stations get rich, the schools get rich, the coaches get rich… the players - well, hope you make it kid.  The NCAA preaches about student-athletes, yet very few graduate with an education.

The Boss Button

Hypocrisy 101

My predictions:

Final Four: Kansas, Tennessee, Texas, UCLA

Championship:  Kansas beats UCLA 

Go Temple!!!

Last week an old roommate forwarded me a link to a great article about Dallas Robinson, a sprinter and Olympic hopeful. 

This is the type of story that makes the sports world so great. People that compete because they love sport.  Because they want to do their best.  Because they want to do what others may tell them is unrealistic, not possible.  Most of these stories won’t end with gold medals, or world championships, or glorious victories… heck, I might be one of them.  Some might call that a failure, or a waste of time.  Those folks just don’t get it. 

To the person on the journey — the people they meet, the places they go, and the experiences they gain along the way — it all makes it worth every second. 

Every workout.  Every race.  Every drop of sweat.  Every setback.  Every sacrifice.  All makes you realize what hard work is, and how you define success for yourself… which is more important than how someone else defines success for you.  With that said, here is the article:

Great Set of Wheels for Olympic Hopeful 

Last weekend, short track nationals were held at the Pettit Center.  I got a couple of workouts in on the long track, before spending most of the afternoon (both days) sitting in the stands watching.  There were some great races, which goes without saying as short track is a world of chaos.  There were also some horrific crashes… again, short track = world of chaos.

I read this on a packet of oatmeal this morning:

Question: In the U.S., how much is spent on golf balls each year?

Answer: $630 Million

That is a lot of bad golf! 

 To illustrate I did some simple math… I took the cost of a decent pack of golf balls, bought online and figured out how much $630M gets you.  There are probably a lot of variables that you can add to the equation (types of ball, used/range balls, balls bought at a country club, etc.).  Hence, I’m calling this simple math using the one brand/ball.  Anyway, you can get 36 Pinnacle Gold golf balls for $22 online at a golf ball specific website (they don’t sponsor me so I’m not mentioning the site).    

At that price, $630 million would buy a total of 1,030,909,090 golf balls.  One billion golf balls!!!!  I don’t even want to imagine the size of the cumulative crater that all those hackers have collectively made…. and that’s just in the U.S.

We keep getting hammered with snow here in the Midwest.  Here’s a quick pic of today’s storm - this is the view from the front door at work at about 3pm.  My office window is about 6 feet to the right of this pic, pretty much the same view.  It’s now 7:15pm and the snow hasn’t stopped yet….