Almost Sweden

We head to Sweden in 2 weeks and have our race in just under 3 weeks -- August 18th! It has been very very hot here (theme of the summer) but in my opinion this is much better than very very cold. Work has been good but very slow with many (most?) people away on vacation for several weeks in the summer. Also, France basically shuts down for the month of August with many (most?) restaurants, bars, services, and shops closing entirely for most -- if not all -- of the month. Without knowing it (or I guess in a way we had no choice due to the timing of the race) I'll be taking my vacations at the same time as the rest of the country.

Our friends from Peterborough R & S were here recently and we drove down to the Cote d'Azur; we stayed in Juan Les Pins in Antibes and it was (believe it or not) almost as hot there as it is here (not quite though). This past weekend Sandi and I ran 33km on Saturday morning and then biked 165km on Sunday (even though we were supposed to do 200, it then became 180, and then we decided "what's the difference?" and went home because it was too hot and we were tired). Tonight we'll swim 4 km and then from here on in it should be a bit of a 'taper' as we begin resting our bodies for our race. However, we hope to ride to Alpe d'Huez (and of course up it) next Saturday if the weather is nice and then hopefully go swimming outdoors somewhere on the Sunday.. maybe we'll take the train to Annecy. That's one of the main things we haven't been able to do as much of as we would like -- open water swimming -- because not having a car makes it quite difficult. There is somewhere in Grenoble but it's been so hot that the tiny dirty crowded lake is even warm feeling WITHOUT a wetsuit and the wetsuit practice is what we need because it requires a lot more shoulder strength than without... Could be a disaster but hopefully not...

Until our race is over we will still probably not have very exciting news to write about. Most of our time is spent training and eating because you sure need to train a lot to get ready for this race and you sure need to eat A LOT when you're doing all this training. Perhaps afterwards we'll become more interesting. Or maybe we'll just watch a lot of TV. Or maybe I'll become a workaholic staying at work all night long (not likely). Or maybe we'll sign up for some kind of group where we have to speak French all the time so that when we come back to Canada it will actually seem like we were in France. I suppose the possibilities really are endless, but we'll probably just sign up for another one right away.. hahahahhah NOT

Whatever you say Lady!

Coming to Canada

Defence is scheduled for the morning of Friday, August 31st! I will arrive in Toronto on Thursday the 30th around lunch time and I'll leave Sunday the 2nd of September in the late afternoon. Whirlwind trip!

Break from work

This past Saturday was exactly six weeks to Ironman Sweden. We 'celebrated' such a day by biking 185km in the Vercors mountain. We went further than we had gone before and made it all the way to the Col de Rousset where we had one of many snack breaks. The climb up to the Col is 6.2km long from St.-Agnan-en-Vercors with an average incline of 5.2% and maximum of 8.5%. The climb is rated category 2 following the Tour de France ratings where they range from HC (Hors Catégorie -- the most difficult) to Category 4 (the easiest). After the snack break we went ~100m further up over about 5 km to the 'outlook' point where we reached our highest yet in France -- about 1370m. The climb that always starts the bike rides from Grenoble into the Vercors is from Sassenage (essentially Grenoble) up to Villard-de-Lans which is nearly 20km long and goes from 200m to 1100m. This is a Category 1 climb. Our legs were VERY tired by the end of the day. In addition to the litres of water and gatorade that we consumed plus lunch in Lans-en-Vercors and other snack breaks including entire boxes of cookies and family-size bags of chips, these are approximate averages of consumption per product per person:


-- 3 Coca Colas (/person)
-- 3 coffees (/person)
-- 1 red bull (/person)
-- 3 chocolate bars (/person)
-- etc.

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Last week I spent in Brussels for a project kickoff that I'll be a part of. The kickoff was unfortunately not very exciting as it entails a lot of meetings about not very interesting things and it does not entail very much free time. I did get to enjoy some Belgian beer, however. I hope that the actual work on the project and its results will be infinitely more interesting than the meeting itself was.

Other interesting news is that I may finally have a date to defend my thesis! If some things can be sorted out, I may come back to Canada on August 30th to do the defence on Friday the 31st. It looks like an external examiner has been found and most people are available. Unfortunately, we also need someone who is familiar with my work but from within the university and NOT in our department. This was easy as there was someone from the math department who was on my advisory committee but he will be away during this time. Hopefully a suitable replacement can be found and this date can be confirmed soon because then I can buy a ticket asap before the prices are too insane. If the date works it should be perfect because it will be after the race and all the training and I won't have to worry about missing training days or wrecking up my body from jet lag and lack of sleep!

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It is really nice to have our friend Thony staying with us. Last year he was visiting us in Guelph at essentially the same time when we went to Peterborough and did the Half Ironman race. This year's Ptbo 1/2 IM was yesterday (of course we didn't do it this time). Last year we watched the Tour de France on my computer screen over the Internet with a pixely broadcast that would intermittently cut out. This year we're watching it in HD on a big TV so that's pretty nice! We were of course cheering for Ryder but after the big crash on Friday he was injured and so had to withdraw and go home for some rehab. He plans to be back for the Olympics though so maybe the extra rest will do him good. I haven't chosen a new person to cheer for yet but yesterday's first successful breakaway was pretty exciting and the stage was won by a 22-year-old French rider which must have been pretty amazing for him.

Back to work...

The Long History of the Espresso Machine

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/2012/06/the-long-history-of-the-espresso-machine/

Addendum

I'm currently reading an excellent book by Steven Pinker called "The Better Angels of our Nature" (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0670022950). I say excellent because it's thoroughly enjoyable to read and his observations and comments on human nature are incredibly interesting. I'm not done the book yet but his thesis that violence has declined (for numerous reasons that are difficult to summarize [the book is very very long for a good reason] but mainly have to do with Hobbes' leviathan social contract theory) has me convinced. There's a review on Amazon (you can see it following the above link) that says he misses the boat completely because violence against animals has increased so much that species are being wiped out at a faster rate than ever. While that's true and it's definitely a problem (obviously) I don't think in general it can be lumped in with 'violence'. It's unfair and the elimination of species is clearly the result of human actions but it's not violence in the traditional sense. The food/meat industry could more closely be claimed to be violent (we're literally killing more animals than ever because more people can afford to purchase meat and more animals are being born for the purpose of being killed and overall there are more people in the world) but this is really a book about violence against humans and human nature. Not to ignore the animal problem but really, I totally digress... Really what I wanted to note was this amazingly succinct passage that really captures the problem with religion:

"A broader range of unverifiable beliefs is the temptation to defend them by violent means. People become wedded to their beliefs, because the validity of those beliefs reflects on their competence, commends them as authorities, and rationalizes their mandate to lead. Challenge a person’s beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali was the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them—or worse, who credibly rebut them—they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful." (p. 140)

There you go.

Busy month

After a solid week of 30+ degree temperatures today it's a much more tolerable 25 degrees or so and raining. The rain is actually nice because it has also helped things feel cooler and although I typically enjoy the hot weather this is really nice right now. So, I have to write something because just yesterday (or perhaps the day before?) I quickly posted that due to the weather it was too hot to post!

While most of my blog posts have been written from the 'we did this' vantage point (i.e. the past) now I'll write about what 'we will do'. July will be busy. We have a ton of training to do with just about 1.5 months to go till the Ironman but we're starting the month off with a complete day off. We slept in and then watched the Tour de France all day long. Tomorrow things will get busy though and likely won't calm down for a while. Sandi has her 'formation civique' which is a day-long course where she'll learn about the organization of functioning of the French state and the fundamental principles of the French republic including (of course) liberty and equality (they don't mention fraternity in the letter...). This is part of her resident requirements which for some reason I don't have to do. After work (and Sandi's formation) we'll then run 30km! The next morning I'll go on a bike ride before taking my bike to Vélo Dayak (a bike store in Grenoble) to get a 'check-up' while I'm in Belgium. After that I'll take the shuttle to the Lyon airport and then spend a few days in Brussels for the European Project "FusePool"'s kickoff. This is a project that I'll start working on and this meeting is to discuss how the project will proceed and to get to know the other people that will participate from other companies. To read more about the project see http://www.fusepool.eu/

On the Thursday night before I return, our friend Thony will arrive from Sweden. He's visiting for a week where we'll have a "training camp" in preparation for our Ironman in August. We'll also drink a lot of coffee and watch a lot of Tour de France. We would like to go see some of it live but it will likely be too far away when he's here to be able to. The Monday after he arrives, Sandi will also start her job as a teacher at an English camp. After Thony leaves at the end of the week, we'll have a weekend (which will include hours and hours of biking and running -- and maybe some swimming) and then on the Tuesday our friends Russell and Sarah will arrive from Canada. While they're here we will spend the weekend in Nice and also visit Monaco.

On a recent bike trip in the Vercors mountain we stopped for lunch in La Chappelle en Vercors. Here we are enjoying some fine duck and Coca-Cola products: