Keeping Busy at Work

Projects at work have kept me and my colleagues pretty busy lately. In a way, I think it's helped some of us come together as a team. Everyone realizes that everyone else is in a crunch and that people can only do so much. It makes you chill out when things are uptight and realize that people are doing their best.

My friend Naysan has been particularly helpful in crunch time. He's our instructional technology specialist that ensures that the computers can keep up with the language content. I am personally very grateful to him for making many an evening/weekend phone call to my editor to help her figure out technical problems with her computer. You could say that I would not enjoy as much success at work as I do if Naysan weren't there to help.

So, I rewarded him by letting him beat me in an arm wrestling match. 'Gotta build him up somehow!

Shenandoah National Park

I-81 runs in a nearly north-east-to-south-west direction, roughly parallel to the Shenandoah River, which in turn runs roughly parallel to the Shenandoah National Park. The park sits on a mountain ridge, adorned by a road called "Skyline Drive." Be sure to exercise extreme caution when driving on Skyline Drive. You're likely to be tempted to pay little attention to the winding road in front of you in favor of looking out at the valley. Before I moved hear, I heard that the Shenandoah Valley was one of the most beautiful places in the United States. I had seen some photographs of how green the valley is, but I was not prepared for what this place would look like in the fall.

I've been to Skyline Drive several times with different groups of friends. There's a chance that I went on the same (or a portion of the same) hike every time. It doesn't really matter, especially if you go in different seasons, as the same hike is likely to be an entirely different experience a few months later.

I think one of my favorite hiking experiences in the Shenandoah was with my friends Richard and Heather. Some friends of theirs also joined us. After the first few stops, we realized that we weren't going to be able to get out of the car at every look-out point. We had initially planned on hiking a six-miler, but because it was already late morning, we changed our plans in favor of a mile and a half. It was a good thing we didn't get there any later than we did, as it was a Saturday and everyone else in the valley also showed up for a quick trip to the mountains that day. Who could blame them on a day like that?

Richard and I thought we'd try our hands at sawing logs the old fashioned way. We tried not to pay attention to the flack we got from the women-folk in our party.

There's plenty to do in the Shenandoah National Park. You can find a hike of just about any length to suit your hiking abilities. Heck, my nephews Peter and Adam have even hiked in the Shenandoah! Be careful if you bring kids along with you, though. You may end up looking like the Ricks.

Olympic-style Weightlifting

My most recent and most exciting athletic pursuits are in the sport of weightlifting. No, this is not the same as bodybuilding or powerlifting. Here's the brief run-down.

Olympic-style weightlifting is a sport with two events in it: the Snatch and the Clean-and-Jerk. The snatch is when the athlete lifts a barbell from the ground directly into a stabilized position over his/her head in one movement. The clean-and-jerk is when the athlete raises or cleans the bar from the ground to the collar bone level. (S)he then jerks the bar from there into the air and again stabilizes the bar over his/her head.

These two events might seem ... well, ... they might seem to be any number of things. 'Painful' and 'brainless' are two words that you might be thinking. For the record, it's a very precise sport, with a lot of fine-tuned motion. Usually that involves capitalizing on gravity, inertia, and natural movement. In other words, Newton does most of the work, so competing isn't that painful (training is a different story).

As far as the word 'brainless' is concerned, the sport actually requires a tremendous amount of concentration and mental discipline. This is one of the reasons this sport is so compelling to me -- it makes the athlete control his/her thoughts. I'm beginning to see that there is great purpose in athletics.

I just returned from competing in the Virginia Weightlifting Cardinal Open. Somehow, I managed to win first place in the Senior Men's division. I'm not exactly sure how that happened, since I've only been training regularly for a few months. I think it has something to do with the fact that all the guys that were lifting more weight than me happened to be in either younger or older age divisions.