Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
-Aristotle

Happy Valentine’s all! I think I did ok and suggested M pick out a new tree for the deck yesterday, an Arizona Cypress. Romance is in idiosyncrasy, in the details.

Game time is approaching. Working on lots of sleep, minding all the details, and finishing up work. The later is proving most problematic, as we had a field trip today, one tomorrow, new grading protocols, and I have training on Friday. I will soon be a certified instructor in restraining children, a mark I suppose that I’ve been doing things well. And the usual pile of 80 essays to grade; I will not be assigning an essay the week before a big weekend again.

The bike will I think work out with the gears, I spent an hour filing and refiling the Endless to make it play well with a derailleur. I squared the tall teeth off, then rounded down the corners. It needs more work, but the principle is sound. Kinda freaky how easy it is to file alloy. The Surly’s still have a periodic skip, it seems to have something to do with the powerlinks, which makes no sense. Nothing visually wrong, at this point it’s periodic enough that I’m going to let it wear in and see what happens. I really have no patience with technology, and while the multi-gears will in the end be a worthwhile and satisfactory use of effort, right now I just want the ease of one gear. Moreso, I want to not be messing with the bike setup every few months. Lets see how that plays out. The tension between tinkering with the bike and tinkering with your self.

Also of note of mtbr.com today, a trip report in passion of a solo two day White Rim trip earlier this month. The salient quotation, for a newbie ranger: “What we are finding [sic] is that the bikes damage the road more than these 4×4 trucks here….[speaking of his own Ford].”

Bullshit. I find it impossible to think of an empirical case that could be made for this. I think the damage is rather psychological (good on ya Chris and Dave’s!) or phantasmagoric. I intend to rim the Whitey this coming winter as often as possible.

Some stolen highlights:

My expert analysis tells me that those are motorcycle tracks going up the “closed” road, though I would welcome second opinions on that count. This is surely a case of a nasty societal trend getting me up in arms when it happens to hit me in the junk, but I’ll run with it. “FTWR!” anyone?

One more:

Sounds like the rider had some mud issues in places. Not conditions I’d pick, but it sounded like a great trip. Ignorance can indeed be bliss.

Lastly, the “unsupported” debate as mentioned below continues. As usual, the meaningful and delicate distinctions are being lost amongst the words. To be brief, it is of greater consequence to conquer yourself than whatever medium is allowing you to do so. This is not something the world in which we live encourages us to understand. Sometimes ultimate success in this respect is bailing, but with integrity.

Get psyched. Method: iTunes, U2, “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.”

“And the battle’s just begun…”