Riding bikes of carbon fiber and horses of math...

Small victories are important. They can make a difference in how I feel day-to-day. To use training language, everyone needs periodic reinforcement. Since the beginning of the spring semester, my reinforcement to work ratio was very low, particularly with several very time-consuming assignments that I never finished. The past couple months, my running and biking also fell off. I’m not training for anything in particular. (If people ask, I “joke” that I’m training for middle age. Not entirely a joke, right? It may seem far off, but it’ll come soon enough.) I’ve set no specific goals. I even figured out eating habits that maintain weight without much exercise. At this stage, my exercise has dropped enough that simply getting out is a victory. I realized this today while I spent a quick hour on the bike ride to burn off some extra energy and make it easier to mount up back onto the study horse this evening. As my Goshen physics professor Carl Helrich has been known to say, "Math is the trusty steed we ride." But now I'm back off the bike so it's time to get back on the study horse. Or maybe it's a study train, I never was sure.

These days I need to use exercise to give myself these small victories, in the absence of feedback from the academic side of things (those pots all have to simmer longer term). In several weeks I’ll get course grades from spring semester (hopefully passing), and hopefully along the way make measurable progress on my thesis. Right now I’m simply figuring out the mechanics of the data processing I do in MATLAB - what order to do things in, how to pre-process data, how to measure changes. So for every step of progress I make toward the explicit goals of the thesis, it usually means figuring out several behind-the-scenes issues. It’s not always the most fun I could imagine having ever, but I enjoy getting into the process of actually doing science, and learning what exactly that means.

Well, back to more studying so I can actually earn some positive reinforcement for all the time I’ve spent on this course in the past few months.

Edit: bikes of aluminum. I guess only the fork is carbon.

The wheels on the bike...

...go 'round and 'round, 'round and 'round, 'round and 'round. The wheels on the bike go 'round and 'round, but now I've finished riding it and shipped it back to Ohio so I can move to Zurich. While the visa process has not been as cooperative as I'd hoped (I fly out tomorrow afternoon and it was not yet in as of two days ago), the move is beginning to take shape. After 15 days and nearly 1100 miles of biking in the Rockies plus a few days with the family at Priest Lake in Idaho, I'm back in Chicago for the night before flying out of O'Hare tomorrow.

Theoretically, I'm coming through Chicago to pick up my type D (long term) visa from the Swiss Consulate General here in town, but it seems to be taking longer than anticipated and is probably not ready. Worst comes to worst, I go over there on a tourist visa and get that "upgraded" to the type D once it comes through. Hopefully by the beginning of next week I can register for classes at U Zurich (UZH), find an apartment within 2 or 3 weeks, and get my residence permit by the time classes start on September 17th.

Clearly I did not manage to post any updates during the bike trip. Being away from the internet was both a blessing and a curse - I might have made a little more progress in expediting my visa process had I had internet, but without it I was forced to completely back off from thinking about Switzerland and focus on the time at hand. For a brief pictorial summary (less than 10% of pictures taken are in this album), I have some photos up on a facebook album. Maybe some time soon I'll get more up on picasa for a little better accessibility. Had some hard climbs, annoying headwinds, and long days, but it was a good 15 days spent in good company. And now, after getting used to 5 meals a day, my body is telling me it's time to eat after a pretty meager couple of snacks through today's traveling across half of the country.

Riding, Reviving

Bon Bon on a Bike is about to come back! After just over two and a half years in Chicago, this guy's moving on. Back in March I applied for a few master's programs in Europe to study Biomedical Engineering. I was fortunate enough to get accepted by all three programs (TU Delft in the Netherlands, Aalborg in Denmark, and U Zurich in Switzerland), but ultimately the Alps won out.

The past two months have been a blur - two weeks in Minnesota for camping and canoeing the Boundary Waters with Nate, Mitch, and Amber, several weekend trips for family reunions and weddings, wrapping up work projects as much as possible, trudging through the paperwork to get a Swiss visa, figuring out how much stuff I can afford to take/get rid of/leave, training for a half-marathon (finished in 2hrs 10mins!), tweaking my bike setup to optimize for touring, planning said tour between Pueblo, CO and Priest Lake, ID (via Kalispell, MT), and on top of all that desperately trying to learn as much German as I can before being plopped down into an intimidatingly multilingual country. Whew!

With only three days left in Chicago, it's probably time to  buckle down on packing - right now there are only three boxes packed. With the advent of this Next Step, I'm reviving this blog. Hopefully I'll get a few entries in during the bike trip, and will keep on posting while I settle into my first international move as an adult (not counting SST). So on to further adventures and the next stage of life!

PS...

P.S. It looks like I may have another (though briefer) Summer of Spandex in the works. With any luck I'll stop working after July and bike up the Rockies from Denver to Kalispell on the way to a family vacation in Idaho.

So I'm really looking forward to both that and a mildly planned trip in late May to the boundary waters with Nate, Mitchell, and Amber. Friends! Canoes! Fishing! Hopefully not too many bugs! And I get to try out a new backpacking tent I picked up on sale from DepartmentOfGoods.com.