I just successfully completed my online traffic school course. It's awfully convenient that you are able to do this online now instead of attending class in-person. However, considering that it still took me over 2 hours to complete the course and take the test (and cost $110), it's not like I actually spent less time (or money) than if I was to appear in person.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I only scored 80% on a 10 question open book test :) But I stand behind the two answers that I gave that were marked incorrect. The first question that I got wrong had to do with the circumstance under which you should use extra caution around a motorcycle. In addition to, "In bad weather" and "On slippery surfaces", I answered "At night". Apparently the online traffic school did not agree that you should pay (special) attention to motorcycles at night. Of course, as someone that rides a motorcycle, I believe that you should pay special attention to them at ALL times.
The second question that I got wrong had to do with the appropriate behaviour when approaching a schoolbus with flashing yellow lights from the opposite direction on a non-divided road. I knew that the answer, "Slow down and use caution" was the appropriate answer listed in the course material. However, as I scanned the other options, I saw this: "Yield right of way to any children getting on the bus and then proceed". Hmm, under what circumstances would not yield the right of way to children getting on to the bus. True, the bus should have red lights flashing if it was stopped and children were getting on. But regardless of the color of the flashing lights, if there are children present, call me crazy, but I think that it's prudent to yield the right of way to them. Once again, the online traffic school did not agree with me.
So, why was I enrolled in an online traffic school? Could I really think of no better way to spend a snowy Sunday afternoon? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was coming home for lunch and got nailed doing 43 in a 25. I openly admit to regularly speeding, and to be honest, given the frequency with which I speed and am not ticketed, I probably deserved this ticket. However, I take particular issue with the location in which it was cited.
The main road leading up to my house is about a mile long. Although there are only officially two lanes of traffic, the road is wide enough for there to be 5 lanes of traffic. On the entire stretch of road there is only a single house with a driveway that faces the road. There is a school but it is fenced off (and there were no children present at the time that I was ticketed). Similar roads, elsewhere in Spanish Fork have speed of 40MPH or greater. However, this one stretch of road has a speed limit of 25. It's kind of ridiculous because nobody drives that slow on that road.
I thought about fighting the ticket and arguing that the road should have a higher speed limit. But even if I convinced someone of that fact, it wouldn't change that I exceeded the speed limit while it was still posted at it's old speed. Or in other words, there's no real way of arguing that what I did was legal and shouldn't have been ticketed. Oh well. I'm still thinking of writing a letter to the city encouraging them to reconsider.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
Our Winter/Spring Weekend
Was this past weekend a late winter weeknd or an early spring weekend? I'm still really not sure. Judging by our activities though it may have been a little bit of both.
On Friday we went cross country skiing at the Sundance Nordic center. Unfortunatley the trail was mostly mush due to the warm temperatures. We still managed a quick loop through Middle Earth and arrived safely back at our car despite having a few near death experience coming down some steep runs with no stopping power in the wet slushy snow.
Later that day... we didn't get enough of a workout from the skiing so we decided to go on a quick bike ride. We did a short 12 mile ride around the neighborhood to stretch out our legs. God, I love biking.
Friday night, (unrelated to physical activity) we saw the Flying Karamazov Brothers at Abravenel Hall in Salt Lake City. It was a juggling act that performed in conjunction with the Utah symphony. Some of the juggling was impressive, but too much of the show was centered around cheap laughs rather than juggling performances. For instance, one of the "numbers" were these four middle aged men dressed in tutu's doing a mock ballet. It was amusing, no doubt, but felt a little like I was watching a "cultured" version of a "Jackass" episode (if there is such a thing). The best part of the evening was hearing the symphony perform a medley of music from the Russian composer Shastakovich (sp?).
Saturday morning, we packed up the car and headed down to Moab for the weekend. We started with an 8 mile hike around the permiter of Upheaval Dome in Canyonlands National Park (I believe it's actually called the Syncline Loop trail). Although much of the trail was in the sun and very warm, we ended up walking several miles through a shaded canyon where everything was still frozen and covered in snow. It was strange to transition between these two extremes on the same hike.
Saturday night I discovered that it was bad to mix large quantities of alcohol, sugar and fried food. We ate out at a Mexican Restaurant in Moab and I decided to cut loose a little bit and have a few drinks with dinner. The specialty that night was a pomegranate margarita. It sounded interesting, I had never had a pomegranate drink before. And so, I ordered and drank 3 of them.
I don't think that it was the alcohol itself that did me in. But something in the combination of the alcohol, sticky sugary sweet pomegranate margarita mix, the 3 baskets of chips and salsa that I ate while waiting for a table and the two mammoth sized enchiladadas that I ate for dinner made me feel really not well. I spent the remainder of the night moaning and groaning and trying very hard not to let anything touch or otherwise put any pressure on my stomach for fear that it might rupture and spill out the vile concoction that I had shoved into it earlier that night.
Sunday was dedicated to biking. In fact, my original inspiration for a weekend in Moab came from the desire to road bike through Arches. We ended up in Canyonlands rather than Arches but it still satisfied my craving for miles on the road bike. In fact I even think that the ride in Canyonlands was better than riding through Arches.
We kept a moderate pace riding from the visitor center out to Grand View Point; a short 12 mile ride on a brisk Sunday morning. But on the way back I split off on my own and decided to haul ass in order to atone for my previous nights indescretions. With the wind at my back and a slight downhill grade I achieved a top speed of 39 miles per hour... yes, on a leg-powered road bike. It was way cool.
I continued riding past the car at the visitors center and continued on to Dead Horse Point; about another 15 miles. I had been there several times before but it was Rosey's first time. We spent a couple of minutes gazing down at the gooseneck before returning back to the car for the day.
I ended up with a grand total of 52 miles for the day. Certainly not my longest ride (compared to some of my rides last year), but not bad for a ride in mid-February. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that I had lost some of my stamina over the winter. Towards the end of the ride I was really struggling to find energy. Hopefully, I will regain it all when I start riding to work again.
We rounded out the day by doing some off-roading in Rosey's rodeo. Her vehicle is no longer new by any stretch of the imagination. It was a little unnerving to hear all of the squeaking and rattling as we traversed the rocky road. There were a couple of bumps where I was convinced the whole thing was just going to fall to pieces and that we would have to hike back out. In the end, the truck held together and we were rewarded with an incredible, up-close-and-personal view of the gooseneck in the Colorado river. It was a worthwhile diversion.
We woke up this morning to discover that our Spring Weekend was over. The weather suddenly remembered that it was February and decided to snow again. We drove home under ominous black clouds and light snow and arrived to 5 inches of snow in the driveway. I however, refused to let go of my Spring weekend. The weather was going to have to pry it from my cold dead hands. As an act of defiance, I decided to shovel my driveway in shorts and sandals.
On Friday we went cross country skiing at the Sundance Nordic center. Unfortunatley the trail was mostly mush due to the warm temperatures. We still managed a quick loop through Middle Earth and arrived safely back at our car despite having a few near death experience coming down some steep runs with no stopping power in the wet slushy snow.
Later that day... we didn't get enough of a workout from the skiing so we decided to go on a quick bike ride. We did a short 12 mile ride around the neighborhood to stretch out our legs. God, I love biking.
Friday night, (unrelated to physical activity) we saw the Flying Karamazov Brothers at Abravenel Hall in Salt Lake City. It was a juggling act that performed in conjunction with the Utah symphony. Some of the juggling was impressive, but too much of the show was centered around cheap laughs rather than juggling performances. For instance, one of the "numbers" were these four middle aged men dressed in tutu's doing a mock ballet. It was amusing, no doubt, but felt a little like I was watching a "cultured" version of a "Jackass" episode (if there is such a thing). The best part of the evening was hearing the symphony perform a medley of music from the Russian composer Shastakovich (sp?).
Saturday morning, we packed up the car and headed down to Moab for the weekend. We started with an 8 mile hike around the permiter of Upheaval Dome in Canyonlands National Park (I believe it's actually called the Syncline Loop trail). Although much of the trail was in the sun and very warm, we ended up walking several miles through a shaded canyon where everything was still frozen and covered in snow. It was strange to transition between these two extremes on the same hike.
Saturday night I discovered that it was bad to mix large quantities of alcohol, sugar and fried food. We ate out at a Mexican Restaurant in Moab and I decided to cut loose a little bit and have a few drinks with dinner. The specialty that night was a pomegranate margarita. It sounded interesting, I had never had a pomegranate drink before. And so, I ordered and drank 3 of them.
I don't think that it was the alcohol itself that did me in. But something in the combination of the alcohol, sticky sugary sweet pomegranate margarita mix, the 3 baskets of chips and salsa that I ate while waiting for a table and the two mammoth sized enchiladadas that I ate for dinner made me feel really not well. I spent the remainder of the night moaning and groaning and trying very hard not to let anything touch or otherwise put any pressure on my stomach for fear that it might rupture and spill out the vile concoction that I had shoved into it earlier that night.
Sunday was dedicated to biking. In fact, my original inspiration for a weekend in Moab came from the desire to road bike through Arches. We ended up in Canyonlands rather than Arches but it still satisfied my craving for miles on the road bike. In fact I even think that the ride in Canyonlands was better than riding through Arches.
We kept a moderate pace riding from the visitor center out to Grand View Point; a short 12 mile ride on a brisk Sunday morning. But on the way back I split off on my own and decided to haul ass in order to atone for my previous nights indescretions. With the wind at my back and a slight downhill grade I achieved a top speed of 39 miles per hour... yes, on a leg-powered road bike. It was way cool.
I continued riding past the car at the visitors center and continued on to Dead Horse Point; about another 15 miles. I had been there several times before but it was Rosey's first time. We spent a couple of minutes gazing down at the gooseneck before returning back to the car for the day.
I ended up with a grand total of 52 miles for the day. Certainly not my longest ride (compared to some of my rides last year), but not bad for a ride in mid-February. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that I had lost some of my stamina over the winter. Towards the end of the ride I was really struggling to find energy. Hopefully, I will regain it all when I start riding to work again.
We rounded out the day by doing some off-roading in Rosey's rodeo. Her vehicle is no longer new by any stretch of the imagination. It was a little unnerving to hear all of the squeaking and rattling as we traversed the rocky road. There were a couple of bumps where I was convinced the whole thing was just going to fall to pieces and that we would have to hike back out. In the end, the truck held together and we were rewarded with an incredible, up-close-and-personal view of the gooseneck in the Colorado river. It was a worthwhile diversion.
We woke up this morning to discover that our Spring Weekend was over. The weather suddenly remembered that it was February and decided to snow again. We drove home under ominous black clouds and light snow and arrived to 5 inches of snow in the driveway. I however, refused to let go of my Spring weekend. The weather was going to have to pry it from my cold dead hands. As an act of defiance, I decided to shovel my driveway in shorts and sandals.
Flirting with Spring
The warm weather of the last couple of weeks has been making me restless. The temperatures have been reaching as high as the 50's mid-day. The snow has all melted and I have even been able to bring my bike with me to work and to ride at lunch. I love spring weather. However, the spring weather has a consequence. Once it's nice enough to do stuff outside, I feel like working out inside is a waste of time. Who wants to get up every morning to ride 20 miles on an exercise bike when I know that I can ride 20 miles at lunch time on a real bike on real pavement.
So, I have found myself for the last couple of weeks skipping my indoor workouts in favor of getting my exercise outdoors. The problem that I keep trying to ignore is that it is really still February. Sure there are some days when we hit the 50's, but some of those days are drenched with rain and there are still days when the temperatures drop into the 30's. And no matter how devoted I am to biking, it's just no fun riding into the wind in 30 degree weather.
The moral of the story is that I have all but stopped working out inside but it's still not nice enough to get all of the exercise that I need outside. It's starting to make me feel like crap. But the thought of retiring to my dungeon of a basement for yet another month of indoor workouts is more than I can take. I just wish that Spring would hurry up and come already.
So, I have found myself for the last couple of weeks skipping my indoor workouts in favor of getting my exercise outdoors. The problem that I keep trying to ignore is that it is really still February. Sure there are some days when we hit the 50's, but some of those days are drenched with rain and there are still days when the temperatures drop into the 30's. And no matter how devoted I am to biking, it's just no fun riding into the wind in 30 degree weather.
The moral of the story is that I have all but stopped working out inside but it's still not nice enough to get all of the exercise that I need outside. It's starting to make me feel like crap. But the thought of retiring to my dungeon of a basement for yet another month of indoor workouts is more than I can take. I just wish that Spring would hurry up and come already.
Mid-Term Russian Update
Mom asked me how my Russian class was going so I thought that I would give an update. I've been in class for about 5 weeks now and things are going well. The class is not nearly as structured as I had hoped it would be and really isn't very demanding. There are only 4 of us total enrolled in the course: a married couple, myself and a high school student. The teacher is a recent college graduate with a degree in Geography (huh?) who is incidentally fluent in both Russian and Italian.
The first several weeks of class I was way ahead of everyone else since I was already familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. Even though it wasn't totally new material it was still fun to be in a class and to practice reading and speaking Russian.
I'm afraid, however, that the ease of the class made me a little complacent. At the end of our fourth class we had a quiz on the vocabulary that we had been assigned at the beginning of the first class. I assumed that we were going to just be covering the words that we had talked about so far in class and so I didn't really study. Even though I did as well (or better) than anyone else in the class I was embarrassed that I had to leave so many questions unanswered. I didn't realize that we were being quizzed on the entire vocabulary list and not just the words that we had covered in class.
I'm not one of those people that obsesses about being the best student in class but I don't like to get caught unprepared for something that I should know. So, I went home after class and typed up all 150 vocabulary words on flash cards and then proceeded to memorize every single one of them for my next class.
Of course, the way that life works you often don't get the chance to make up for an occasion like that. The most likely outcome would be that I would go to class the following week and that we would not be quizzed on those same words again. Sure, I imagined being able to rattle off each and every one of those 160 words that I had studied when challenged by the teacher. But would that really happen in real life?
It turns out that I got exactly that opportunity. Only it didn't make me feel as good as I had hoped. We ended up with some spare time at the end of our last class and the teacher decided to quiz us on some vocabulary words. In response to the first couple of words I blurted out the answer almost before the teacher had finished saying them.
After that I figured that I had made my point and had vindicated myself from the previous weeks lackluster performance. I decided to let some of the other students answer the next couple of words. The only problem was that the other students didn't seem to know any of the answer. After a couple seconds of dead silence I began to fear that the teacher would assume that I wasn't answering because I also did not know the answer.
And so, unable to bear the silence in the classroom any longer, one word after another, I blurted out the answer. It got to where I was embarrassing myself. I felt like I was being a showboat, but I just couldn't seem to stop myself from spitting out the answers. I had, after all, studied so hard to learn each and every one of them. At one point, the teacher even allowed the other students to use their printed list of words to cheat... and they still couldn't answer fast enough.
I left class that night feeling bad about my episode. I'm sure that all of the other students in class hated me. I even apologized to the teacher on the way out (although she didn't seem concerned or even realize that there was cause for concern).
The first several weeks of class I was way ahead of everyone else since I was already familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. Even though it wasn't totally new material it was still fun to be in a class and to practice reading and speaking Russian.
I'm afraid, however, that the ease of the class made me a little complacent. At the end of our fourth class we had a quiz on the vocabulary that we had been assigned at the beginning of the first class. I assumed that we were going to just be covering the words that we had talked about so far in class and so I didn't really study. Even though I did as well (or better) than anyone else in the class I was embarrassed that I had to leave so many questions unanswered. I didn't realize that we were being quizzed on the entire vocabulary list and not just the words that we had covered in class.
I'm not one of those people that obsesses about being the best student in class but I don't like to get caught unprepared for something that I should know. So, I went home after class and typed up all 150 vocabulary words on flash cards and then proceeded to memorize every single one of them for my next class.
Of course, the way that life works you often don't get the chance to make up for an occasion like that. The most likely outcome would be that I would go to class the following week and that we would not be quizzed on those same words again. Sure, I imagined being able to rattle off each and every one of those 160 words that I had studied when challenged by the teacher. But would that really happen in real life?
It turns out that I got exactly that opportunity. Only it didn't make me feel as good as I had hoped. We ended up with some spare time at the end of our last class and the teacher decided to quiz us on some vocabulary words. In response to the first couple of words I blurted out the answer almost before the teacher had finished saying them.
After that I figured that I had made my point and had vindicated myself from the previous weeks lackluster performance. I decided to let some of the other students answer the next couple of words. The only problem was that the other students didn't seem to know any of the answer. After a couple seconds of dead silence I began to fear that the teacher would assume that I wasn't answering because I also did not know the answer.
And so, unable to bear the silence in the classroom any longer, one word after another, I blurted out the answer. It got to where I was embarrassing myself. I felt like I was being a showboat, but I just couldn't seem to stop myself from spitting out the answers. I had, after all, studied so hard to learn each and every one of them. At one point, the teacher even allowed the other students to use their printed list of words to cheat... and they still couldn't answer fast enough.
I left class that night feeling bad about my episode. I'm sure that all of the other students in class hated me. I even apologized to the teacher on the way out (although she didn't seem concerned or even realize that there was cause for concern).
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