Saturday, April 29, 2006

Bicycle Geek
It seems a little counter-intuitive, but the fact is that I ride my bike to work everyday because I am cheap and lazy.

We all need to get some exercise, but I don't want to spend money to go to a gym, and I don't want to spend any extra time either. Since I have to spend time commuting to and from work anyway, I might as well get a workout at the same time. Plus it saves money that would be spent on a gym and on gasoline.

For the 5 mile commute, it takes about 12 minutes to drive, and about 18 minutes to bicycle. So it only costs me 6 minutes each way. Counting both ways, I get about 36 minutes of aerobic exercise for a 12 minute time investment. Is that geeky or what?

Then there's the price of gas. If my truck gets 20 miles/gallon (which it doesn't), and gas costs $3.00 per gallon, then the 10 mile round trip to and from work costs me $1.50 every day. Maybe a buck-fifty isn't that much to you, but that's about $30.00 a month, which makes a difference to me.
So be cheap; be lazy; start commuting on your bicycle.
MotorHome Geek
Our family of 5 have always been tent-campers, so why the leap from thin nylon to 29-foot aluminum and fiberglass with a bigblock V-8?

Our kids are 15, 9, and 6, and we decided that it's time to see more of the USA while we all are together. Rather than stay cooped up in a car or van all day to drive from Mount Rushmore to Yellowstone, we are convinced that it will be better to have room to spread out while on the road. No potty stops!

So we purchased a 29 foot Class C Motor Home this spring and plan to take it out west this August. Our first trip was an 8-hour drive over Easter weekend, and everything went pretty well. We did learn that you don't want to be parked next to a truckload of cattle at a rest stop overnight!

I'll plan to blog more about future trips, as well as some of the little things that we've learned to take with us. Then when we take the 3-week trip in August, we'll tell you all about some of the great (and not so great) things that we see and do across America.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Coffee Geek
"You roast your own coffee?!? What a geek!"

I hear that a lot. Usually people are more polite about it, but that's what they're thinking.
Believe it or not, I became a coffee geek as a way to reduce my caffeine intake. The coffee that my company provides at the office is free, and you get what you pay for. It's terrible, but with no frame of reference, I could drink a lot of it. My twisted thinking was that if I have one good cup of java in the morning, then I won't be able to choke down the swill at work; therefore limiting myself to one cup per day.

One problem with that is that good coffee is expensive. I'll post more about the drivers behind home roasting later, but the bottom line is that it's the cheapest way to get the best coffee!

So, did it work? Yes, I've been limited to my single cup of very good joe, and much better off for it.
Geek (gēk)
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/geek
Most appropriate for this blog is definition 3:
"(colloquial) A person intensely interested in a particular field or hobby, generally at the expense of broader social interaction. Often used with an attributive noun."

Having a wide range of interests and experience, it seemed appropriate to share some of them with the world.
I've been called a Computer-Geek, a Coffee-Geek, Bicycle-Geek, and more.

Hopefully you'll identify with some of my passions, and be able to avoid some of my failures!