Every four years, I find myself spending way too much time in front of the television for two weeks, watching it for hours way past my bedtime and wrecking my sleep schedule. It's the Olympics!! As an athlete, I find watching the best in the world in all out competition for the same olive wreaths that made the Persian Empire quake in their leather sandals at The Battle of Thermopylae. [Xerxes was curious as to what the Greeks were trying to do (presumably because there were so few numbers) and had some Arcadian deserters interrogated in his presence. The answer was that all the other men were participating in the Olympic Games. When Xerxes asked what the prize for the winner was, "an olive-wreath" was the answer. Upon hearing this, Tigranes, a Persian general, said: "Good heavens, what kind of men are these that you have pitted against us? It is not for money that they contend but for glory of achievement!" ].
Of course now in today's world, there is a significant amount of monetary value associated with earning a medal in the Olympics in terms reaping advertisement deals, as we will all be subjected to endless commercials involving various medal winners for the upcoming months. I could not wait to for those commercials involving that snowboarding "Carrot Top" doppelganger to get over with from the Winter Games.
The buzz of the games this year is Michael Phelps. As always, the Summer Games are dominated by two sports, Swimming and Gymnastics. Everything else gets second billing, and unfortunately for me, the sport I really love doing, cycling and triathlon, gets no billing. Michael Phelps is the top dog in the top viewed sport. It's hard not to know who Michael Phelps is, as he has broken the "household name" boundary like Lance Armstrong did for cycling and Tiger Woods for golf. Michael Phelps is truly a phenomenal athlete and is the dominating sports star of our generation for swimming.
I'm pretty sure Phelps, is down to earth, friendly, team playing, or whatever adjective that can be applied positively. My complaint is going to be about the media. In the earlier years of the Olympics, the most annoying thing about it was the "personal stories of overcoming great odds" stories that every athlete had. It seemed at one point, based on the impression I got from the media, that you could not qualify for the Olympics unless you had a parent who miraculously overcame a terminal disease, a sibling that got paralyzed from the neck up in a drinking game accident, and a family pet that died - all within the past year. Thankfully, they got the hint that people really hated those stories and they just wanted to see action. No one really cares that Scruffy bit it the week before.
So came in more sports, and way cool mobile cameras that tracked the entire event, giving you a way better view than you would have gotten if you were actually there. The coverage had gotten way better, offering more sports like beach volleyball, where girls jump up and down in bikini's (it took them this long for the media to figure out that this might be a good sport to televise?) .
For me, the scourge of the Olympic coverage this year has been Michael Phelps. Again, I'm not knocking the guy and you bet I'm rooting for him to dust the French every time he jumps into the water, but the media is way too much into him. It's like sugar. Sugar tastes good, it makes bad things taste better, and you can easily eat alot of it. But if I were to plop down a 5lb bag of sugar in front of you and tell you to eat nothing but sugar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that wouldn't work. I like watching Michael Phelps, but I don't want to hear and watch 2 weeks of nothing but Michael Phelps. I don't want to know that he eats 12,000 calories a day worth of pizza, wears size 14 shoes, or whatever useless tidbit of information that the media plasters everywhere like it's a revelation. I'm sure even his team mates are getting sick of "Everything Phelps".
I thought the media had hit it's pinnacle of tackiness when they started putting "Phelps in 5 minutes" bullets on the top of the screen during the gymnastics coverage and every news discussion involved Phelps, until yesterday, when it sunk to a new level. Jason Lezak, they guy who did a phenomenal job of anchoring the 4x100 relay to beat the French, was up for his individual 100m finals. A reporter goes up to Lezak for an interview and asks the stupidest Phelps related questing/comment to date. "So, did the prospect of you helping Michael Phelps on his path to 8 Olympic gold medals motivate you to produce a record breaking effort to beat the French in the 4x100 relay?" Lezak was pretty dumbfounded by the question. Seriously, Lezak is a professional competitor that smelled French blood in the water. These athletes aspire and are driven to win. Lezak's response was pretty much like "Phelps is a great competitor, team mate, and all, but I saw Bernard slowing down and I felt strong. I wanted to win and I did it for myself. Phelps was not in my mind at the time." Even the other announcers knew how stupid that question was.
There's still 10 more days of Olympics left. I may have to create a "Michael Phelps Free-Zone" if I'm going to survive.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
It's Like I Picked The Wrong Week To Quit Sniffing Glue
Liz and I headed to downtown Chicago on Sunday, thinking that it would be good way to get our long run and open water swim in. In retrospect, I kept on thinking about that one line Lloyd Bridges kept on saying in the move "Airplane". Looks like I picked the wrong weekend.
Getting downtown was moderately OK. We hit a little traffic at the "Hillside Strangler" which has been the scourge of I-290. I believe that this part of the highway where I-88, I-53, and I-290 merges is ranked in one of the top ten traffic headaches in the United States. Chicago spent enormous amounts of money to reconstruct the area about 5 years ago, but you still can't change the fact you have 8 lanes going down to 3. The rest of the way downtown was more traffic once we got within 2 miles of our destination, which can be really of bummer, because you are JUST SO CLOSE!!
We parked the car in my sister's condo and then proceeded by bicycle to the Ohio Street beach. As we crossed Michigan avenue, Liz was ahead of me and as she went through, the light turned yellow. I knew that crossing a 6 lane intersection would take more than 4 seconds (DOT mandated length of yellow), so I picked it up not to get caught too far out when the light turned red. Unfortunately, some kid who was waiting for the precise moment of that red light to step out into the intersection, did so. I had been going pretty fast to get through the intersection, and now a kid was about to blindly step in front of me. His father instinctively grabbed him and pulled him back, but I'm pretty sure that I was now "another dangerous cyclists" in their eyes. Great. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to ride downtown.
Once at the beach, Liz and I racked the bikes, and ended up having a conversation with a stranger about swimming in what looked like a pretty choppy lake, and triathlons in general. The bike rack at Ohio Street Beach is usually a hub for triathletes as it's a good open water swim location, is next to the running path, and has solid bike racks that's in an area that's pretty safe theft-wise. Liz and I got our running gear all set up and talked about our plans. Either head North on the path which can be more scenic, but crowded, to North Avenue Beach; or take the less crowded, but boring, South route to McCormick Place. We chose the South route because of wind direction (we would be coming back into a nice, cool, headwind), and as a bonus, we could follow the Accenture Chicago Triathlon race course.
We set off on our run and I ducked off early into an outhouse, causing a separation between Liz and I. Running was going good until I got to the Shedd Aquarium where construction barricades were blocking the path I knew. I jumped down to the break wall and ran around the Shedd there. When I got towards the Planetarium, more construction barricades greeted me there. After some cross country short cuts, I was back on what I assumed was the path I knew from Accenture.
All of a sudden, I found myself alone running through green fields with the sun on my face. Where was I? I definitely didn't remember this at all and I was confused. All I kept thinking about was the Russell Crowe line from Gladiator that my friends keep quoting when they're dropped and riding alone in the corn fields of Ragbrai. "If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!" Turns out I had made some bad shortcuts and ended up in what was Meigs Field, which was at one time a small lake-front airport for the rich and famous, not Elysium as I had feared.
After I got myself backtracked enough to figure out where I should have zigged instead of zagged, I got back to the course. Unfortunately, once I got there, I was greeted by more construction barricades, and in addition to that, I now had a huge crowd of at least a thousand women; all wearing pink, walking and chatting down the path on a charity walk-a-thon, replete with banners, balloons, and bubbles. After all that, I got to my guess-timated turnaround that compensated for my earlier Meigs Field foray, and turned into that "cool-breeze" I had anticipated earlier. Except now it was significantly stronger.
The Lake Front path is multi-user, so now all the cyclists that were simply zipping by me on the way out, were no longer able to do that into a stiff headwind. I actually ended up being able to out run them, which is actually a not fun on the path. The path is tight as it is, and if you have to overtake a cyclist, there's a lot of maneuvering and effort required. As a rule, people on bikes don't like being passed by someone who's running because it's just simply a reminder to them that they really should be going faster. So, you just don't overtake a cyclist, you have to make an "attack" on them, lest you end up playing some cat and mouse game with them for the next 5 minutes. I finished up my last 35 minutes this way, got back to beach, and pretty much concluded that this was not the lake front run I was looking for. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to run downtown.
Liz came in a minute or two later, we got kitted up for our swim, and looked at the daunting chop on the lake the increasing winds had created. Lake Michigan really does not get "waves". It more or less gets varying degrees of "chop" or "big chop". The ocean gets these big waves that curl in and crash onto the shore with a beautifully rhythm of "slam-rip-hiss". Michigan's "waves" are like something you would get if you tried running with a bucket full of water. The water sloshes back and forth on the sides, having no "wave-like" motion to it. Just sloshing, slapping, and spilling.
Were not the only ones getting in. There had been other people who had been standing there on the beach in their wetsuits, getting psyched up to go, since we got back from our run. You could tell they were apprehensive about entering the "washing machine" the lake had become. I had experience in this before, so I knew what to expect. Liz really didn't like the idea, but since other people were going in, she followed. We got about 100 yards in and I was literally finding myself suspended in the air at times as the chop would toss me up and I would come crashing down a foot or two. It really wasn't swimming. It was just churning the arms when you could grab water. I had learned a while ago that it's better to just slow down the stroke when swimming in chop and take your pulls when you can. It was definitely slow going and at times I was taking in water faster than the Titanic. Liz didn't like the idea of swimming far out to the buoys, so we just swam back and forth, staying close to the shore.
We saw swimmer after swimmer go in and then go right back out. I think that motivated Liz to stay in there longer, knowing that she was out-braving other grown adults. But this really wasn't swimming. It was just survival of the chop. Once you do this, any other rough swim you encounter in a race is nothing. Challenging as this was, it was not something I really wanted to do after a 90 minute run. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to swim downtown.
Got packed up, rode back to the car, and discussed our options. Eat here, eat there, go back this way, go back that way, etc. I couldn't make a decision in any case and simply headed straight into a traffic jam of everyone fleeing Chicago. Great. I usually take the train downtown to avoid these headaches, but we had driven today because Sunday's train schedule is really spaced out. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to drive downtown, too.
PS. Congrats to Eric and Liz Ott who came in 1st and 1st on their 1st wedding anniversary at the Naperville Triathlon yesterday.
Getting downtown was moderately OK. We hit a little traffic at the "Hillside Strangler" which has been the scourge of I-290. I believe that this part of the highway where I-88, I-53, and I-290 merges is ranked in one of the top ten traffic headaches in the United States. Chicago spent enormous amounts of money to reconstruct the area about 5 years ago, but you still can't change the fact you have 8 lanes going down to 3. The rest of the way downtown was more traffic once we got within 2 miles of our destination, which can be really of bummer, because you are JUST SO CLOSE!!
We parked the car in my sister's condo and then proceeded by bicycle to the Ohio Street beach. As we crossed Michigan avenue, Liz was ahead of me and as she went through, the light turned yellow. I knew that crossing a 6 lane intersection would take more than 4 seconds (DOT mandated length of yellow), so I picked it up not to get caught too far out when the light turned red. Unfortunately, some kid who was waiting for the precise moment of that red light to step out into the intersection, did so. I had been going pretty fast to get through the intersection, and now a kid was about to blindly step in front of me. His father instinctively grabbed him and pulled him back, but I'm pretty sure that I was now "another dangerous cyclists" in their eyes. Great. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to ride downtown.
Once at the beach, Liz and I racked the bikes, and ended up having a conversation with a stranger about swimming in what looked like a pretty choppy lake, and triathlons in general. The bike rack at Ohio Street Beach is usually a hub for triathletes as it's a good open water swim location, is next to the running path, and has solid bike racks that's in an area that's pretty safe theft-wise. Liz and I got our running gear all set up and talked about our plans. Either head North on the path which can be more scenic, but crowded, to North Avenue Beach; or take the less crowded, but boring, South route to McCormick Place. We chose the South route because of wind direction (we would be coming back into a nice, cool, headwind), and as a bonus, we could follow the Accenture Chicago Triathlon race course.
We set off on our run and I ducked off early into an outhouse, causing a separation between Liz and I. Running was going good until I got to the Shedd Aquarium where construction barricades were blocking the path I knew. I jumped down to the break wall and ran around the Shedd there. When I got towards the Planetarium, more construction barricades greeted me there. After some cross country short cuts, I was back on what I assumed was the path I knew from Accenture.
All of a sudden, I found myself alone running through green fields with the sun on my face. Where was I? I definitely didn't remember this at all and I was confused. All I kept thinking about was the Russell Crowe line from Gladiator that my friends keep quoting when they're dropped and riding alone in the corn fields of Ragbrai. "If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!" Turns out I had made some bad shortcuts and ended up in what was Meigs Field, which was at one time a small lake-front airport for the rich and famous, not Elysium as I had feared.
After I got myself backtracked enough to figure out where I should have zigged instead of zagged, I got back to the course. Unfortunately, once I got there, I was greeted by more construction barricades, and in addition to that, I now had a huge crowd of at least a thousand women; all wearing pink, walking and chatting down the path on a charity walk-a-thon, replete with banners, balloons, and bubbles. After all that, I got to my guess-timated turnaround that compensated for my earlier Meigs Field foray, and turned into that "cool-breeze" I had anticipated earlier. Except now it was significantly stronger.
The Lake Front path is multi-user, so now all the cyclists that were simply zipping by me on the way out, were no longer able to do that into a stiff headwind. I actually ended up being able to out run them, which is actually a not fun on the path. The path is tight as it is, and if you have to overtake a cyclist, there's a lot of maneuvering and effort required. As a rule, people on bikes don't like being passed by someone who's running because it's just simply a reminder to them that they really should be going faster. So, you just don't overtake a cyclist, you have to make an "attack" on them, lest you end up playing some cat and mouse game with them for the next 5 minutes. I finished up my last 35 minutes this way, got back to beach, and pretty much concluded that this was not the lake front run I was looking for. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to run downtown.
Liz came in a minute or two later, we got kitted up for our swim, and looked at the daunting chop on the lake the increasing winds had created. Lake Michigan really does not get "waves". It more or less gets varying degrees of "chop" or "big chop". The ocean gets these big waves that curl in and crash onto the shore with a beautifully rhythm of "slam-rip-hiss". Michigan's "waves" are like something you would get if you tried running with a bucket full of water. The water sloshes back and forth on the sides, having no "wave-like" motion to it. Just sloshing, slapping, and spilling.
Were not the only ones getting in. There had been other people who had been standing there on the beach in their wetsuits, getting psyched up to go, since we got back from our run. You could tell they were apprehensive about entering the "washing machine" the lake had become. I had experience in this before, so I knew what to expect. Liz really didn't like the idea, but since other people were going in, she followed. We got about 100 yards in and I was literally finding myself suspended in the air at times as the chop would toss me up and I would come crashing down a foot or two. It really wasn't swimming. It was just churning the arms when you could grab water. I had learned a while ago that it's better to just slow down the stroke when swimming in chop and take your pulls when you can. It was definitely slow going and at times I was taking in water faster than the Titanic. Liz didn't like the idea of swimming far out to the buoys, so we just swam back and forth, staying close to the shore.
We saw swimmer after swimmer go in and then go right back out. I think that motivated Liz to stay in there longer, knowing that she was out-braving other grown adults. But this really wasn't swimming. It was just survival of the chop. Once you do this, any other rough swim you encounter in a race is nothing. Challenging as this was, it was not something I really wanted to do after a 90 minute run. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to swim downtown.
Got packed up, rode back to the car, and discussed our options. Eat here, eat there, go back this way, go back that way, etc. I couldn't make a decision in any case and simply headed straight into a traffic jam of everyone fleeing Chicago. Great. I usually take the train downtown to avoid these headaches, but we had driven today because Sunday's train schedule is really spaced out. Looks like I picked the wrong weekend to drive downtown, too.
PS. Congrats to Eric and Liz Ott who came in 1st and 1st on their 1st wedding anniversary at the Naperville Triathlon yesterday.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Classic Ragbrai
I’ve been missing on the past two years of Ragbrai. It got to the point where the only other Asian guy on the ride started going around claiming to be me (the statistical rider is a white male 40-45 from Iowa). I had been worried that I would have a rough time adjusting to the stresses of Ragbrai, as they can be tough, but fortunately this year was everything I remembered it being and I left the ride waiting for next year.
By “Classic”, I mean it in the way that there is “Classic” Coke and then there the other varieties of Coke, which sometimes make it big or fail miserably. The Ragbrai this year was everything you wanted and expected it to be, just like a regular can of Coke: just plain good. No crazy aftertaste or startling mix of unexpected flavors.
Our team is named Trousermouse, which was the end result of collaborative decision of a bunch of 14 year old boys on their first Ragbrai 17 years ago. Some people are not always so quick as to what “Trousermouse” means, and we sometimes get asked that question. It’s really one of those “If you gotta ask…” type scenarios. We wear what I think is an awful misuse of custom made jerseys as our outfit is simply cyan blue with white hibiscus flowers spattered across it. Eye catching, but it confuses everybody into thinking we are from Hawaii.
We ride Ragbrai as if we were professionals of Ragbrai. We are on the average 15 riders big (other teams are 100+), but we have seemly gained a lot of notoriety for ourselves , which is impressive for how small we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragbrai#RAGBRAI_teams_and_charters
The team knows all of the quirks and foibles of the ride. Even though the route, like the Tour de France, changes every year, there are a lot of things that don’t change. It’s gotten to the point where Trousemouse has a list of “Ism’s”, or things to expect on Ragbrai: Expect at least one big storm to scare the crap out of you. The van will become a scattered mess on the inside and anything carefully packed will disappear after day 2 (also known as “Ragbrai’d”). Another one is we will have picked up a drafter and they will go down with no fault of our own (we also don’t stop for these instances).
With Ironman training just beginning for me, my spin on things were a little different this ride. If Ragbrai could be described as an “All-U-Can Eat Buffet of Meat”, I was the guy ordering the salad. I sort of stuck out from the rest of the group in that same way. I knew I had 8 week smorgasbord of workouts ahead of me to gorge on and I better not waste room eating the bread sticks. For the first time in my history of doing Ragbrai, I actually left the ride feeling better than I had gone into it. (I did Rhode Island the weekend prior, was still trashed going in, but then miraculously recovered by riding 500 miles).
I have to give a big thanks to the team. The way the ride works for Trousermouse, is that someone has to drive the van out every morning with our equipment to the next town and set up camp. This usually involves one of the riders having to sacrifice their day of riding to do this required task of sagging the van. Some days there are plenty of volunteers to drive (eg. “How do you turn a hot headwind into a cool breeze”? “You sag!” or “What’s the best way to sleep off a hangover on Ragbrai?” “You sag!”). Other times it can be a mean game of shotgun or short straw if it’s a nice day and everyone feels good. To actually ride an entire Ragbrai without taking a turn sagging is very rare. This year, out of the 17 of us on this trip, only two of us covered the entire route. I was one of them, and this was my first completion in 10 years. It felt good to come back from being 2 years MIA and being given the opportunity to ride the entire course.
A "If you gotta ask" Q/A:
What is "Poo Dollar?"
Poo Dollar is a disgusting game developed and patented this year by the "team" where someone wipes their butt with a dollar bill as if it were a sheet of toilet paper. This “tainted” dollar is then placed in an obvious location, like the middle of the street or on the sidewalk. It’s really a spectator game, where everyone watches to see which unsuspecting “tourist” is going to stop and pick it up (children are barred from playing the game). It’s really an obvious game (the crowd watching usually grows to 30-50 people), because as soon as someone starts to pick up the dollar, the crowd can’t help but get rowdy with “Oh’s” and “Yay’s”. Most people quickly access that there’s a gig going on with that dollar and don’t touch it. Very few people are left clueless with the crowd gathered, but most of the time the game ends by a person who just really wants that dollar.
By “Classic”, I mean it in the way that there is “Classic” Coke and then there the other varieties of Coke, which sometimes make it big or fail miserably. The Ragbrai this year was everything you wanted and expected it to be, just like a regular can of Coke: just plain good. No crazy aftertaste or startling mix of unexpected flavors.
Our team is named Trousermouse, which was the end result of collaborative decision of a bunch of 14 year old boys on their first Ragbrai 17 years ago. Some people are not always so quick as to what “Trousermouse” means, and we sometimes get asked that question. It’s really one of those “If you gotta ask…” type scenarios. We wear what I think is an awful misuse of custom made jerseys as our outfit is simply cyan blue with white hibiscus flowers spattered across it. Eye catching, but it confuses everybody into thinking we are from Hawaii.
We ride Ragbrai as if we were professionals of Ragbrai. We are on the average 15 riders big (other teams are 100+), but we have seemly gained a lot of notoriety for ourselves , which is impressive for how small we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragbrai#RAGBRAI_teams_and_charters
The team knows all of the quirks and foibles of the ride. Even though the route, like the Tour de France, changes every year, there are a lot of things that don’t change. It’s gotten to the point where Trousemouse has a list of “Ism’s”, or things to expect on Ragbrai: Expect at least one big storm to scare the crap out of you. The van will become a scattered mess on the inside and anything carefully packed will disappear after day 2 (also known as “Ragbrai’d”). Another one is we will have picked up a drafter and they will go down with no fault of our own (we also don’t stop for these instances).
With Ironman training just beginning for me, my spin on things were a little different this ride. If Ragbrai could be described as an “All-U-Can Eat Buffet of Meat”, I was the guy ordering the salad. I sort of stuck out from the rest of the group in that same way. I knew I had 8 week smorgasbord of workouts ahead of me to gorge on and I better not waste room eating the bread sticks. For the first time in my history of doing Ragbrai, I actually left the ride feeling better than I had gone into it. (I did Rhode Island the weekend prior, was still trashed going in, but then miraculously recovered by riding 500 miles).
I have to give a big thanks to the team. The way the ride works for Trousermouse, is that someone has to drive the van out every morning with our equipment to the next town and set up camp. This usually involves one of the riders having to sacrifice their day of riding to do this required task of sagging the van. Some days there are plenty of volunteers to drive (eg. “How do you turn a hot headwind into a cool breeze”? “You sag!” or “What’s the best way to sleep off a hangover on Ragbrai?” “You sag!”). Other times it can be a mean game of shotgun or short straw if it’s a nice day and everyone feels good. To actually ride an entire Ragbrai without taking a turn sagging is very rare. This year, out of the 17 of us on this trip, only two of us covered the entire route. I was one of them, and this was my first completion in 10 years. It felt good to come back from being 2 years MIA and being given the opportunity to ride the entire course.
A "If you gotta ask" Q/A:
What is "Poo Dollar?"
Poo Dollar is a disgusting game developed and patented this year by the "team" where someone wipes their butt with a dollar bill as if it were a sheet of toilet paper. This “tainted” dollar is then placed in an obvious location, like the middle of the street or on the sidewalk. It’s really a spectator game, where everyone watches to see which unsuspecting “tourist” is going to stop and pick it up (children are barred from playing the game). It’s really an obvious game (the crowd watching usually grows to 30-50 people), because as soon as someone starts to pick up the dollar, the crowd can’t help but get rowdy with “Oh’s” and “Yay’s”. Most people quickly access that there’s a gig going on with that dollar and don’t touch it. Very few people are left clueless with the crowd gathered, but most of the time the game ends by a person who just really wants that dollar.
Monday, August 4, 2008
The Office
Things have been hectic lately. My decidedly “retro and ghetto” office I have known for the past 14 years in Schaumburg has moved. I started out doing summer internships there during my college summer breaks staring in 1994, took a few years away at other careers, and then I’ve been back there for the past 6 years. (This will be the officially the longest time I have ever been employed by one company). The company, founded 30+ years ago, moved into the Schaumburg location 25 years ago. 10 years later, the management of the building decided that the décor back then was too run down and did a “refresh” in 1983. It has not been retouched since. The office became a collage of decidedly 80’s styling, donated pieces 70’s era furniture from everyone’s houses, and late 90’s office jetsam from failed companies of the internet boom that fled once the creditors came looking for assets to seize. (Most of the stuff was dumpster dived and much of it had questionable stains on it.)
We sort of made do with what we had, duct taping our desks together as this move had been in the works for years, and since with the move always in the plans, this always served as the excuse not to update or fix anything. Besides, the management’s philosophy was mainly “We spent good money on that ‘XXX’ 20 years ago.” The office building was purchased a few years ago by a savvy entrepreneur who was pretty successful in leasing to companies that were actually successful. Our source of furniture and office supplies from the fly-by-night companies that failed regularly had dried up.
It didn’t take long for the new office building to rise above the decades of decay left behind by the old building management and create what was becoming a pretty nice location. Except us. We had now become the decaying, crooked, black tooth in an otherwise perfect set of pearly whites. After several months of dogging the company to commit to signing an annual lease and refurnish the office, the building manager simply came to us on July 1st and said “A dental office is going to rent this space. The construction crews are going to tear down the walls on August 1st.” That was pretty much as good as an eviction that can be done without getting the cops involved. Of course, that threw our office into a loop. The new office was in “near completion”, which probably meant in real speak (BS removed) that it would be ready in another 2 years.
The actual move came as a surprise. We knew that we were being moved at some time, but no one ever told us when, exactly. Then one day, moving trucks showed up, a bunch of big, burly, but polite guys came in, helped us put our belongings onto big pallets, ripped out all the equipment, and transported us to the new office. Just like that.
Of course, there were some minor issues, like why did the installer not put labels on the internet cables, or more importantly, does anyone know how to re-start the server once it’s been torn out of its moorings?
(No server = no internet access for two weeks. BTW, no contact with clients for two weeks either, not like that's important or anything.)The major concern for the management was the location of the microwave and does Chris really have to have an expensive drying rack in the kitchenette, because it really doesn’t tie the room together. Plus, much to my chagrin, they insisted on keeping the rotting coffee maker of 18 years and it kept on being retrieved from the trash every time I threw it into there.
Don’t get me wrong. The office is nicer than what we had before. Everything is newer and having an actual kitchenette is nice, no more relying on a zoo-smelling bathroom to wash coffee mugs in. But there is a little issue about space and privacy. I got downgraded from a windowed office to the cubicle farm without any real walls. If I look behind me, I can see them looking back at me. ALL DAY LONG.
ps. They can hear me ripping one, and vice versa.This is Raj, my former office mate, now once removed. He talks a lot about “7 Glacier Circle” a lot, which is his brand new house with heaps of trouble he had bought 5 minutes away from the old office (now he’s 30 minutes). The glass partition is the only thing we have that’s close a wall between anyone, but it’s still like building your new McMansion that’s pushing the easement boundaries and discovering that you can peer right into your neighbors bathroom from your dining room window.
The office is a 10 minute drive from home, and that’s pretty kick ass. Its right by Oak Brook Mall, so there’s lots of shopping around, but I’m still unfamiliar with the location of everything. I did find Dominick’s Supermarket, and it’s a grocer wonder. Meredith and I decided to carpool more, so instead of dropping $100 a week to pollute our air, it’s now down about $10, which will mean more to spend on bike parts. :)
My very own piece of land on the cubicle farm. Yes, that is a post 108 miler donut next to the Power Tap computer.
View of the lobby below. A great vantage point to play "Poo Dollar" from.
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