Change in Climate!

The flight(s) up to Iowa City seemed rather long this time, due I'm sure to the woman behind me who was coughing the whole way and the unhappy baby a couple of rows up who cried, or to put it more accurately, screamed, nearly the entire flight. The Wife was blissfully unaware of most of it, working on a piece of a quilt and listening to her iPod the whole time. Every now and then I would have to give her a nudge because she would start singing along with the music and people would start looking.

We arrived in Cedar Rapids under cloudy drizzly skies and the rain continued steadily all afternoon and evening, occasionally turning to big chunky snowflakes. We went over to the Arena where the Big Ten Championships will be held tomorrow evening and helped out a little, but mostly watched the team do a light workout.

I tried a number of time to contact a couple of faculty members who I need to speak with right away, leaving even more voicemail, but I guess they have skipped town or something since Tulane is on Spring Break. I'll have to try for e-mail later today.

I did manage to get in about an hour at the hotel "fitness center" which consists of one of those lounge-chair type exercise bikes, two treadmills, and a rack of dumbbells. Naturally it is situated next to the pool in the most humid possible location. Despite the fan, I was drenched with sweat after half an hour of moderate exercise on the bike and my knees ached a bit from the odd position. I don't know how they calibrate the effort levels on those torture machines, but when I selected the "Hill" workout, level 6 felt like a weight-lifting session more than a bike ride, and I can't imagine anyone being able to turn the cranks at level 10 or 12 or whatever the limit is. Periodically I would have to lift myself up off my butt. It is not a good idea to design exercise equipment where the user sits with his full weight directly on a joint that is one of the ones being used. What were these people thinking? I would have thought by now that I'd be seeing some sort of spinning type bike in the hotel exercise rooms, but I guess they're too cheap for that.

I got an I-10 report from GiVo last night. She's on her way to N.O. from Tucson to pick up some stuff she left here and then is heading up to N.C. for a while to do a couple of rotations. Nice timing, I must say. Charlotte is going to be real nice during the next month or two.

Well, got to go give The Daughter a lift to class this morning, and then we're pretty much on our own until evening, I think. I sure wish the sun would come out!! It's about 35F and raining, I guess.