They have that on computers now?

Well ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for me to join the infamy and glory of blogging on the interweb. After the downfall of the late, great Mt. Nittany Wheelworks, I found myself with prodigious amounts of free time on my idol hands. Instead of utilizing this time to do what some may consider "important" things (this includes furthering my education, riding my bike, or even looking for a new line of work), I continued to live a fairly delecate existence consisting of syndicated sci-fi shows, banjo picking, and solitaire. If you doubt my devotion to such a listless lifestyle, I have the rotten, mold-ridden fruits of my efforts here:

Notice the "Games played" line... clearly I have been very busy since January... However, I decided to retire from my professional Solitaire career in hopes of more lucrative (or just simply more interesting) ventures.

My first foray into a new lifestyle began yesterday, when I decided to devote my strikingly capable body to clinical testing. During my Cardiovascular Physiology course, I became the guinea pig for a Venous Occlusion Plethysmography, which is a fancy way of saying "blood went into your arm and we're gonna find out how much ended up there." After that, I swung on over to the General Clinical Research Center in Noll Lab to see what other forms of torture they had for me. If you have never been to this part of campus, all the clinicians look more or less like this guy and walk around with 6 inch syringes for no apparent purpose. But I looked past the madness of the Elmore Wing and put my name on the list along with my peer Spencer to undergo some various testing. After a significant amount of paperwork, the nurse practitioner came in to take my blood pressure, height, weight, and hip measurements (luckily these measurements were in metric units, which we Americans don't believe in, and therefore they don't really matter). After that they took my blood and used some weird device to measure light absorption of my skin. Then they handed me a brand spankin' new $20 bill and sent me on my way. Penn State is finally paying me back for my education!

Although that study was not as interesting as I was hoping for, I did get my name put in for a study on control of leg blood flow. The cool part? I will get paid to get a VO2 test! It is almost enough to make me want to do this "training" thing this year, especially now that I am racing with the fast guys (Cat1), but I certainly don't want to get ahead of myself.

I won't call it training, but I do need to get on the bike today. Hopefully the snow/ice storm yesterday didn't put the trails in too poor a condition, 'cause I have been itching to hit the ridge for a while now.

I'll be sure to spill more words over these pages later. Stay tuned.