I feel like such a masochist when it comes to biking. I am in pain.... but it feels so good!

So here's the backstory - yesterday, I responded to an email for a short bike ride with the Hopkins4k people. I figured, a bunch of newbies would show up, we'd go over clipping in, maybe a 5 mile ride around Druid lake or something. So, I planned for a short ride - no food, ONE bottle of water. When I arrived, I found... Greg, and Rafi. Both are Hopkins4k veterans. Well, I figured I could probably take whatever they could dish out, and told Rafi to lead the way.

33 miles later, I collapsed at home, madly looking for any and all types of food. 33 miles in 2 hours. I broke two big records yesterday x_x Fastest average speed ever (15.6 before I bonked), fastest top speed (42 mph). I most likely broke my record for largest distance climbed, and biggest elevation change as well, but I can't ascertain that. Rafi lead us through this crazy route along Falls Rd. I honestly have no idea where we went, lol. I lost count of how many hills we climbed, but two gigantic ones stick in my memory. There's this one brutal climb about halfway into the ride, and another on Bellamore, coming back up the Northern Pkwy hill. I burned through my only bottle of water in just 10 miles. Surprisingly, I was actually able to keep up with the two! Rafi was a lot faster, but I mostly kept up. After the first 10 miles, I got the customary 10 mile stomach cramp. After I cleared that up, I was golden for the next 10 miles. It felt awesome to be traveling at such a high average speed. Then I bonked. I got that slight twinge in the stomach again, that intense feeling of hunger. We were probably still a good 8 miles out or so. No matter! The human body is resiliant, I can run on empty for a good while, haha. I felt workable until I got to the Bellamore hill. I badly burned out after that...

By the time I got home, I was feeling quite faint. I could FEEL my blood sugar just... missing, lol. One more Bellamore hill and I think I'd be dead on the side of the road, lol. It must have been hilarious for eleen when she walked in. I had a gigantic man tou jammed in my face, looking like I was STARVED. I had to skip CIS2 because I was just... broken, lol.

Waking up the next morning (this morning), it felt like my joints were GLUED together. Well, I promised Ben and Ankit that I'd go with them this morning, so I suited up, and climbed right back in the saddle. And you know what? It felt GOOD. Only a 10 mile ride, mostly around dead flat Lake Montebello, but still... Going from, omfg I can't move to, oh yeah, let's get 18 mph around the lake... Quite a difference, lol.

At least this is quite healthy, and really good for losing weight :-D

Thanks to eleen for this one, but since I don't like to propagate chain emails, I've posted it here. Freaking hilarious I tell you, almost makes me wish I still worked at a wet lab, hahaha

You know you've worked too long in a lab when....

1. You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice
2. You can tell what cheap and expensive white coats look like
   
3. You can't watch CSI without cursing at least one scientific inaccuracy
   
4. You use acronyms for everything and never stop to elaborate
5. Liquid nitrogen is only about a 1/3 as dangerous as you thought
6. You always seem to use the microscope after the person with the impossible close together eyes
7. Accident reports are a badge of honour
8. You've wondered why you can't drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean?
9. You give the lab equipment motivational pep talks such as "Work for me today or i'll reprogram you with a fire axe"
   
10. You've worked out that a trained chimp could probably do 90% of your job
11. When a non-scientist asks you what you do for a living you roll your eyes and talk science at them until they've lost the will to live (mainly for fun)
12. You have to check the web to find out what the weather is outside
13. You realize that almost anything can be classed as background reading
14. People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath
15. Although all cooking is a glorified chemistry experiment you just still can't seem to get it right
16. Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool
17. Warning labels invoke curiosity rather than caution
18. The Christmas nightout reveals scientists can't dance, although a formula for the movement of hands and feet combined with beats per min is found scrawled on a napkin by a waiter the next day
19. You know which part of the lab you can chill out undisturbed on Friday afternoon
20. You decide the courses and conference you want to go on by the quality of the food served
21. You are strangely proud of the collection of junk you've stolen from vendors at trade shows
22. You've used dry ice to cool beer down
23. No matter what the timings in the experiment protocol there is always time for lunch in the middle
24. You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid
25. Burning eyes, nose and throat indicate that you haven't actually turned on the fumehood/downdraft bench
26. Your slightly too fond of the smell of (pick one or many)
    Xylene/Agar/Ethanol/Undergraduates/Alcoholic handwash
    
27. You've left the lab wearing a piece of PPE because you forgot you had it on
28. You bitch about not being able to pipette by mouth any more
29. Security come round at 2 am wondering why the lights are still on only to find you with your arms up to your elbows in a glovebox
30. You have made some kind of puppet out of a nitrile glove and kept it as a pet (Putting dry ice in makes for a rapidly expanding if short lived pet - )
31. When at a Fall Out Boy gig you wonder why everyone is going round with Faecal Occult Blood (FOB) written on their head!!!!
32. You have an irresistible urge to rip your shirt off superman style because it has press stud fasteners just like your lab coat.....Most often occurring as you walk through a door just like exiting the lab.... (The worlds of strippers and lab workers collide, not pretty)
33. You still get amusement out of "freezing" things in liquid nitrogen!
34. Blinking real fast has saved your eyesight on more than one occasion.
35. You've removed your gloves to find a small hole which has left you with either - wrinkly old person hands, a brightly coloured finger (histologists especially) or a burning sensation and dermatitis and some point.
36. You've bent down to pick something up off the floor only to scatter the contents of your top pocket.

My sleep schedule finally decided to break last night... Went to sleep at 4, woke up at 5:30. And proceeded to have my most productive period all weekend, haha. Finished off Leon's data formatting thing, and IRB. Sadly, my body is on strike now... I've got this weird searing back pain, a dull headache (probably from not sleeping), and due to being AWAKE for so long, i'm *starving*.

At least this will be the first step in getting my sleep schedule back into a sane position. Maybe I can start getting exercise in the morning too! Hopkins4k will kill me in the first week if I don't get into shape... I'm kinda wishing that the weather would improve a bit so I can start biking properly again. But not before next weekend! I still want to go skiing one more time, haha.

Anyways, back to work at the CER... I'm finally fixing all the weird superEditor bugs :-p

OMFG... INTERVIEW FROM BERKELEY!!!! I'M NOT USELESS!!! YAYYYYYYYY

So I finally decided to clean off Yuki's desktop, merge all the files I made last semester into a single complete set. It's quite a pain, because it's been so long since I made all the files, I don't remember which one's the latest copy. I had to go through everything and carefully make sure I only kept the last one I made. I've been postponing this, because I knew this would happen - I knew I'd get all nostalgic if I had to clean up my files. Four years of my life, all summed into a single folder. $100,000 purchased just 1.9 gb of data. Four years of my life can still fit on a DVD with ease, or if I REALLY want to make myself sad, a single 2 gb microSD card.

Yeah, I know, I'm a horrible computer geek. Getting nostalgic over FILES of all things. Well, do remember that all my notes from college are in files, so in effect, the sum of all knowledge I gained in college is in this one folder. Ah well... what the hell am I babbling on about, it's 4 am. Sleep time for me!