school's harshing my mellow

Well, the semester's in full swing again. I used to always look forward to the start of the new semester as essentially a week where I could put up my feet and enjoy the college atmosphere without dealing with the work. Apparently those times are over though, because presently I've got a mountain of novels, plays, and various other literature to pore over for the following week of class. While I am used to and very capable of handling that kind of workload, I'm not exactly a speed reader, so my free time is pretty much nill.

My training's been on the back-burner because of that, reduced to what I can squeeze in at the gym and biking to and from class every day. Thankfully, Harrisonburg is a pretty hilly town, with one of its biggest hills on the road leading to campus and back to my apartment, so my ride isn't exactly leisurely. I also have over a two hour break in between classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which I've decided to devote to biking around town. I explored a bit yesterday during that time, cycling around the grid downtown that I'd never been to, and found probably the seediest bar in town that I've resolved to go to some time next week.

Besides the time constraints, probably the most difficult part of training is finding a route that doesn't intimidate me and is the adequate length. Like I said, Harrisonburg is a pretty hilly town, and flying down an incline at sixty miles an hour(I clocked it) on a traffiky road really doesn't feel like something I should be doing solo right now. I've decided to bike over to my LBS and ask them about some appropriate routes for my skill level, as well as asking about any group rides. There used to be a fairly publicized one that went all through town for an anti-war organization, Food Not Bombs I believe, but I haven't seen nearly as many cyclists as I used to. Then again, it is January.

On a fundraising note, the donations keep rolling in, although certainly not with the frequency that they were, and some that were promised me still haven't come in. One of them is my church, St. Andrew's Lutheran, which was promised months ago. I have to admit I'm a little annoyed, especially since I don't feel quite right heckling a church, but I have a niggling fear that they never wrote my name in the memo section. Hopefully it'll come through any day now, and I can put my anxieties to rest, otherwise I'm going to have to do a little subtle prodding.

I've been playing with the idea of contacting my school's newspaper, The Breeze, and seeing if they want to interview me. I think that with the considerable "cool factor" and phillanthropic nature of the ride I have a pretty good shot at front page. My only qualm is that I don't have a snazzy bike and build jersey to wear for the interview, and I really want to look the part. Another avenue I plan on exploring now that I'm back at school is soliciting old and current professors for funds.

Bike and Build cyclists receive, among other things, a participants manual complete with sections devoted to the cause, fundraising, and training. The fundraising section spends a fair ammount of time addressing the money tabboo, that is, the innate fear most of us have about asking others for money. Up until this point, I thought that I'd put the tabboo into perspective, but for some reason asking my professors for money is a little unnerving, even though by and large I've got a very good relationship with many of them. They also have a whole lot more money than anyone else I could ask down here. Okay, enough blog, time for a light ride while the weather's warm.