Doing the Right Thing

Daily we are all confronted with situations where we can do the right thing or the wrong thing. As a parents of two small developing children my wife and I are constantly trying to reinforce doing what is right and discouraging (or in some cases punishing) making the wrong choice. I had a drill sergeant in the Army that used to say "hard right over easy wrong" and it is something that sticks with me even to this day.

All of this makes it extremely hard for me to understand how the government can justify a trillion dollar "bail out" (or hand out however you choose to view it) with a straight face. Now this isn't intended to be a diatribe on the government and this is not turning into a political blog by any means. It is however my view on a situtation that will affect not only our children but our children's children. Continuing on our current track our country as we know it will go from a nation that is founded on hard work, innovation, and a desire to succeed to a welfare state where everyone has their hand out to the government. It is like we have become a country that is afraid to fail or let any of our citizens fail, Robert Kennedy said "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever acheive greatly". This is the root of our countries problems that go from the everyday citizen all the way to the White House. We are so afraid to let our children fail at anything that they are not building any character or learning to cope with disappointment. It's ok to fail as long as you get up and try again, it's ok to lose as long as you played as hard as you were capable. Sadly in this era of "everybody gets a trophy" the message of overcoming adversity is lost. With the direction that this country is headed what incentive to I or my children have to be anything other than mediocre. If you are financially successful all you get is the opportunity to pay more taxes and the disdain of those too lazy to be sucessful themselves. Since when did it become a crime to get an education, work hard, and reap the benefits of your labor? The proposed Mortgage Handout that is being discussed now rewards those that don't pay their bills, took out loans that they had no business being approved for and living outside of their means. Where those of us who live in modest houses, drive older cars, and pay our bills are getting nothing more than the opportunity to have more of our tax dollars taken away and spent on our deadbeat neighbors. Where is the incentive to do the right thing? Why should I send in my mortgage payment each month on a house that has lost 20 % of its value in the last year?

At the risk of sounding political the only thing that we as citizens can do is vote out the current batch of crooks and try to find some one with principles and values to lead our nation.

Dear Mr. Speedo....

Dear Mr. Speedo Guy,

Wearing a speedo should in and of itself be considered a crime against humanity, however there are provisions that are made in the Man Code for the wear and apperance of the speedo. According to Part 603, paragraphs c and d of the Man Code the wear of a speedo to swim or to the beach (or anywhere else in public for that matter) shall be limited to: "former swimmers who have maintained their physique or those who look like Arnold in his prime." Mr. Speedo as evidenced by your flailing swim stroke you don't fit into the first category and judging from your beer gut you don't fit in the second one as well. I want to thank you for standing at the end of the pool right at eye level as I was just finishing up my last 4x500 set and was about to vomit anyway. You in your "banana hammock" will be forever seeared into my brain.

Your Friend,
Rocketman

I am a slacker....

...about blogging at least. This has been a really good week training wise, almost 11,000 yds in the pool, should be about or over 100 mi after my ride this afternoon, and tomorrows trail run should put me over the 30 mi mark for the week. All in all not a bad week of training.

Tomorrow's trail race should be fun, the weather looks like it will cooperate and my legs are feeling good. There are a few people that are racing tomorrow that I would like to beat, but I am not going to be too upset if it doesn't happen.

In football news, UGA had a great signing class on Wednesday. Small in number, but high in quality, the 2009 class is ranked in the Top 10 by every recruiting service. I am looking forward to the 2009 season, the spring game is only about 8 weeks away.

That's all for now, I will try to be more consistant with my blogging in the future.

Random Stuff

Just some random stuff to keep both of you who regularly read entertained.

January has been an amazing training month so far. If I hit all my workouts this week I should be somewhere around 370-400 miles on the bike, 100 + miles running, and around 30,000 yards in the pool (even though I swim in a meter pool now). For comparison purposes, my peak monthly totals for last year were: 22,000 yds (three months), 428 miles on the bike (March), and 103 miles running (September). This leads me to believe that I haven't been training hard enough in the past. Hopefully I can stay healthy and keep this pace up all year.

In other news....did you know that you can lose weight without dieting or exercise? It's true! I heard it on the radio and read it on the interwebs. WAKE UP AMERICA!!! Write this down...you will NEVER, EVER acheive proper health and lasting weight loss without some form of exercise. There is no magic potion, pill, or wand that is going to magically make you svelte and healthy. All of these fad diets are not going to work, you may lose weight initially, but eventually you will gain the weight back and in most cases more. Exercise people, get moving!! 30 minutes, 3 times a week, make time!!

Miracle on the Hudson

This guy is my new hero! Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and his crew pulled off an amazing emergency landing in the Hudson River. For the "lay person" it was an amazing feat, but for those of us in the aviation industry it is even more impressive. As an Air Traffic Controller and a pilot the danger of a bird strike is something that I am very familiar with. Without going completely "nerd" on you there are several different times when this entire thing could have gone bad, but due to the quick thinking and experience of the crew it did not. First on climb out, the aircraft is in a nose high attitude and at or near full power in order to get to cruise altitude as fast at possible (of course this is all dependent on traffic and departure procedure out of La Guardia) losing one engine during this phase of flight would be bad enough, but losing both is potentially catastrophic. Published reports state that the bird strike occured at 3000 ft, which sounds high up but it really isn't. 3000 ft would give you a very limited glide radius in a Cessna 172, much less an Airbus 320 full of passengers and fuel. To quote one of my professors from college those things glide "like a streamlined brick". The fact that the crew was able to nose the aircraft over and trade some altitude for airspeed and avoid stalling the wings is a testament to many, many hours of training and flight time. Without any power and at a very low altitude the crew basically had one chance to land the plane safely, had they had any indecision at all or made the wrong choice by going back to La Guardia or trying for Teterboro the outcome would have certainly been much worse. Landing an aircraft on water is not an easy feat in and of itself, doing it with no power and limited flight controls makes it almost impossible. The margin for error is practically nil, pitch the nose up too soon and you risk a belly flop and the aircraft breaking apart in the water, pitch the nose up too late and you risk the nose of the aircraft going in first and the rest of the plane following it to the bottom of the river. What the crew did was bleed off every knot of airspeed right over the water and then pitched the nose up at the perfect time so the aircraft settled in and floated on top of the water.

Congratulations Capt. Sully and crew, you are truely heroes in every sense of the word.

Not Much To Report....

The last week hasn't been terribly exciting, nor has it yielded anything that I would consider remotely interesting to anyone else.

From The Mouths of Babes......

So I am tucking in the Bean (she's 5) and we are having a conversation about how bummed she is her BFF is turning 6 soon and she will be the only one who is still 5 (her birthday is in June). I told her that it isn't such a bad thing being the youngest one, and asked her how old she thought Daddy is....she said "Well, you are taller than Mommy so I think you are 58" (I am really 37). So then I asked her "How old do you think Mommy is then?", she thinks for a minute and then replies "Well Mommy is shorter than you are so she has to be about 39." (she is actually 31 but that was relatively close). Curious as to what she would say I asked her how old she thought Mimi and Pops (wife's parents) and Beba (my mom) are...she didn't even think about it and said "Oh Daddy, they are just OLD!". Needless to say I won't be calling my Mom or MIL to tell them about that one.