Biking on the Rebound

With the Iowa temperatures creeping up into the seasonably Spwingter zone of the mid-forties, we got the bicycles prepped and took a short ride out to the mall and back. Of course a bike ride to the mall is not complete without a stop at Cookies, Etc, followed by a stroll up and down the hallway to browse a little at GameStop and count the depressing number of vacant storefronts.

Fortunately I am in a healthy enough state to ride the bicycle. While the ankle band in this picture is intended to keep my pant leg from rubbing on the chain, I would probably be well-advised to also wear such a band with reflective warning tape next time I attempt to play basketball at the rec. The last time I tried a few weeks ago (without a warning band) I managed to sprain my right ankle for the second time in two months. Perhaps the reflective tape would have caused the other players to think "That ankle looks like trouble" and they would give it plenty of room for the foot to land and perhaps even lend a hand to help guide it squarely to the ground.

For some reason (like, oh, maybe the first time I rolled the same ankle just before New Year's), my brain failed to tell my right foot to straighten out for landing when I jumped for a rebound, and I came down on the side of it. Though I felt like I had rehabbed my ankle plenty since the first sprain, in hindsight I probably didn't spend enough time retraining my reflexes to react properly. As my physician told me, "you're not 19 anymore."

Perhaps it's time to put the basketball shoes away for awhile and focus on bicycle season.

Or in a few weeks when I feel like I'm ready to go again, I just need to remember that I'm an outside shooter, and let the 19 year old college kids deal with rebounding.

Happy Pi Day!

We returned to Perkins to celebrate Pi Day 2011 with slices of peanut butter silk and french silk pie. Adam wanted pumpkin and was heartbroken to learn that it is seasonal. I think I see a homemade pumpkin pie in our future.

We prepped for our Pi Day extravaganza with a trip to the rec. I'm going to go ahead and pretend that my slice of pie had fewer calories than I burned in my hour on the exercise bike.

Although we enjoy celebrating Pi Day every year, we are really looking forward to 2015, when the date will represent the first five digits of pi (3.1415) rather than just the first three. Of course, none of this will matter if the world ends in 2012. We'd better live it up while we can.

Speaking of living it up, I had a revelation tonight: because pi's decimal representation never ends or repeats, theoretically any date could be represented in it. Woohoo! Pie every day!

As a special bonus, because we haven't posted in a month, I leave you with pi represented to 50 decimal places. You're welcome.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510