After a week and a half of Christmas break on the east coast, I am enjoying my time back with the family. I’ve seen both sides of the family in both Florida and Michigan, and both were very fun gatherings. I arrived in Jacksonville from San Diego on Saturday the 16th and got to see the new house that my grandparents will be moving into shortly. We went to the IMAX theater in the World Golf Village, always a fun outing. Bright and early Sunday morning, Amanda and Angela Griffin, Holly and I got up to head to the race start for our first half marathon. I was eager to see how my body would hold up for such a long race, and was surprised to find out that my injury from the previous weekend’s soccer game was fully healed (I strained my groin fighting for the ball). So prior to the race, I had not run for a week and a half. Fortunately, I was in decent enough shape from my training that I didn’t suffer a whole lot from this absence of running beforehand. I didn’t train as hard as I expected to before the race, but I found myself weighing a surf outing versus a run, and I often chose the water instead. I guess my shoulders were in great shape from all of the paddling and may have even helped in cardio training. So, on race morning, I felt amazing for the first 7 or 8 miles, a huge smile on my face and holding a 6:45 minutes/mile pace. Amanda stuck with me for about the first mile, then I started decreasing my splits as my body felt able. The race went by quite quickly for me, it surely didn’t seem like 1:27.44 had passed since we started the race when I finished. I was trying to decrease my splits for the last couple miles, but still have enough energy left at the end for a kick down the last straight. I believe my last mile was somewhere around 6:00, but my calves were quivering and about to lock up with cramps in the last 100 yards. My parents, grandparents, and a couple of Holly’s friends were there to cheer us on, so that was pretty awesome to have them giving us support a couple miles away from the finish. My mom remarked that we all looked like we were just cruising with no pain, even at the 11 mile mark in the race. I thought this was an ironic statement coming from her because, there she was, standing on the side of the path, cheering us on, who were actually running in her honor of the nearly painless battle with those pesky fast growing cells. Afterwards, we were all very proud of each other, and I felt a bit more involved in her fight. It is unfortunate that I have not been able to be around during all of the doctors visits, surgeries, and rough times, but she sure is an amazing woman. I just saw her without her wig on today, and other than her being a beautiful woman even without hair, I’m looking forward to it coming back.
After running some errands and Christmas shopping in the Augusta traffic for a day, I was off again to go backpacking with Mike Armstrong and Lucky on the Appalachian Trail in North Georgia. We hiked up to Tray Mountain (2nd highest point in Georgia), and there be enjoyed an awesome fire and a windy night with the helpful protection of a shelter there. Some mice defied gravity and made it past the bear and squirrel proof food hanging system, but they only got into a few granola bars and some hot chocolate. I can only imagine the celebration dance they do when they see the hikers set up camp and revel in the fact that the food cannot really be hidden from them. Mike read some of the entries in the trail log at the shelter to me, and one sentence stuck out: “A cowboy’s philosophy – if you got a hill to climb, waitin’ ain’t gonna make it any smaller.” There was an entry in there from some people from Kentucky who were either joking, or really have absolutely no idea how to properly communicate in written English. It’s hard for me to imagine how someone could make it through high school without knowing how to properly spell most words. Anyways, the hike was a great chance for me to get a deep breath of that cool mountain air. On the way home, we stopped at this little outfitter shop where they have some pretty hard core gear for sale, and I spotted a pair of Chaco sandals on sale for $25, down from the regular $95. The funny part is, they were size 14, and that just happens to be what size Mike wears – even if it wasn’t me making the purchase, I still got pleasure from the sick deal he got.
Wednesday night, my sister had a birthday gathering at our house, where I got a chance to see the beautiful Kayla Bourne, and also to speak some Spanish with one of Holly’s exchange student friends. My comprehension ability had not diminished nearly as rapidly as my speaking ability, but I was still pleased with my performance.
Thursday, just before we left to go to Michigan, my car arrived from its trip across the country. Covered in hydraulic fluid from a broken hose on the carrier truck, my car was filthy. I wiped it down before we left, finding scratches on the left front bumper and a broken wind guard around the sunroof, two things I was not very happy with. I think professionals should treat customers’ belongings as their own, and that didn’t seem to be the case in this situation. I understand that those shipping trucks are tight quarters, though, and am still very grateful for the fact that my company paid for all of my moving costs.
In Michigan, we had multiple family gatherings where just about all of my Hess relatives were present - all 16 cousins. We gathered on the night of the 23rd at my grandparents’ house in East Lansing. It was fun to get to share some of the exciting stories from my travels of the last 8 months, answering many questions about life in California and recent interactions with the ladies. I think my most common comment about ladies was about finding Catherine, an awesome girl with logic, and her describing directions to her house in terms of street names and cardinal directions, which I thought was very impressive. It was awesome to see how they are all growing up; my dad’s youngest sister has four kids who are impeccably trained, with the youngest being five years old and incredibly fun to play with. My dad turns into a little kid around those cousins – he’s always a bucking bronco with a few rodeo clowns on his back or something along those lines. We also regularly have family musical time, where the kids display something they’ve learned with what musical instruments they play, and somehow I was coaxed into playing the recorder in front of everyone. I never really thought about it, but I remembered the song that I knew how to play being called Old Lang Syne, but it turns out that it was Amazing Grace, and I just didn’t realize it. They all thought it was quite humorous that I said one song and played another, and even more amusing that I didn’t have a clue that it was wrong.
Christmas was great, I got more than I expected and was pleased with all of my presents. I really enjoyed getting to play ping pong every night with my sister and my cousins. On Tuesday night, we went to Troy (a suburb of Detroit) for another family gathering where we went shopping, bowling, and I got a driving tour of Detroit with my dad and my grandpa. That was cool because I’ve been to Michigan so many times before, but never had a chance to see the famous Motor City. It sure has seen its better day, with lots of houses that are falling down and a few abandoned buildings right in the heart of downtown. The Lions and Tigers stadiums are right next to each other, which I thought was an interesting way to attract people back to the heart of this old city. I also didn’t realize that Canada was just across a river from Detroit – I thought you had to drive across a great lake to get to Canada. We had my dog Lucky in the car, and we didn’t think we could smuggle her in, so we decided not to drive over to Canada, which would have allowed me to be in the eight different countries in one year. It was cool to see the headquarters for the big car companies, as well as the now famous 8 Mile road. My cousin John left the morning of our departure to go pick up his girlfriend and bring her back to Okemos. Unfortunately, we missed getting to meet here by a couple hours. His girlfriend, Kelsey, will be studying in Madrid for the semester, while he will be studying in Rome. I left him a note that outlined some of my suggestions for travel in Europe, namely some cool hostels, things to do in Switzerland, and some helpful websites. It’s really neat to be able to do that for him, just to say that I’ve been there already.
I have been reading a book called American Prometheus, a biography of the famous American physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who managed the Manhattan Project (that produced the atomic bomb). After reading much about the political history of that period in relation to Oppie’s surroundings of the day, I had many questions about socialism, fascism, communism, and the McCarthy period. Fortunately, my uncle used to be a history teacher and was able to thoroughly educate me on any subject I could ask questions about. My cousin John, who’s studying political science at Wheaton College in Chicago, was very well informed in this realm and started me reading Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, a piece of literature that seemingly had a large influence on Oppenheimer’s political views. This pamphlet, only about 45 pages long, speaks to those already informed of communism and presents the idealism of a man scared by the onslaught of unbridled capitalism. I find it interesting that the intellectuals of the day are drawn to communism because of its theoretical flawlessness. The reason this is interesting, in my mind, is that, due to the restrictions of the social interaction and the psychological tendencies of human nature, this supposed perfect system is horribly flawed. Maybe Marx’s ideas were so much ahead of their time that they actually apply to a world of artificial intelligence, where pride and prejudice do not play a role in the relationship between ‘individuals.’
Now that I’m done my share of economic theory for this blog, I’ll tell you what I did in the days following our return from Michigan. We got home from Michigan at 4 am on Thursday morning, and I started my drive to Greenville, South Carolina at 10 am to meet up with Hayley, the girl I traveled with this summer. She invited me to accompany her to a Debutant Ball, which requires me to wear a tux with tails and white gloves. If you haven’t heard of debutants before, here’s how I understand it: Its roots start in the high class southern families who made sure their daughters were educated in high society living, namely proper dancing, manners, and other skills necessary to court the high society young men of the day. Since then, this had transformed into groups across the south, who are based around the social circles of parents who were previously involved in such things. So the point of this whole deal is a young woman is to “debut” the Christmas of her first year in college, and through this process her father is presenting her to society as being ready to start takings suitors for marriage. Now that we’ve got that over, I can tell you how I got involved. As I do not know how to dance, am not from high society, and am still budding in my education of these things, I wouldn’t seem to be prepared for such an outing. As luck would have it though, my invitation included only the requirement of being able to munch and mingle, a skill in which I am fast becoming a professional. If I mentioned that I’m looking forward to seeing southern belles before, I think I’m about to hit the cream of the crop! It’s going to be an educational experience either way, and I am very much looking forward to it.
I will be moving into my new apartment in a couple weeks, and I’m looking forward to being in a more grown up atmosphere outside of the dorms. I think the coming semester is going to be a lot of work, I have five classes that will have multiple homeworks due every week. The wonderful thing about this, though, is that I will be done with class every day at 11 am. This means that I will be perfectly set up to workout and knock some homework out before going back to the distractions at my apartment.
