Blowing & Drifting

I dunno what students are thinking when they leave their bicycles outside all winter, but the snow does make for some interestingly immobilized bikes. It’s a good thing this bike’s owner put that plastic bag over the seat. At least that’ll stay dry.

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Looking out my office window throughout the day, I often feel a pang of sadness for my bike, which sits out there all day in the cold, halfway up the snowbank that covers most of the bike rack. (I’ve anthropomorphized my belongings like this as long as I can remember: I recall introducing my G.I. [...]

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Over the Christmas break, I took advantage of a week away from work and plentiful, excellent snow to hold my own little ski-training camp. Not only was the “camp” a great way to burn off the Christmas calories, but it turned to be a decent way to get into something like ski shape as I [...]

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A few shots of indoor activities on the snow day and a number of them from outdoors, where Northfield looked awfully U.P.-ish.

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Go cross-country skiing and wear your breath.

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Friday’s snowfall – mini-blizzard, at best – laid down an excellent layer of snow, and by gum Northfield’s intrepid skiers had created some excellent trails by the afternoon. I enjoyed a good hour-long ski (actually, 40 minutes of skiing and 20 minutes of happy conversation with other skiers and a bowhunter [!]) in the near-perfect [...]

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Lower Lyman Lake on the Carleton campus is apparently a major stop on the Canada goose flyway. Until seeing this sight, I had always kinda wondered why Canada geese are gray, black, and white. Turns out, their coloration evolved not in response to golf courses but to wintry bodies of water. Clever, geese! Clever!

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I had to cross campus today on some errands, and the the outing turned into a wonderful winter walk. Campus was almost visibly settling down into its late-year hibernation, now that almost all the students are gone for winter break (and all the profs are off in their “grading jails”). The cold quiet was magnificent, [...]

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I got pretty soaked riding to work this morning, which got me 90% of the way to deciding to finally buy some Gore-Tex gear. The only thing repellent about my water repellent shell (eight years old) or my windpants (five years old) is how much water they let through. (The worst day I’ve ever had [...]

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One of the many construction projects at Carleton this summer was the remodeling of the entrance to the campus center, Sayles-Hill: The plaza area in front of Sayles-Hill has been redesigned to provide additional bike parking and better pedestrian circulation. Most of the existing sidewalks will be removed. The project will be staged so that [...]

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As I often say, one of the best things about working at Carleton is going to all the excellent events that the College sponsors. Tonight’s example was a wonderful lecture by the cartoonist/graphic novelist Ben Katchor, best known for his comic strip, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer – a strip I discovered in the Chicago [...]

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Is there any manly – or even semi-masculine – way to carry those little wire-handled takeout boxes? Have any students ever been injured after a collision caused by someone reading while walking? Have any students ever been injured after being run down by someone biking at 15mph through a crowd of pedestrians? Just how do [...]

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September was the second “30 Days of Biking” event. As I posted way back on August 31, I gave it a go, having successfully completed the first 30DoB in April. Thanks to good weather, a great bike, a wonderful commuting route, lots of excellent road riding right near the house, and the bit of incentive [...]

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Friday was flood day in Northfield. Others have covered the freak storm and flash flooding in great detail, so here I’ll just post a short clip of the river flowing well above flood stage, as seen from the Second Street Bridge in Northfield, MN. Cannon River Flood at Northfield from Christopher Tassava on Vimeo. The [...]

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One item on the long list of great things about working at Carleton is that I can attend the weekly presentations offered by the College’s Perlman Center for Teaching and Learning (which is, perversely, called the “LTC”). Today’s presentation , conducted by a geology prof, a psych prof, and a student, was great: Digital Nation: Electronic [...]

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