Lesson #7: Don’t dial 9 for an outside line at the cabin

I run a handful of websites as part of my job and hobby.  One of these sites controls the paging interface for nurses to get a hold of the doctors in the hospital.  Let’s see if I can give you an example…Well, lets say Johnny is having a heart attack on Station 20, and the nurse needs to get a hold of the doctor.  So, it is kind of an important web site.  The others are much less important.  The company that hosts the websites was bought by another company a few months ago.  So they had to move all of the web sites from the old company’s servers over to the new ones.  I called twice before this happened to let them know that there couldn’t be any time when the site was not working during the transfer. 

Paragraph two: nothing in paragraph 1 worked out as expected.  They moved the sites last Friday.  The sites stopped working Friday afternoon while I was driving to the cabin.  I spent my weekend on the phone with tech support getting the sites back up, and then they would crash again.  This went on for the next 7 days and made for one hell of a week.  So I talked to them on Thursday night and told them I had to get the site in a stable situation because I was going to the cabin for the weekend and couldn’t deal with this again from the cabin.  Sure enough, Friday night when I was eating dinner at the cabin, the site went down again. Surprise.

I now had the tech support phone# memorized from dialing it 40-45 times this week from the hospital.  I picked up the phone at the cabin, dialed 9-1…(I was trying to get an outside line like I was at the hospital, and dial a long distance number), then I realized I didn’t need to dial 9-1 so just started dialing the memorized number 1-877-228-3849.  It didn’t ring because I had dialed 9-1-1-877-228-3849.  I hung up and dialed 1-877-228-3849.  I was on the phone with tech support for the next 30 minutes.  The end result is that I moved my websites off their servers so I could relax and enjoy the weekend.  I hung up the phone, and as I walked back into the living room of the cabin, the sheriff came bolting down the road into the cabin.  The phone rang, Jessie answered, a woman on the other line asked “What is the emergency?”  Jessie said, “What?”  The lady said, “Someone called 911 thirty minutes ago, and we have been trying to get a hold of someone there for the last 30 minutes, but the line has been busy.”  Jessie asked if someone called 911.  Everyone said no.  The sheriff arrived, explained that he had just driven 30 miles at 80mph to get here.  It took him 35min though, so his math didn’t line up.  After everyone settled down a little, I realized that I had tried to dial an outside line from the cabin.  It was, however, a website emergency.  The sheriff didn’t think that was funny.  The website is working fine now, and I’m enjoying my Memorial Day weekend at the cabin.

Here’s the crew from the Rusk County Sheriff’s Dept

Lesson #6: Don’t fight with someone until you verify with your wife that his wife isn’t a professor in her department.

I am emergently typing this blog, because my wife is telling her side of the story on her blog, and I’m sure there are some problems with her version.  So here’s the true version of a very unfortunate situation Friday night last. 

I am a runner.  I bike because it is 1/3 of a triathlon.  That is the only reason.  So for the last 10 years, I have run around Lake Phalen 6-7 days a week.  It takes me 35-36min depending on the day.  It is 4.37 miles.  I can run around it with a blindfold on.  There are two giant hills on the route.  Both of which I avoid by moving over to the biking path which takes the low road.  I hate hills.  Never, in 10 years, over 3,000 trips around the lake with my running shoes, has anyone pissed me off.  That is, until last Friday when I was running with Jessie around the lake.

18min into the run, Jessie and I approach hill #1 and move onto the biking path.  A couple comes up behind us and says “Passing on your left x 2,” and we move over.  They fly by.  Somewhat of an unusual sight around Lake Phalen, I must say.  The paths are usually full of little chubby kids on Big Wheels, a grown man carrying a monkey in a twins uniform on his shoulder, lots of runners, lots of Hmong families walking 4 abreast, but rarely a professional biker.  

24min into the run, hill #2 arrives, and we move to the biking trail with the other 50 people walking on the biking trail.  In my rear-view ear, I hear “On your lefffffffffffft.”  No need to move over, as we are already single file on the right side of the biking path that is 8 ft. wide.  The bikers who passed us on hill #1 passed again, but this time there was an added “This is a bike trail!”  I was not in the best mood, and said, “Hey, if it is such a problem, get on the street where you have a private bike lane painted.”  At the end of the hill, the guy parked his bike in the middle of the path, and clipped out.  Stood there waiting for me to arrive.  Jessie said, “Oh shit” and moved over to the running path.  I continued on the bike path to see what this professional biker wanted to tell me.  He started yelling at me. I yelled back at him and told him to go a lot of different places. I explained to him that there are 2 spots we jump onto the bike path with the other 400 people not on bikes walking around Phalen.  I also told him that the only law on the bike paths is a bike speed limit of 10 mph, which he and his wife were well over.  He asked me a strange question, “Are you a bike?”  I said, “Yes,” and this made him confused I think.  He was in my face, but I didn’t punch him.  Jessie was getting worried across on the walking path and started yelling, “Stop it you guys, lets go.”  I turned and started to walk away with a few more words for the professional biker, and he decided that he was going to pull a move off of page #5 from the 6th graders handbook for girl fights.  He tried to trip me with his bike shoe as I walked away.  Yes, the trip move.  Unsuccessful.  But this really pissed Jessie off, who all of a sudden comes running over and starts calling the guy an as**ol! for “getting physical” as she called it.  He asked her if she could read.  Jessie didn’t reply. 

Then he started to walk towards me again.  His wife, who was standing off her bike up ahead yelled at him to stop.  At that moment, Jessie looked at his wife and realized that it was a professor in her department at the U of M.  Awesome.  We very quickly all realized that this needed to stop, and they rode away and we ran on the running path again.  I think he realized that his question about whether Jessie could read was not appropriate for someone finishing their PhD in literacy education in his wife’s department.  Area of altercation with blood red star in map below.

30min into the run, we see them waiting on the path ahead with their helmets off standing next to their bikes.  They had checkered flags waving as we ran towards them.  We were either going to fight, old-school, or they were apologizing.  I was secretly hoping for the former.  They apologized, made small talk, shook my hand, etc.  I was not impressed, but can be very collegial if I need to be.  And I really needed to be for Jessie’s sake.  All I was thinking the whole time was that it was a good thing he hadn’t successfully tripped me because I would have given Jessie’s professor’s husband a broken nose back there. 

It was their first time riding around Lake Phalen.  I think they realized that it isn’t a spot to go on a Friday night for a smooth bike ride on the path if you want to go fast like real professionals do.  Maybe this will be their last trip around Lake Phalen.  He told me he didn’t want to be one of those guys that “gives bikers a bad name.”  It was the first time they had been bike riding as they got their bikes the day before from the store.  I’d say that’s a bad way to start out your professional bike-riding career if you don’t want to be “one of those bikers.” 

My lesson…Never get into a fight with someone until you verify with your wife that the guy is not the husband of one of her professors.  Sub lesson: this guy is a major as**ol!  Sub-sub lesson: I have good restraint because every person I’ve told this story to would have punched the guy after the 6th grader trip move.  Last lesson: don’t fight while exercising, it is stupid and throws off your pace.

Lesson #5: Manure vs. LECA, City vs. Farm, Heirloom vs. Hybrid

STUDY DESIGN

A small, triple variable, prospective, cohort study conducted at a large metropolitan hospital in Minneapolis, MN (n=3)

BACKGROUND:

Variable #1: LECA stands for Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate.  Manure is, for the purpose of this post, a liquid farm slurry of cow shit.

Variable #2: The city is St. Paul, and the farm is in Little Canada, MN. 

Variable #3a:  A hybrid is usually a car that combines a conventional internal combustion propulsion system with an electric propulsion system with names reminiscent of future planets, Greek characters, and energy nomenclature.  But, this time of year at our house, it refers to a tomato that has been commercially bred by crossing two distinct parents that are inbred for disease resistance, evening ripening, firm skins.  You find them at the grocery store because they have been bred for commercial purposes to be machine picked, to last on the shelf for 3 to 4 weeks and pretty much you get what amounts to a tennis ball; slightly different color and taste.  Taste suffers and the tomato’s durability and new facelift characteristics prevail. 

Variable #3b: So finally, what is an heirloom?  Grandma’s broche is one.  My brother’s underwear, another.  The wooden desk from Benjamin Franklin’s fish cleaning house yet another.  But, this time of year at our house, that term is used with respect to tomatoes.  An heirloom tomato is of a variety that has been passed down from generation to generation because of some cherished characteristic.  There are 4 classes of heirloom tomatoes.  They are:

1. Commercial Heirlooms: Open-pollinated varieties introduced before 1940, or tomato varieties more than 50 years in circulation.
2. Family Heirlooms: Seeds that have been passed down for several generations through a family.
3. Created Heirlooms: Crossing two known parents (either two heirlooms or an heirloom and a hybrid) and dehybridizing the resulting seeds for how ever many years/generations it takes to eliminate the undesirable characteristics and stabilize the desired characteristics, perhaps as many as 8 years or more.
4. Mystery Heirlooms: Varieties that are a product of natural cross-pollination of other heirloom varieties.

In recent years, the number of heirloom tomato varieties has plummeted proportional to the decrease in small family farms that supported heirloom lines of tomatoes. The unique heirloom varieties that had adapted to survive well for hundreds of years are being lost or replaced by newer hybrid tomatoes, genetically altered to be beautiful on the shelves of grocery stores.  As the number of heirloom varieties decreases, so does the genetic variability of this vegetable.  Every heirloom tomato type is genetically unique and inherent in this uniqueness is an evolved resistance to pests and diseases.  Local heirloom varieties have adapted to specific growing conditions and climates in places like Minnesota.  This narrowing of the genetic pool, and loss of adaptable characteristics has been called “genetic erosion.”

So with that background, the contest of opposites begins this week between a few friendly tomato growers at the hospital. 

METHODS

My little 40 sqft. backyard plot in the inner city of St. Paul, with a pH balanced 1/3 manure, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 dirt mixture will house my brandywine, boxcar willie, sungold, and black prince tomato plants.  My friend, Deb, will plant hers in 100% manure in the distant outskirts of the Twin Cities where the air is fresh and the deer roam free, and my boss, Terry, will plant his in LECA (“clay balls” as he calls them) next to his orchids in the basement, and grow the tomatoes hydroponically with exact (to the mmol) control of nutrients, UV light, and temperature. 

RESULTS

This contest will end late in September when we have the “taste off” in the office at work.  Perhaps Terry’s will taste like clay, Deb’s will taste nice and hearty organic, and mine will taste like exhaust from the neighbor’s 1982 diesel volvo rolling down the alley next to my tomato bed all summer (it’s the only spot in my yard that gets more than a couple hours of sun each day).  In the end, the genetics of the tomato will prevail over the conditions they grow in, and they will all make great additions to caprese salads, pasta sauce, and hamburgers all summer long.  While we enjoy our tomatoes, we will each do our part to keep a couple heirlooms going this summer maintaining some genetic variability in the days of tennis ball tomatoes. 

CONCLUSION

So is there a lesson in this Lesson #5 blog?  Not yet, but I expect it to be that you shouldn’t grow tomatoes in clay balls.  We’ll see when I get the Results section finished.