Learning matlab early

Graduation

Josh does in fact have a masters now.

Sorry!

Sorry for the restricted page email earlier. I was trying to solve some blog-related problems.

Amanda

Restricted page

The blog you were trying to access (OhioSchmenck.blogspot.com) is password protected. Please contact us if you would like the password. - Josh and Amanda

Hermes 10 miler

Hi Everyone! I did my first ever 10 mile race today. A woman I know had entered and couldn't race, so she gave me her entry (that's why my number says Meghan on it). I finished in 1 hr 48 minutes, which comes out to 10 min 50 sec miles, but I stopped to go to the bathroom and that took 3 minutes, so I think that my real pace was closer to 10 min 30 sec. I'm super excited. One of the highlights of the race was seeing a woman running with her 6 month old in a stroller. Turns out she is an ob/gyn and was really supportive of me being out there running. The picture is of my friend, Lilli, and me at the finish. Lilli has type 1 diabetes and is training for the Cleveland marathon next month. She finished at a pace of something like 8.5 min miles.

amanda :)

Chagrin river cx

Josh came in 3rd today in a 14 person cat 3 cx race!!! Won $20 too!!

Sent from my iPhone

African (afghan)

After 5 years, I finally finished it!

WVMBA #2 Big Bear Classic

This weekend was the Big Bear Classic in the beautiful countryside of West Virginia. Nestled up in the hills is Big Bear Lake surrounded by 4000 acres of private forest land with approximately 40 miles of single track. The terrain offers a variable mix of technical climbs and descents with twisty single track in between.

The experts race had an interesting twist in that they had a short prologue with a $30 prime for the first one across the line. This brought the racers back around for some cheers from the waiting sport and beginner racers. The sport and beginner was a mass start with all charging down a short section of double track and into a bottleneck at the first incline. The bottleneck is of course a large rock on one side and trees on the other. I worked my way through some stopped riders and into the middle of the pack and was feeling pretty good until I dropped my chain the first time. Something that was going to be part of the rest of my race. We got into the single track which was nice and twisty for the first couple of miles and then got more technical. Miles 3 and 4 consisted of some nice technical and muddy singletrack. There were some fun rolling rock drops and some narrow jaunts through boulders. I caught my wheel a couple of times that resulted in a little "a" over teakettle. My legs were feeling pretty good and whenever I stopped it gave me a chance to get something to eat and drink.

There were some nice climbs with flowing downs. It seemed like I would work my way into a group and then get past them and have a problem. At one point I lost my heart rate monitor watch and had to go back to retrieve it. Luckily somebody had picked it up and handed it off to me as they passed. With my watch back on and about 3/4 of the way through the race I wanted to make up some of the places that I lost.

I came in at 8th place for my class which was about the middle of the group. Amanda on the other hand did a little bit better. Here she is at the end:

Look at that smile, she thinks she did well.

Here she is with her second place mug. And here is my award which they gave to everyone:

The last piece of info is Amanda's prize from last week, a new floor pump.

 

 

Wvmba 2

I finished 2nd and josh 8th. His category is much bigger and more competitive. Great race!

Sent from my iPhone

Wvmba

We are about to start a mountain bike race in 40 deg weather and 20 mph winds!

Sent from my iPhone

The Challenge at Mountwood - Or how I learned to push a bike up hill

This weekends race at Mountwood outside of Parkersburg West Virginia was a welcome relief to riding on the cold roads of Oberlin, Ohio. With the first real hot day coming in at over 80 we knew that it would be tough but how tough I didn't know. We got up at 6 am for the three hour drive to the event which started at noon. Sufficeth to say we made it to the venue with plenty of time to spare but lacking our trustee floor pump.

After sorting everything out, getting registered and dressed we went out for a quick ride which is when I noticed that my front derailleur was not retracting properly between the high and low gears. I had taken care to make sure that everything was shifting fine the day before but somewhere along the line something occured resulting in some binding in the derailleur itself causing it to stick in the high gear. Fortunately I got the shifting working to an acceptable level and was ready to race. Or so I thought...

I got grouped with the sport men vet, because I am racing in the Ohio series which has different age groupings I was in with the 34+ ages. I was actually ok with this since I don't really want to race against the 19-29 year olds if I don't have to. We were the third group out with a short climb followed by quick steep corner onto some double track. This corner was the bottle neck that started the breaking up of the group. Since about half of the guys paused and lost momentum bottling up the rest of the group. I was lucky and got a clear line through some of the guys without having to get off my bike. We had warmed up on the first climb and so I was prepared for some of the steeper sections. I was pushing myself along trying to get into the middle of the pack and maintain a good pace only passing as needed. My heart rate was bumping pretty high and the heat was starting to affect my need for water. I was tracking between some groups that were making good pace but after the first couple of miles I could tell that there was something wrong with how I was feeling overall. I woke up that morning with a nasty runny nose and overall was not feeling terribly well and it sure felt like I was doing a lot of climbing. But then we started going down hill and everything was good, or so I thought...

More climbing pretty much sums up this race for me with a fair amount of walking. Throughout the race I was having bouts of doubt about whether or not I was going to actually finish. My goal for the race eventually changed from coming in middle of the pack to just finishing the damn thing and getting some water and food. By the last mile I was willing to bag it all and quit except that I still needed to get back to the car so I needed to finish. Rolling into the finish I got some water and made it back to the car in time to see Amanda coming down the last stretch.

Overall the race was fun but much harder than I expected. Good single track with lots of climbing and fun (short) descents. Oh and Amanda got 3rd so we got a new floor pump.

 

Naw Ruz

A year ago we competed in a mountain bike race in china on our new single speeds. We had only been in Sichuan 1 week. Today we are celebrating Naw Ruz with our first, outdoor Ohio mountain bike ride. Our first race is in 2 weeks.

We have our priorities straight

This is our new living room.

Zoomed in

Here is the zoom in of our favorite local sign.

Funny sign

I got my new iPhone yesterday and found this old photo that I forgot to post. Next I will send the zoom in of the sign.

Yes, we are back...

That's right, after a 10 month stay in China et al. we have arrived back in the global climate change prospecticus that is Seattle. That is to say that the moderate winter temperatures that we normally have were thrown out for cold wet and snowy weather. Yay. However this has hardly damped our spirits and we are still going through with the move to Ohio via the southerner route. That does not mean that this blog will be forgotten I think that I will keep it up and tell of our adventures in old world Ohio, you know C-town and such, so keep tuned in for more fun.

sometimes I take the hit

What is the preverbial hit that I took for the team you ask? Well as usual during dinner with a Chinese party liner who insists that we eat what he orders I enjoyed a type of food that I thought I would never try. You see what happens when we go out for these dinners is that Amanda does not mention that she is a vegetarian and so the host orders what he thinks everyone will like. Now I have been known to be somewhat gastronomically experimental at times, hey I've tried raw oysters without hot sauce and a chaser. Ok that is not that experimental but I have had the tongue of a duck which is the part of a duck that I would rather not be in mouth to mouth contact with. Anyhow in my current case it was something that tasted like chicken but had the consistency of fish. If you are familiar with Western Chinese cuisine then you would know that what I was eating were frogs. Or toads. I don't really know the difference well enough when they are sitting in a soup bowl.
This is the second time that we have been hosted by this particular guy to dinner and while I have found it interesting the first time resulted in me eating turtles, yet another creature that does not belong on my personal plate. While I can honestly say that I did try both of them and that the overall flavors were not such that I was revolted I don't think that it is something that I would pursue on a regular basis. That is to say that once is enough for me and since I can safely say that I have eaten more than one frog I am now an expert at how to extract what little meat there is from their pathetic little bodies.
Getting back to Amanda's vegetarianism my thought is that she should feel extremely lucky to have a husband that is willing to eat the weird stuff and meat that gets ordered for her and that she sudtlely hides under the rice in her bowl. Our close friends know that she is a veg and all the meat usually gets thrown to my plate, which I don't mind that much. However is it so much to ask that I get a little  thanks now and again for having to gastronomically sacrifice for her benefit. I mean I am taking the hit in the stomach by distracting our host from the fact that she is picking the vegetables out from under the la roe (piggy).

New blog

I've started a new blog on my new adventures as a baby professor. http://drjzg.blogspot.com.

Amanda

skype down temporarily

Skype seems to be temporarily down, so if you are trying to call us and it won't go through, that's why. Sorry about the problems, but they are totally out of our control.

Amanda and Josh

New blog for the new prof

I'm thinking of setting up a blog on my experiences as a new prof. I'm torn between a psuedonym where I keep things general enough that I don't talk about research in too much detail and can rant or an out-there-in-the-open Amanda blogging about the environment, China, research, and being a new teacher. I like the science blogging community I've found this year... and both the anonymous and non-anonymous blogs. But cannot decide which I'd prefer to be. I don't think that doing both make sense. What do you think?