michael fulk’s blog

The third day began as another hot, scorching day.* Our first fifteen miles were quickly covered to arrive at the Evansville church for a meet up and short break. It seems like it was relatively soon after that when we crossed over into Michigan. We rode for a short time on State Line Road, then turned north again.

Our route led us up (and down) more hills, though I think that the way we traveled this time around was overall less hilly than previous trips. By late afternoon, when we were about five miles or so from the church we stayed in for the night, the weather had cooled and actually began to drizzle just a bit.  Which was a nice way to end the day.

Today was more tiring so I really just went to bed instead of writing. Somewhere along the line today or yesterday, the start/stop button the my bike computer stopped working so I don’t have a good idea how far the trip was today. Oh, well.

Here’s a few photos:

* With the conference and being quite tired…then getting sick and being busy, I’ve finally written this up - and back dated it so that it is on the right day.

Today was (hopefully) the longest day of the trip…85 miles! I volunteered to help with the slow group partly because I knew my sister would probably join that group. We left Kokomo about 7:30 and headed on North. After a while on country roads, we hopped on the Nickel Plate Trail which after a small detour, was a quite pleasant, shady ride into Peru. Especially since the last couple miles is a 2% downhill grade.

Didn’t stay much longer in Peru than just to group everyone up and make sure no one was lost. Eventually made it, over hills and past Amish and in the scorching sun, to the town of Mentone for a 2pm lunch. After sixty something miles. That left about 25 miles or so remaining to Nappanee. We’re staying at this amazingly huge church in what looks to be the room for the youth worship, hard to say for sure.

Overall, today seemed a bit more tiring. I know I was flagging a bit near the end and my hands and behind hurt. Other than that, a good ride. Going to bed now so we can be up at 6 again.*

* I took a few less photos today and will eventually post them, but not now.

Having arrived Indianapolis at about 3am, I slept in a bit and then met up with one of the bike groups on the way up the Monon Trail. While I did miss the first 15 or so miles of the trip I had a few things to take care of before I left for the next week and a half.

Throughout the day, I ended up joining different groups after breaks or stopping to take care of a flat tire. This particular trip (the third time I’ve done it) is especially fun because three of my youngest siblings are riding as well.

I was able to ride with my younger sister a lot of the way; hopefully she was encouraged along the way to keep going. She is six months younger than my brother was when he went on the trip four years ago, so it will be quite the personal accomplishment for her. I planning to do my best to help her achieve that goal.

There were times when I wondered about being too tired to keep pedaling or when my hands (for some reason) fell asleep. In the end we made it successfully the approximately 65 miles to Kokomo and had a cookout dinner - good stuff. No one was seriously hurt and while some groups got lost the worst was about 8 miles out of the way. Well, I’m going to crash as we have an eighty-five mile stretch to go tomorrow and we’re getting up at 6 to take advantage of the cooler morning.

I took a few photos, but don’t have time to post them now. Maybe tomorrow lunch or later in the evening.

I don’t know why this has taken me so long to sit down and finish this, but for some reason it’s been a week…oh, well. My parents decided to come out to visit me in my new apartment for the Independence Day weekend* and brought my four youngest siblings with them**. They arrived in time for dinner Friday, then we drove over to my office building to watch the downtown fireworks.

As we had some time, I showed them around the office space itself since they’d not seen where I work now that W|W has moved. Shortly before 9:30, we went up onto the roof to watch the fireworks. The owner of the building was apparently hosting a party, so we stayed behind and out of the way. I think this was the first 4th of July fireworks I’ve seen in Pittsburgh since I’ve been out here. While we had a fairly good point of view, the smoke from the explosions blew our general direction and obscured somewhat the best view. There were also lasers added to the mix, in addition to being the show synchronized to a music track played over one of the local radio stations. I didn’t take any photos, myself, as my camera doesn’t do well in the dark and my dad brought his Canon DSLR.

Saturday we did a lot of work cleaning my apartment (see my floorplan on the right). It started out relatively clean when I first moved in, but really needed a solid ’spring-cleaning’ to get rid of the fine bits of dirt in various places. Mom and I went shopping for various cleaning materials and stuff that I didn’t have yet in my collection. The windows were cleaned inside and out, the floor in the kitchen (under both the refrigerator and stove), vacuumed the carpets, &c.

On Sunday we went to North Hills RPC as I usually do. I really wanted to play softball in the afternoon with the rest of the Yinz Team***, but decided that the best choice would be to spend time with my family since they’d come out out here to spend time with me. We ate lunch at Bob Evans, stopped by my previous place to pick up a couple things I’d left, and went back to my apartment for the remainder of the afternoon. Helped them pack up then we stopped by Rita’s to see what they offer in the way of frozen dessert before I sent them on their way back to Indy (since dad and my sister had to be back for work on Monday). Good stuff, have to go back again. =)

*Since I’d decided it would be best as well as most cost-efficient to stay here in Pittsburgh rather than spend the $120 it’d take to get home to Indy.

**The other three — two are married and one is in southern Indiana for school and summer work.

***This week another team had a bye week and we could definitely use the practice so a game was set up for the afternoon.

Tonight was game four for the Pittsburgh Sports League softball team I’m on with a bunch of other greater Pittsburgh area new media people. The origin of the team came when tehjim asked on Twitter what softball position each would want to play. I guess there was enough feedback that it was clear there’d be enough people to play so here we are, playing. As the Yinz Team, in gold.

We definitely aren’t there to win at all cost, but to have fun. It’s been quite the hoot playing with the loudest team and getting soundly beaten every time so far. Which I attribute to this being our first time playing as a team and that we (generally) aren’t particularly athletic. In fact, tonight we lost 0-18 but stayed around and chatted until the 9:00 game was about to start. Many of the other teams seem to take it just a bit too seriously. Nonetheless, we seem to be doing better as we go along - if only we could get a few more runs so that the game would go a bit longer than five innings.

Go Yinz Team!

This weekend was the Summer Solstice, so now it’s officially summer. =) And I’m finally moved into a new apartment about 0.67 miles (if my bike computer is to be trusted) away from the last place I was at and that much closer to work. Took essentially all day Saturday with the final loads brought up at about 1 am. Plus, for some unknown reason I wasn’t feeling on top of the world so that compounded things. Gratefully a friend from school and her husband were able to come help me move the big stuff in their rented truck (which was all that was available when they went to rent something due to their poor minivan having caught fire last week).

Tonight, while riding home from the PCPGH3 planning meeting in Bellevue, I saw a myriad of fireflies. Shiny! I think they must have been waiting to come out until Summer (or I just haven’t been looking for them). The weather today was gorgeous so I had decided to ride my bike both to work and then on to the meeting. Really need to be biking more, first for exercise and second to be in shape for a 300 mile ride I’m hoping to go on in July. We shall see.

Here’s a few photos of my new place in its state of disarray due to my indecision of how to use the various rooms and where to put things.

Today Mozilla is due to release the final version of Firefox 3. I’ve been using the betas and RC versions for the last month or two at work and have been pleased with how it runs.

Someone decided it would be awesome to try to set the world record for most downloads in one day, but it seems like that plan might have backfired a bit as everyone is visiting the site at 10am Pacific Time and it’s down at the moment.

Sometime today it should be available at the Mozilla site.

About mid-April someone from the Mattress Factory invited Pittsburgh bloggers to have media access to the April 25 opening of the new exhibit Inner and Outer Space. As I had not visited the Mattress Factory before, I figured I would take the opportunity to explore another museum/gallery and see some new art. Not that I hadn’t heard of the space previously, my friend Heather Mallak of monkey museum has done some work there in the past. Plus, it’s only about 5 minutes from work.

I met Mike Woycheck and Uncle Crappy (and wife) to explore Inner and Outer Space together. The art installations by the nine artists go way beyond the traditional painting in a frame on the wall but break through the confines of the floor, walls and ceiling. The new exhibit, which runs through January 2009, seems to complement the other permanent installations nicely.

I won’t describe all of the pieces but mention some favorites. Probably the one piece which best illustrates the concept of inner and outer spaces is 610-3356 by Sarah Oppenheimer, a “wormhole” or viewport from the floor above out the window of the next lower floor. The view is of what looks to be the neighboring backyard and because of the rounded-rectangle shape at the top and a different shape at the window end, the image has the illusion of being compressed.

The rainbow-like being here by Mark Garry, made up of strings affixed to the floor and ceiling with pins, is probably my favorite. In the same room were a couple tufts of grass and hand-cranked music boxes (which I think played “Over the Rainbow”). Another favorite is a rather ingenious piece on both sides of the wall in front of the elevators, Transparent Brick Wall for Kusama by Mary Temple. If you look closely, you’ll see what looks like the concrete wall is shadow see-through, but in reality the artist used a clever differentiation of white and gray paint to make the shadows.

Likely the most dynamic piece is Instant Before Incident (Marinetti’s Drive 1908) by Luca Buvoli, an abstract metal and fiberglass sculpture depicting a car speeding past (left) and crashing out the window (right). Along with the sculpture is a video/animation of the crash as well as a painting/collage.

I was interested by the wide variety of media and takes the artists took on the topic of Inner and Outer Space including sculpture, video, painting, drawing, fiber optics, robotics, and lighting, just to name a few.

Having been working on the 2008 Carnegie International website for the last couple months, the relationship of the two exhibits titles doesn’t really seem accidental. The Carnegie International exhibit is called Life on Mars and this exhibit is called Inner and Outer Space. Additionally, they are set to close on the same day, January 11.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit the Mattress Factory before or it’s been a while, I reccommend checking it out. Definitely some interesting stuff.

Saturday evening I decided to check out the Prince Caspian movie since I felt the first film was particularly good*. And honestly, it has been many years since I’ve read the book so I can’t properly compare it to the text**. Plus, when I think of Prince Caspian, I think of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which also stars Prince Caspian and is my favorite of the Narnia series (I’ve probably read it 7-8 times at least).

This is the next logical book in the series to make into a film as it is the next time the four children take a trip to Narnia. While it has only been a couple years for the children, more than a thousand years have passed in Narnia and the country is essentially ruled by the evil Mizar (Prince Caspian’s uncle). They are called to Narnia by the Prince sounding Susan’s horn and arrive in the ruins of their castle Cair Paravel. Eventually they help Prince Caspian defeat his uncle but not before they attempt to handle things on their own, without Aslan’s help.

I believe it was certainly worth watching for at least a matinee ticket price. The movie fit in the same quality and style as the first. So much so that you could probably watch them back to back and not notice much difference. The children seemed to act well to me and as before (I don’t quite understand why) I still connected with Susan who has always been my favorite since I first read the books. But Peter’s attempt to take things into his own hands does seem to be something I would do as a first-born. I really didn’t notice anything wrong with it so I’m putting it on my “to buy” list.

* That means it was worth buying the DVD even after watching it in the theater.

** Though, I stopped at Borders on my way home from work last night, took a quick scan through the book and it does appear that the filmmakers were relatively faithful to the story. Obviously they had to leave various little details out so as not to complicate the film, but overall I think they successfully told C.S. Lewis’ story on screen.

Where, oh where, did April go? I was planning to write this fun alphabet story based as an episode of a short story I’ve already written but ended up getting stuck trying to figure out the conflict to solve. I really need to find someone to brainstorm with here in PGH since I’m six hours away from my mom (whom I normally brainstorm with). I’m going to continue to think about and eventually write it. Maybe I’ll end up just posting it here as I come up with it and eventually it will be done.

Taxes were a bother to get filled out this year, much like last year. But at least this time I didn’t try the reciprocal state thing and instead just “changed residency.” And interestingly, the amount I get back from federal taxes is about equal to what I owed the states.

The last couple weekends I’ve gone to several art openings and shows which I’ll write about separately. But since my last post, I did end up taking a few photos of the interior of the office. We’re still working on getting things unpacked and arranged so I’m sure eventually it will look different/more moved into.