Stop this mountain, I want to get off

The Mt. St. Helens hike is a month away, so today I did a "simulation" treadmill workout. As you know if you read this page with any regularity, I'm caught between trying to do hikes to prepare for the big trip and the lack of sufficient natural slope. A treadmill can't really give you the experience of stepping over tree roots and up boulders, but at least it has an incline button.

Of course, it's not exactly a perfect simulation. While an 11% incline at 3.0 miles per hour for 1 hour and 40 minutes may be an approximation of the climb up, the gym's treadmills don't have negative incline setting for the trip down. (I've seen treadmills that do, but never with a decline of more than 5%.) 3.0 mph is also way faster than we will or could hike. Furthermore, I'm not carrying the weight of a backpack. And at the end I did not stop and take pictures, there was no tang of pine in the air, I never stopped for a snack, etc., etc.

Nevertheless, as an endurance test it's a reasonable benchmark, I think. And the one bit of realism it has over actually going out and doing a hike is that the temperature and humidity in the gym is a lot closer to Mt. St. Helens than Tennessee in the summer is.

In other news

As of today, I have a dissertation chair (insert happy dance).

(Does anyone want to buy me this?)

My body won't pay off my credit cards

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Mingle²

Hardin's "Junkyard" Cave

Last night I went caving and actually did in-cave vertical work for the first time in a while. Hardin's Cave is just outside of Nashville and considered an easy beginner cave, but there are a couple of levels that can only be reached by climbing a rope. The folks I went with had explored part of these levels last time and wanted to see the rest. Because the main level is the first level, however, rigging is a challenge - someone has to free climb up to get the rope up there. We took a look at one spot that none of us were willing to risk free climbing. But another place has been permanently rigged, so we went up there. There was actually nothing too exciting up there.

For me the most exciting part was rappelling down. Most of the cavers around here use racks; I use a Petzl Stop, which a lot of people in the Northwest (not to mention all of Europe) use. All of Europe can't be wrong. However, Americans use a slightly thicker rope than Europeans. So when a rope hangs permanently in a cave and swells with water and some dirt, it can be too thick to slide freely through the bobbin. The design of the rack, however, can accommodate several sizes of rope easily. So, basically, my Stop lived too much up to its name in this case - I could barely move on rope. On the bright side, there was no chance of plummeting to my death.

By the time we got out it was 12:30, so I was tired, not just from caving but also because it was 12:30. I had intended to go for a hike today, but I'm still processing my coffee at this point, so I'm going to scale back and do something smaller than I was thinking of.

Three approaches to graduation

Among the last few cohorts of students in my program there seem to be three approaches to graduation. I separate these recent cohorts from earlier ones because earlier classes were not guaranteed funding, and it was possible to study part-time. This produced different results for purely short-term financial reasons. But in the last few cohorts, while many students would undoubtedly prefer more money, none have to worry about making tuition. Their plans for graduation are driven by more personal factors. While we all are precious and unique snowflakes, you can ignore that to group our plans into three categories.

1. Is there a fast-forward button on this ride? Look, I can earn a lot more when I graduate, easily twice as much, and maybe I can work only 40 hours a week, and I want to move back to City X. I got all the transfer credit I could. Now, I'll take the fastest chunk my advisor's work I can to get this dessertation done.
2. Outer Translovakia awaits. When I graduate, my student visa will expire, and then the terms of my funding will require me to go home again for two years. I rather like it over here in the U.S. and am not keen on returning to Outer Translovakia. I doubt my significant other would do well there either. So I'll just enjoy this sojourn as long as I can.
3. I'm playing the academic game to WIN, baby! My goal is an academic post, so I'm playing the game and making all the right moves to get one. My advisor needs a student? I'm going to make sure he turns to me. Do I hate this class? It's funny, my work always turns out awesome even when I'm talking about slacking. My dissertation is going to be original, groundbreaking, touching, funny, and better than Cats. So it'll take me a little longer than those speedsters, but when I'm done, I won't just be Dr., I'll be Professor.