Pumping up your tires.

My favorite part of riding a bicycle is when I've been riding around for awhile on low tires. I finally get my bike to the sport shop and have them pump them up for me. Suddenly, biking is the easiest thing ever. I go further. I go faster. I feel like an Olympian out there!

It's kind of like life. Every now and then we get a bit low and end up working twice as hard to go half the distance. Why do we do this? Why do we insist on driving on low tires? Part of the reason is because we are too lazy. Even worse, some of us don't even know that our tires are low. We are totally unaware to the signs and feedback from our bodies when they require maintenance. I'm not saying that you should go to the doctor and ask them to give you some botox and a pacemaker, but you can pump your tires in other ways.

Anwer has been in India for about ten days already because his Chinese New Year holiday is longer than mine. We've been separated by oceans on various occasions since the beginning of our relationship, but this was different. This was my first time being alone in China. I spent some time rediscovering Shannon time. I had to be more purposeful in my pursuits. I took a bicycle journey to Yangcheng Peninsula. I got lost. I found my way. I pretended I could read Chinese signs. I spent time skyping friends and reconnecting with friends from long ago. This did mean I was up later than usual because of time zone differences, but I still felt refreshed and inspired.





Keep your tires at optimal pressure.

A proper bike lane with kilometer markers, lanes, and rule following.

Why haven't I visited here before?

I didn't get peed on by a monkey.

In a day that rivaled the time I got peed on by a monkey and glittered in the same twelve hours, today sucked.

First period began with biathlon training with my 9th graders. Things are as fun as you can imagine with a group of 9th graders in the pool that range from great swimmers to doggy-paddlers. I had everyone get out of the pool to talk about something and have them watch some other swimmers demonstrate. One girl was sitting and said she was dizzy. Another girl mentions that this happens to her often. As I was talking to the girl, asking her questions, she passes out in my arms. Her eyes glaze over, and I think she's about to have a seizure. It was the scariest 15 seconds of my life as I shouted her name to get her to wake up. It felt like minutes had passed before she woke up. While this is happening, I'm also dealing with an extremely different level of emergency recognition from my Chinese lifeguards. I try to tell them to call the nurse, an ambulance, and they tell a student, who translates it for me, that they are not allowed to call.

Luckily, I had another teacher in the pool and called him over to help. A student had already gone to get the nurse, but this was before the girl passed out, so the level of emergency was at a much lower level when the student left. The girl woke up, but she couldn't see or hear well. I was so scared she was going to pass out again. I just kept talking to her and waiting for someone with more life saving skills to come. Time seemed to be moving much slower, and I had no idea what my first aid training had taught me to do in this situation. I was trying to summon people who knew more than me, but it wasn't working. The nurse came, and everything was beginning to be more under control. It was scary. I was distraught.

A couple classes later, I had gathered a sense of calm and was less likely to yell at children when this happened: I called over my 6th grade students to sit next to a badminton court so I could demonstrate something. As I was talking to a couple students, a student literally slid into my legs from behind me. (He was apparently trying to just slide in and sit, but I was moving as he was sliding.) I did a bunch of nascar maneuvers to not fall or crush the student. I ended up banging my knee up in the process. I did not kill this student.

THEN! I came back to my office and was drinking from my water bottle, and I began to choke on a piece of plastic. A small tooth-size piece of plastic was lodged in my throat. Is this real life? Is someone trying to murder me?