Deferred Projects

I've been thinking a lot about my endurance sports time commitment. What would I do with the 500 hours each year dedicated to exercise if I hated exercise or, worse, found myself unable to exercise? Sleep would occupy a significant amount of that time for sure. But there are a number of things on my bucket list that aren't likely to become reality while I remain addicted to the multi-sport lifestyle. Here's what I've come up with:

1. Take a car apart and put it back together. I'm an engineer that doesn't know nearly enough about cars short of theoretical internal combustion engine problems. I love cars and would surely spend way too much money on them if I didn't already do that with bicycles. My bikes are actually worth more than my cars.

2. Learn Spanish. I find it a little embarrassing to be mono-linguistic (I think that's a word. If not, forgive me. I have an engineer's education. See #1 above). I had 3 years of French in high school. When touring France in 1989 I realized how little those 3 years prepared me for actually interacting with the French. Too much time spent on proper sentence structure and ordering from menus, not enough time spent actually learning how to converse in real time. Anyway, there are obvious reasons to learn Spanish while living in America. I think I'd try Rosetta this time.

3. Get life guard certified. I spend a fair amount of time around the water. Some day something bad's gonna happen and I want to be fully prepared. The number of teenie boppers and old men on the life guard chairs scares me. Despite the cost of entry, I might still make this happen some off season.

4. Become a jazz musician, not just a note player. I'm blessed with some genetic gifts for playing the trumpet. It sounds good, but the reality is I just know how to read notes and make a good sound (I'm just an engineer. See #1 above). Learning to play for real takes serious study and commitment. I would love to become a middle aged understudy of a great jazz musician, but am too addicted to endorphins to ever make it happen.

A couple of my college buddies are full professors at Penn State. One of them's on sabbatical. Geez... I can't even imagine. Think I could negotiate a paid sabbatical in my private industry job? :-)