I'm so fresh, man!

"What a freshman!"
Definitely the most common phrase heard on college campuses all across the nation this week.  It's safe to say that the freshmen have arrived.  The confused faces, the "oops, wrong class", and the "hey, how do I get to _____ (insert name of the building on the other side of campus)" are all sure signs that school is back in session.  I've had a few of my own freshman moments this past week, most notably causing the dishwasher to overflow with soap bubbles, spewing them all over the floor due to adding excessive amounts of dishwashing liquid.

I haven't bothered to use the dishwasher since.  I've been teaching myself to cook, as well.  I guess my freshman culinary skills are lacking as well, because after every meal I make, my room mates rush to the kitchen window to let out all the burnt food fumes, and then proceed to evacuate the kitchen for a few hours.  Then, on my first day of school, I made another fatal freshman error.  I failed to correctly read over my schedule, and I walked into the wrong class!  I left as soon as I noticed everyone was staring at me kinda funny.  After that, I made sure to read my schedule twice.  But perhaps my most embarrassing freshman moment this week was on my way home from school yesterday.  The walk back to my place is about 15 minutes, and it's pretty lame.  So I figured I would go ahead and take the quickest route home, and try to play the angles and stuff like that.  But mother nature wanted me to walk the long way back home.  It was a really rainy day, so I was thinking I had just one-up'ed mother nature by packing an umbrella in my backpack.  But she had another trick up her sleeve.  As I was walking back I noticed that there were fewer intersections on one side of the street than the other, so I quickly jumped onto that sidewalk instead of the bike path running through the woods along the side of the road.  What I didn't notice was that the warp in the road that forms over time in the bus lanes, where the tires produce added pressure in certain spots had completely filled with rain water.  Also, this sidewalk was right on the edge of the road, which is probably why I was the only one walking on that side on a rainy day.  Anyways, you probably see where this one is headed.  I got drenched.  A wall of water soaked me from head to toe as a bus flew by, and my umbrella couldn't do anything about it.  I bet the bus load of people got a good chuckle about that.  To make things worse, I had my brand new, insanely expensive textbook in my bag at the time.  The miracle that it wasn't wet when I got home was definitely the best part of that day.  I'll take the longer way home next time.  But, I've had some pretty cool freshman experiences as well.  I had my first day of training last Monday, and we ran up a mountain.  Can't do that in T-Dot!  My ears were popping constantly, and we even ran through multiple layers of clouds on our ascent to the top.  You could almost call it altitude training by the time we got to the top, as we were about 3000 feet above sea level.  Not too shabby for a 50 minute run!  Then, a few days later while running in the forest, we encountered a massive moose in the middle of the trail.  It was big.  We decided it would be best to run the other way.  Pretty cool experience still.  As far as running goes, we're putting in some pretty solid work up here in the big AK, and feeling a little flat is going to be a part of the game for the next little while as I adapt to a heavier work load.  But that's cool, because the real racing is still months away.