Sweetness and the Hopeville Flyer

I'd like to introduce our two travelling companions, our trusty bikes, Sweetness and the Hopeville Flyer. We hope to do a lot of riding on our trip, and have scheduled stops at several areas with  rail trails. The Rails To Trails Conservancy has been doing a wonderful spotlight series on Facebook in recent months highlighting great rail trails across the country. They are using their great TrailLink service to provide information. We have altered our cross country route bending it here and there to visit some of their suggestions.

The Hopeville Flyer

But I digress, from the two stars of this post. The Hopeville Flyer is Marsha's Specialized Tricross. We had been looking for a touring bike to match my Trek 520 for a while. We looked at several, but on the advice of Chris at Sunshine Cycle-Works, we chose this cyclo-cross bike. Not a true touring bike, but once Marsha sat on it and took a ride around the parking lot we were convinced. I have never seen a better fit between rider and bike. She and that bike were meant for each other.

It got its name from our full panier trip to Hopeville Pond State Park last summer. The trip let us know that 60 year old bodies react less kindly to bike touring that our 20 year old bodies of yesteryear. We crawled over backroads, spent a restless night and came home even slower over two hot summer days, finishing in a thunderstorm. The Hopeville "Flyer" received its moniker on this trip, strictly tongue-in-cheek.

Sweetness

Sweetness gets a bit more complicated. It is a Trek 520 touring bike a veteran of roads and rail trails across New England, New York and PEI. It is a full touring bike, sturdy, long and steady. Riding Sweetness, is like driving an 18 wheeler on the highway. A typical road bike is like a nimble sports car. Sweetness is big and heavy. It takes a while to get her up to speed, she climbs hills willingly, but slowly, loves long flats and even better, long down hills.

Her name comes from Stephen Colbert's satire on The Colbert Report. It is his name for his .38 special revolver. Stephen has a "special" relationship with this hunk of metal. Sweetness is so much more than a revolver and Sweetness the bike is so much more than a bike to me.

Here is more on Stephen's Sweetness - http://wikiality.wikia.com/Sweetness

and on the show here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/pkoboa/in--60-seconds---sweetness

and here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/5i29xg/supreme-court-justice-sweetness

GPS Madness

In an attempt to dial in our bike computers to match each other we spent most of our ride yesterday fiddling and diddling with our settings. We have a "measured mile" on our road (pays to have runners in the family). We kept riding up and down trying to get it right and then worked on it more during the ride. Most maddening is that no matter how we tried we had a difference of 4 hundredths of a mile for every 3/10ths of a mile. Miniscule, right? Except as you extrapolate that to longer and longer rides the differences pile up. If you are trying to coordinate together on a cue sheet or you have a mechanical or medical problem, and you need to know how far away your help is it can really mess things up.

We even pulled out our phones and tracked our bike computers along with our GPS based Map My Ride App. Closer to Marsha's bike computer, but sometimes matching mine and then going back to being closer to hers. There was not one consistent pattern we could zero in on. My computer actually would run ahead of Marsha's quickly climbing to .09 and then mysteriously dropping back to .06 to match her for a while.

There are many reasons why bike computers will vary from each other. Different tire pressure, some type of interference between the cadence sensor and the handlebar unit, or with the cell phone some type of interference between the phone and GPS satellites and/or cell towers. The fact that I out weight Marsha by 100 pounds can change the diameter of my tires as I push them down more.

So, we decided that we will live with it, or perhaps spin my wheel a few hundredths to catch up to Marsha's computer before we start a ride so we even out. The GPS based phone apps we usually hold in reserve as it really sucks down the battery and even with our extra battery packs, the ability to have juice to call for help is more important than recording the ride. Around home for a workout ride or to measure a new route, fine, but out on our western wanderings, an extra layer of security in battery life is a trump card.  

Last Days of School

Coming down to the wire. I have taught my last lesson with Chromebooks, I have been cheered at an all school assembly, gotten a great card with lots of kid signatures, and dumped on by water bucket for the winning team in the "Fun in Your Backyard" activity. One more kid day, then one more teacher day, and then -

School's out for summer!

School's out forever!

School's out with fever!

School's out completely!

 

 

The Last Bulletin Board

Dear Friends,

We race through June and I find myself looking at my last few days of school. I will retire at the end of the school year. It is a time when it is important to remember and to say thank you. I have been  doing that a lot these days.

I wanted to find a way to thank my online community of educators, my PLC, who have been such an important part of my teaching and learning, especially over the last 10 years. I am struggling to figure out an adequate way to do it.  I thought that I would just make a very long FB post with the names of all the folks that I have connected with through the dawn of Web 2.0, and the infancy of educational blogging. I tried to go back to old conference resources to refresh my memory as to not overlook someone. It was jaw dropping.  My list of people it was important to thank quickly grew to over one hundred, and was still climbing before I stopped.  I thought about people whose blogs I read, who I  listened to on podcasts, tweeted with on Twitter, became friends with on Facebook or through Nings and Wikispaces or connected with at Educon, K-12 Online, ISTE, November Learning, EdCamps, Discovery DEN, Second Life, GAFE Summits, PD in PJ’s, or met through a host of regional meetups. And look, the list of just the places, never mind the individual people,  is too long!

What a journey we have been on!

So, I cannot thank you all individually. All I can say is that I treasure your friendship. You have nourished me, inspired me, challenged me, put up with me, and changed my teaching and learning forever. The kids and teachers in my schools have benefitted from your passion and wisdom.  I was grateful for your acceptance and welcome in the beginning, and still need you today.

However  after 33 years I am going to step aside for a little bit.  Not too far and I think not for too long. There are some things I promised myself (and my wife) that I want to get to while life is still young. I like to tell my local friends that I will still be a teacher, I just won’t have to go to school anymore. For the next few months at least, you can follow me at the following blog: After School Adventures: http://sokosafterschool.blogspot.com

Baseball in Babinskiland - A Trip to Fenway

Jose Reyes Warms Up

US Flag on the Monstah

Stilt Walker on Yawkey Way

Marsha's Favorite Blue Jay - R. A. Dickey

Wonderful trip to Fenway on a beautiful June Sunday. Great seats on the 3rd base side courtesy of old friend Mike Babinski.  Unfortunately, right now the Red Sox stink and the game got away from them very fast. They played awful baseball. They let a pop fly into a high tough sun drop between, Pedroia, Bogarts, Castillo, and whomever the bozo they had in right, De Aza, I think. Tough sun, but there were 4 professional baseball players close enough to touch each other and nobody stuck a glove out. De Aza took a bad called 3rd strike and was so unsure of himself in right he let at least 3 balls drop in front of him rather charge it for the out (or he is slower than a bag of rocks). The young fireballer just up from AAA got into trouble early but Farrell kept him in for 5 runs as he struggled with staying ahead in the count. When he finally gave him the hook, his new reliever Steven Wright coughed up a two run home run on his first pitch.

Kale at the ballpark - a sign that the apocalypse is upon us.

Retirement

I am down to the wire. In a few short days I will retire after 33 years of being a teacher. I think that I will always be a teacher, but after June 23rd I will not have to go to school anymore. Here are some remarks I made at our district retirement recognition reception last evening .....

So, a podium, a microphone, a captive audience and ….Sokoloski. Who thought THIS was a good idea? Celeste?

As you approach retirement, you know that this day and this particular time is coming.  Stories and memories of 33 years (15 at EASTCONN and 18 here in Mansfield) float to the surface of your brain. It is hard to sort through them all and and choose what to say.

There are stories of laughter and fun. There are stories of sadness and pain.  There are stories of how the events of the world shook our little schools to the core and stories of steely resolve to protect the lives we care for everyday. There are stories of enormous courage, faith and love, that demonstrate unfathomable  depths of compassion towards our students, each other and our community. And there, are stories of irascibility and stubbornness, when we were not at our best for our students nor for each other.

There are stories of when we reached high, worked incredibly hard, and touched excellence. When teaching became so perfect, it felt like you were dancing in the front of the classroom and every moment of a lesson you designed flowed from somewhere deep within you, and yet was somehow was also coming from beyond you. And you won awards and accolades and praise. And then, there were the train wreck lessons when chaos ruled the classroom. There are stories that are profane, and stories that are scatalogical, and stories that are both profane and scatalogical. There are stories that would keep a whole team of lawyers down at Shipman and Goodman untangling Title 9 issues  for years.

And then, there are a whole genre of stories that are so bat crap crazy that if you told them outside of this room, people’s jaws would drop and they never would believe you for a minute, no matter how hard you tried. But, if you told the same story here, people in this room would turn to each other, nod their heads and say, “Yup, just another day in paradise!”

So, I am not going to tell embarrassing stories about us. Not that you don’t deserve it, it just that I wouldn’t want leave out somebody who really deserved it. You are off the hook, except for three educators that I have to talk about.

The first is a Speech Pathologist, the Hermione Granger of the preschool division of the West Hartford Public Schools, my elder daughter Sarah, of whom I am so proud. The next is a Physical Education and Health teacher at Ellington Middle School, the hottest young softball coach of the Connecticut River Valley Middle School League, my incredibly talented younger daughter Katie. These two young ladies have brought two fine gentlemen into my life my sons-in-law Bryan and Nate who are working today. How great is that, son-in-laws at work while the girls get to party! They have fully grasped the concept of “marrying up” and have understood that the more they allow their father-in-law to beat them at golf the more often he will pay for their rounds.

The last educator is my retired Biology teacher wife, Marsha. Those that know me best, know that if I have been able to contribute anything to the Mansfield Public Schools, it is because this good woman has for most of these last 18 years put her cold feet into the small of my back when the alarm went off at 4:45 in the morning and pushed me out bed saying, “You are going to the gym today aren’t you?”  And then just as lovingly got up went into the kitchen and put together my lunch, and breakfast and to walk me out to the car reminding me to check for my wallet, phone, keys, and in recent years making sure I did not forget to gulp down a handful of drugs.

Would you join me in a round of applause as I tell my wife of 37 years, how much I love her and how much I am looking forward to the freedom and adventures retirement will bring?

I did want to say one word about Fred. I know we all are sad and mad and frustrated about whatever that was that went on.  I know I am. However,  for almost of of my time in Mansfield he was my boss. I always found him to be honest, fair, and a straight shooter. He held me accountable when I needed it, cut me slack when I deserved it  and offered me compassion in some tough times in my life. I could not leave without saying thanks to him.

For the rest of you guys, let me just say thank you for allowing me to grow and learn. I am better technically, intellectually and professionally for working with you. You have taught me to be more kind, more patient, and more understanding as a person. I leave as a better human being  for the time I had teaching with you all.

And to the community of Mansfield especially those here tonight who have or had children in our schools,  thank you for letting me hang out with your kids. It has been an honor and a privilege to teach them.

Softshell Crab

One of my Nonnie's favorites and my mother's as well. Softshell crab, fresh from the deep fryer, on toast with a slice of lettuce, tartar sauce and squeeze of lemon. In the months without an R there it did not take much convincing to get everybody into the Plymouth for a drive to Jimmies of Savin Rock. The outdoor Jimmies, not the restaurant that followed it. Jimmie himself behind the front facing counter/grill taking orders and shouting them back. Hamburgh Wha-one! Hot Dog Twoooo!

If there is a heaven I have to believe that there is a summer seafood shack there, just off the beach with the sea smell mixing with the smells of fried food.  And now that it is summer, I hope that my grandmother and mother have made their way there for their crabs, with my father and grandfather in tow, so they can belly up to the raw bar to enjoy their favorite, fresh clams on the half shell,

Dinner tonight sure brought back some wonderful memories.

Airline Trail in Colchester

With Marsha and my photography sensi Mike Babinski out on the rail trail for a 25 mile spin. Nice tip on the people shot, did not execute the flowers very well.