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The power of a smell…

Yesterday during the sermon, our Pastor told the story of when he was growing up he detested the smell of a certain Bisquick cake his father used to bake. Years later, after the passing of his father, he found himself baking that very cake and being reminded of the fond memories he had. A once mal-odor became a sweet memory through the lense of time and experience. Every once in a while I have a similar olfactory experience and it is one in particular that I found myself dwelling on after church was over.

As I was looking through some bags and random racing/triathlon supply boxes, I found myself looking into the closet of our guest bedroom, which happens to have our wetsuits. Suddenly, I found myself taken back to the last triathlon of the much storied (at least by me) 2008 racing season…the Portage Lakes Triathlon, the last race in the Wheelie Fun Racing Series. The culmination of a season packed with lifetime memories and experiences, excruciatingly painful running courses, seemingly endless uphill bicycle battles, frigid swim courses, that feeling you get as you come into view of the finish line, hearing your name followed by the 4 words “You are an Ironman” and knowing you have earned it. Memories abound as I reminisce about predawn wake ups, race day checklists, pre-visualizing T1 then T2 making sure everything is in its place, shoes here visor there…don’t forget the race number belt. All of this because of a smell…

What was the smell? Like Pastor Malanga’s sermon, it wasn’t the smell of roses, or fresh bread, no this scent has a darker origin…Neoprene and stale lake water. Why does this smell have such power over my memories? Why does the combination of synthetic rubber and highly suspect lake water have such a cogent affect? It isn’t a sweet smell, not particularly inviting at all, but it is the smell that bears the memories of a summer spent training, racing and traveling with my wonderful wife. It was a good summer, one I’m sure to look back upon fondly as I share those memorable moments with friends, family and now…my daughter Cora.

Tiffany and I were talking yesterday afternoon, and I mentioned how that summer could not have been planned better. It was a grueling schedule of training, B-races, A-races, and everything else. It was exhilarating, challenging, painful, but most of all…wicked awesome fun! Tiffany had a suspicion and we later confirmed that during Ironman and all subsequent races, that she was pregnant. She was still able to not only compete in the remaining triathlons we’d planned, but she became the champion of the Wheelie Fun Series…with child… All of this and many more memories are firmly stored in that part of my brain that can be accessed by (among other things) the smell of a man-made rubber-like product aimed at keeping me warm and the strange concoction known as your ordinary off-the-shelf lake water.

As we plan our comparatively meager racing schedule for this year, I find myself still highly affected by the smell that currently resides in the closet of our guest bedroom, to which I’ve returned a few times to make sure those memories are still there. I do not look back with a sense of longing or regret that life has taken its unexpected turns, no those memories deserve so much more. They are a single summer, a collection of events that came together in a way that can never be, nor should ever be, repeated. That smell will forever be known in my own mind as the smell of racing.

OK, so it looks like an excel formula, and you would be right. Why, you may ask, am I writing about this? I love simple solutions to things, techniques that make long laborious tasks much more manageable. Recently, I was given a spreadsheet at work and charged with the task of putting a couple of columns together and adding some text to form a filename that would be used for a whole list of web images (in the end, more than 8000 items). The filenames in the spreadsheet had to match the real files or else things would start breaking. Rather than spend the next 4 weeks typing each name up and matching it to the image file I decided to make use of a formula that has recently become indispensable in my virtual toolkit…”=concatenate”. Simply this formula allows you to take both cell values and text strings and put them together in a new cell.

Here’s my example…nerdy as it may look.

you have 3 columns of information that needs to be combined into a filename with each piece separated with and “_” and the “.jpg” file extension at the end. Here’s how to do it. The formula looks like this: =CONCATENATE(A2,”_”,B2,”_”,C2,”.jpg”)

Enough of that nerdiness…for now…

Every day brings with it a multitude of new experiences for Cora. Just staring at the ceiling fan is cause for great observation and contemplation. Her very own hands can be cause for great concern as they (from her perspective…i’m told) are an unidentified flailing object that is not only a nuisance, but a source of distress. At some point we all started experiencing our world in a similar way and haven’t stopped learning since. As a parent, I have the great opportunity of not only observing this process (9 mos from the beginning), but being a guiding participant in it.

On a lighter note, I’m led to believe that when a newborn smiles it is not because of some awesome joke or crazy face i’ve just made, but a reaction to excess gas making its way through her digestive system…

As with all babies, when Cora was born it took a little bit for her to take her first breath…This is one thing that you can be told and think you understand, but absolutely cannot know until it’s your child laying there awaiting whatever it is in the brain that tells her to inhale for the first time. In less than 60 seconds (but felt much, much longer) her tiny little body realized that it was time to take that first, life affirming, life giving, breath. Ever since then, I have had an almost paranoid compulsion to make sure she is breathing. If she doesn’t move or make a sound for a while, I find myself putting my ear next to her nose to check that she is still breathing. Originally, I thought myself alone in this preoccupation, but I’m finding that it is more wide-spread, especially amongst dads. A vast majority of breathing is sub-conscious meaning it happens whether we think to breathe or not. As a new dad, I find myself doubting this most simple of instincts in someone who has been living for mere minutes, hours or days…So I double-check…

As I ponder the depths of my not-quite-rational urge to confirm respiration in my daughter, I realize that there is much much more to this whole breathing process that goes beyond the survival instinct. Good breathing technique is essential to running or cycling and most obviously swimming. People who aren’t confident in their swimming typically cite their inability to breathe as their main deterrent from starting. What is truly interesting about this whole topic is that by focusing on your breathing during physical exertion you are able to calm your nerves and even limit the pain or discomfort you feel. If someone is punching you in the arm and you cannot stop it, the best remedy is to try and think of something else. Breathing seems to be contrary to the notion of taking your mind off the pain, rather you would be best served by putting your mind on that pain. Breathing is one of the only things you have control over during any endurance type activity, it is both a source of pain and discomfort and a worthwhile endeavor to limit that same pain and discomfort. So to all you new moms and dads, runners, swimmers, cyclists and anyone else within the human race, take a long deep breath and realize the life-giving, pain-reducing, calming effects that accompany this most basic of life’s activities. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great things about having a new addition to the family is that you get to see many of your family and friends. Jeremy, Cora and I have had visitors everyday since she was born. It has been great. We’ve really enjoyed seeing so many of the people that we care about. Here are photos of the family…

We are proud to announce the birth of our daughter,

Cora Jean Dixon
born: april 3 @ 2:27am
weight: 8lbs 6oz
length: 20.5in

Mother and child are recovering well. See below for some photos…

Pretty much every year there is a new group of freshmen at BGSU who have a desire to further their involvement with Young Life, whether they were involved in high school or have just heard about it since arriving at college. This group, at least around here, is called FYF or First Year Fellowship, and it is a combination Bible study and Young Life leader training group. The groups usually finish sometime during the first part of the spring semester with decisions whether they want to continue their involvement by becoming a young life leader. This invitation is for a celebration in honor of those who made that decision and have been interviewed and placed at a high school as an official Young Life Leader. Here it is…

Invitation Front

Invitation Inside

Invitation Back

Recently I drew up a map for a wedding to take place at the Toledo Zoo that included markers for the hotels recommended by the couple and basic markers/indicators for getting from the hotels and all other directions to the zoo. I’m not so much a cartographer, so I struggled a bit deciding what was important to show (highways, exit numbers, major roads, secondary roads, etc.) All of you who live in or know the Toledo, OH area can draw your own conclusions if I represented this area in a way that would allow anyone to find the proper location. In the end I came up with something that is (i think) both simple and easy to read, as well as kinda interesting to look at. No more explanation, here it is:

As a visual communicator, I’m not so much a graphic designer, photographer,videographer, writer or web designer, but I try to stay on top of the latest in all media/content fields to help me in my quest for solving communication problems. I also don’t like getting stuck using a particular tool (illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver, etc.) when trying to solve said problems in visual media. My goal is to continuously improve and learn the new tools and techniques available.

All of this is to say that I plan on posting some of my work on this blog. This is a new category for me, though my work in these areas, both professional and other, is another part of my life that deserves a mention. These works will most definitely take different forms as I try not to pigeon hole myself into any one media format. There are two posts forthcoming in this category, so get ready…

The most popular question that I get about Tiffany these days is…Is she still running? Though most people say it more like…”She’s not still running, is she?” My answer is a most definitely yes, and swimming too. For those not in the know, Tiffany is now 9 months pregnant, so far along is she that she could really go into labor at any time. The due date is April 1st. I joked around with some people in our saturday running group that if she hasn’t given birth by this coming saturday, we would have a “Run with Tiffany mere days or even hours before giving birth” jog. I think we’ll do it if possible, maybe it could be an annual thing too…who knows. Anyway, here’s some pics of a jog we did last night (mar. 23).