Road Rage!

Well, not really. I wanted to document the construction occurring directly outside my building this summer. The signs indicating the construction start date went up in early May. Construction start: May 10. What was happening as I biked into work yesterday? This:





And more than a few people doing something like this:


I hope to chronicle the progress over the next 2 months. BTW, the construction is for an addition to our current building. The removal of the road is to presumably access pipes and wires.

Oh yeah, I've been knitting - another pair of Monkeys.

The Rage

Lest you think I’d forgotten the complete title of this blog – Knitting Rage – let me assure you I have not. In New Jersey, rage was easy and superficial. Yell about the bad drivers, crazy maneuvers on the Garden State and call it a day. Although Michigan hosts an unusually large number of Sunday drivers, it’s nothing to get worked up about. I could whine about the lack of culture, our inability to find decent pizza, bagels or Indian food. But that’s whining, not rage.

Today’s rageful thought of the day is about choices and the inward rage that sometimes accompanies those choices. Every evening, after the girls are in bed and have had their 93rd drink of water, I put the kettle on for tea and curl up in my big brown chair. Most nights I cruise blogs for 20 minutes and then turn to knitting. Occasionally, I get off my duff and hit the sewing machine. But every night, I struggle with guilt. My work chirps at me: read a paper, analyze that data, write up those results, think of something brilliant! As a postdoc in science (albeit it biology education), there is a common stereotype that we (a) have no life, no hobbies, no interests outside of the lab and the corollary (b) all we do is work, work, work – 80+ hours a week. Even within my field, there is the perception that hobbies and family are unfortunate and only detract from one’s research.

So that is my rage – at the stereotypes, at the departmental perceptions, at my own inability to clearly define myself, my life, my research. There is rage at society and the trend to work more, harder, longer. There is rage at the growing perception that our work defines us.

This semester, I’m sitting in on a graduate seminar that’s all about the Mommy track – how to balance family and a career. As a mother, I am hoping to gain incite into balancing work and family and guilt. As a scientist, I’m interested in whether the what, why and how we teach can prepare our students to better maneuver this evolving landscape. I expect to pick up this thread several more times this spring. The role of gender in science and education is becoming increasingly interesting.

Wrong way

I think most of you who read this blog know exactly where I work. And if you don't, just imagine a one-way road that loops around a pond, in a complete circle. A circle, as in, if you've missed your exit, you can continue around the loop until you again reach the exit.

Now imagine an SUV tearing down said one-way loop, flying by his/her exit. Three seconds later, s/he hits the breaks, does an illegal u-turn and accelerates the wrong way back around the loop.

Horrific, I know. Even more upsetting when you learn that I recognized the driver as a long-standing citizen of this institution. There was no call for that behavior.

Rage Outlet

Courtesy of Ry4an, I now know of another way to vent my rage at crazed NJ drivers: PlateWire. If only I'd know about this on Saturday when I watched an SUV perform an illegal U-turn mere feet from a large intersection OVER a concrete median. I suppose the driver was at least using the car for it's intended purpose - after all, they were going off-road.

What would Jesus do?

He’d use his turn signals, that’s what.

Dear people of New Jersey:

If you are turning off a major or minor road, please, for the love of all things wooly, use a turn signal. On that same note, if you are not turning off the road, please turn off your turn signal. A little bit of common courtesy, now and again, won’t kill you (I think).

As you might guess, I was burned this morning by a non-signaling passenger vehicle (nspv). Pulling on to Route 1 means a quick acceleration (at any time of the day). I was dutifully pressing the pedal when I was cut-off by a slow-to-accelerate nspv. Fine. I can take one insult. But! Less than a half a mile later, the nspv hits the breaks and careens into a right hand turn for the local ‘adult’ boutique. At 9 am. I guess some urges can make you forget what you learned in driver’s ed.

Reaction Time

Undoubtedly you’ve experienced a phenomenon known in physics as reaction time (in ecology, we call it lag time). This is the time it takes to respond to a change in one’s environment. For example: you are stopped at a red light. The light changes green. You cannot instantly accelerate because you must first process the change in the environment (light changes from red to green) and then properly react (step on the gas). Oddly enough, the nanoseconds it takes for your brain to process this information and send a signal to your right leg results in a one or two second delay in your acceleration.

In geological time, this is not worth mentioning. In New Jersey time, this is a crime against humanity. I offer today’s example of road rage where a truck driver, fifth in line from the front laid on his horn the instant the light changed. He continued to honk his horn until he began accelerating, and then proceeded to run the red light. Our raging truck driver demonstrates how most New Jersey-ans do not understand reaction time*.

*The exception to this rule is when you are the first car in line. When in that position, a Jersey driver has a perfect understanding of reaction time and will demonstrate their knowledge by politely giving the finger to horn honkers.