New month. It's only 11PM on 31 August right now, but I've been late with entries so much that an early one or two will scarce be but a drop in the bucket.

I've been getting out a lot more. In part, this is networking, a job skill I'm seeing is necessary in this business. It was necessary in the past as well, too. I didn't see it, but that didn't mean it wasn't needed. When I needed it, it just wasn't there.

Getting out, in this case, means primarily sports activities. With a company such as mine, I'm not surprised it's stocked with type-A personalities. Very competitive, very numbers-driven. I'm in two racquetball 'ladders' and a bicycling group.

A ladder is an open-ended turn-based competition structure. Every interval, say, two weeks, a new round begins. Play well, you rise in rank in the ladder. Play poorly, you drop. The point is to find others about your level. It works well. I'm starting to see some familiar faces, talk to them about recurring matters. Networking.

The cycling group is pretty hard-core. Type-A personalities, remember? At least one rider has a 'power meter hub' that somehow measures hir pedaling output in watts and stores it for later upload to a computer. Only costs $1500. No, I'm not missing a decimal point.

I'm trying to get up to speed, literally. One of the things I'm trying are clipless pedals. It's a misnomer... clipless pedals are the ones with the catches for special cleats on those funny bike shoes. In other words, clips.

For some reason, the old straps and toecage assemblies were called clips, so these are termed clipless because they don't have the toeclips.

Even if they have clips for the cleats.

Oh, and those things take some getting used to. I've not yet fallen with them while the bike was in motion, but three times so far I've fallen while at a standstill. It's sort of embarassing, and rather funny to watch. I stop, put one foot down, the other one at the ready.

Then I slowly lean the wrong way. My foot, at the ready, is too high up for me to easily wiggle my heel that special way to get out. So I lean more, and my leg moves more. And I fall. While standing still.

I make jokes in email about my lack of speed, about my lack of grace with the toeclips. It's all self-effacing humour, and it helps build a rapport with others on that biking group. I've had a few people write back that they love my zany posts.

It's a good feeling.