February 20, 2010

I am exploring the concept of memory.  I can read something, but I won’t necessarily retain it in a manner that makes it easily retrievable.  For example, when I read about history, there is a familiarity to it from all the way back to high school, but it isn’t memories I can tap into with any detail.  To own the information, I need to be able to work it forwards, backwards, and sideways.  After a few repetitions, it’s mine.

I realized this when I was studying world geography a few months back.  Once I was able to place a country on a map, I learned to look at a map and name the country.  Once I was able to do it backwards and forwards, I began to feel like I owned the information.  Then I tried creating a map from the ground up and found that I was pretty successful.

With history, much of what happened needs a timeline.  As I read more, I was struggling to place events on a timeline.  Even worse, references to the obscure leaders of the time were completely lost on me.  I decided I needed to own a timeline.  I decided that one of those timelines would be U.S. Presidents.  I have memorized hundreds of countries, how hard can 44 presidents be?  It took less than a day and much of that time was spent creating Excel spreadsheets that mixed up the names so that I could put them back into order.  I can now give the number of the president with just a name.  I can also take a number, but not quite as quickly, and name the president.  It is strange that I am about twice as fast at turning a name into a number than I am at turning a number into a name.  Regardless, I feel like I own an historical timeline for the United States by knowing who was president.  I might try to convert numbers to years, but it isn’t that hard to pin down a general time period just by the number.

Next, I turned my attention to the constitution.  It consists of 7 articles and 27 amendments.  I now own that information.  The amendments also act as a timeline since they rolled out over the history of the country and often represent the critical issues of that time period.

From this experience, I think I have learned how to learn.  While I have less than two weeks until the written test, I think I am on the way to success.  I know there is no way to answer all the questions correctly, but I think I can take this understanding of learning to focus in on the last few pieces I need to excel on this test.

The weather pattern at our ski resort has been strange.  For the second straight week, we have had nearly continuous precipitation.  The temperatures down low have continued to be above freezing while the top of the mountain is averaging better than a foot of snow per day.  The skiing hasn’t been great.  The visibility up high has been marginal.  The rain down low soaks through our clothes in less than a run.  We have had a few awesome runs, like a North Face run minutes after the gates were opened, but we have had more difficult runs in the heavy wet snow and low visibility.  It has still been fun.

We skied Saturday with friends from Fairbanks.  The crowds were nearly unbearable with ten minute lift lines, a rare occurrence at Alyeska.  We skipped Sunday because the winds were threatening to close lifts and the rain was creeping up the mountain beyond half way.  Monday was a holiday and our friends were still in town.  The crowds were more tolerable since most real workers don’t have President’s Day off.  Our friends stayed with us on Monday night and we took them to the airport on Tuesday morning.

We didn’t want to ski five days in a row so we took Wednesday off.  We took a couple mile walk to keep the blood flowing.  Unfortunately, the resort didn’t even open on Thursday with 20” of new snow and high winds.  They can’t operate the lifts if it is too windy and the avalanche danger is very high.  We cross country skied up the greenbelt instead of our normal downstream direction.  Friday was the first break in the precipitation, but heavy wet snow kept us on groomed runs for a higher percentage than normal.  We made a few runs up top before the wind closed the upper lift.  The high winds weren’t unbearable as the temperature was unseasonably warm.  The temperature reached 50 at the base before we left.

Avalanches have been a problem.  A four hundred foot stretch of the Seward Highway was buried up to thirty feet deep in the Turnagain Pass area this week.  Two fatal avalanches occurred over the weekend.  A couple of snowmachiners were killed in one, including the president of Conoco Phillips Alaska.  No matter how much money you have, you are not invincible.  A backcountry skier was killed in Eagle River in the other avalanche.  While I didn’t know any of these people, it always seems like a small town when these things happen.