Introduction

Alright, well first I'll introduce myself. My name is Jon, and I am a 4th year psychology student at UND. I am 6'5", and I've been asked to grab items off of top shelves numerous times, so don't be afraid to ask. I am easily amused, and even more easily distracted...as you will see if you continue reading this blog (assuming anyone does).

Before I get to the point of this blog, here's a little back story. Most of my life I've been leaning towards pudgy/chunky/husky/whatever cute euphemism you want use. This was more evident when I was younger, but all of a sudden I grew...a lot, and that kinda stretched everything out so it wasn't as bad. This was never really a problem, but in this day and age, who doesn't wanna lose weight, right?

Being a Grand Forks resident of legal drinking age, I enjoyed my fair share of binging, until one weekend of partying that finally caught up to me. The next day I came down with probably the worst case of flu I've ever had. Later that week, I was just sitting down and all of a sudden my heart started beating rapidly and out of rhythm. Needless to say, I was pretty scared. My roommate rushed me to the ER and they had to admit me to the hospital as they administered some drugs to slow my heart down. Don't believe the myths about hospital food, Altru's was delicious. They kept me overnight, and the next day I had to see a cardiologist. He told me I was in a state of atrial fibrillation. After a few tests, everything seemed to be normal, but they gave me a prescription anyways (amiodarone). After a couple months, I saw the cardiologist again and he told me that everything was normal, I just came down with a case of "holiday heart." Basically, my heart was weakened after being pummeled by booze all weekend, and then a viral infection during the week...I guess I don't blame it for going crazy on me...sorry heart, just please don't stop on me, thanks.

So I was told to drink alcohol very sparingly for the remainder of my life. I have no problem with that, I had to laugh at some of my friends who treated it as a death sentence though...I'm not dying guys, I just can't get drunk anymore...which is probably a good thing, hangovers are no fun. I'll probably save thousands of dollars after a while too...bars are not cheap. (Yet I'm still broke somehow).

In addition to ditching binge drinking, I decided to change other aspects of my lifestyle...for one I'm going to exercise a lot more often than I did before (which was uh... not much to say the least). Hey we finally got to the point of this post! Thanks for bearing with me!

I recently brought the old mountain bike from home to Grand Forks and I've taken it for a ride almost every day since then. As we all know, it's easy to lose sight of things and slip into old habits, so that's why I'm starting this blog. I want to chronicle each of my trips and take pictures along the way. I'll be looking for all kinds of odd things in Grand Forks to entertain you, and (hopefully) make you laugh. I'm hoping this will keep me motivated enough to keep riding as much as I can. It's harder to give up when people are actually watching...so please read this blog! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT! Okay, maybe a little extreme, but if I ask nicely will you read it?