I’ve been tagged by Andrew Clem (and indirectly by Running Chick) for a fun web meme: five weird habits. The rules are as follows:

The first player of this game starts with the topic “five weird habits of yourself,” and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

Sounds reasonable enough, right? Right?

Right!

Here goes:

  1. While riding my bicycle, I always hum a song that’s between 90 and 100 beats per minute – and it’s usually a Beatles or ABBA song. This probably dates back to my early riding days, as it was an easy way to control cadence without any fancy gadgets. In those days, it was a slower song, as the style was “slow and powerful” in those days, whereas today the style is a faster spin.
  2. I obsess over maps, like Andrew, but the first thing I tend to look at is elevations of mountains and towns. When I was in middle school, I spent an entire summer studying USGS maps, atlases and other cartographic wonders, learning the elevations of all the major peaks in the United States.
  3. I subconsciously analyze every tune I hear, every waking hour of every day. You can thank an AP class in music theory for this. It often causes me to lose focus on conversations, as my ears tend to tune into songs and music – even the din of room conversation as it morphs into a tune. Combined with the fact that years of concert attendance and music making has adversely affected my hearing, it can be really, really frustrating – but it also comes in handy when I want to learn a song after just one or two listens.
  4. Regardless of length, I always count stairs as I go up or down a staircase or escalator. I’ve been doing this as long as I can remember.
  5. When I’m concentrating hard on a task, I stick my tongue out of the left side of my mouth. If you look at any picture of me ski racing, racing my bicycle, writing term papers or composing long blog entries, you’ll see my tongue sticking out. It’s another subconscious thing – but it’s kind Michael Jordan, too.

There you go – five weird habits of Rudi.

And I’m supposed to tag five more unsuspecting people. So I tag sprite, Sam Foreman, Dan Ray, Adam Gerstein and Sam Felder. Good luck, folks!