stop-light

after reading gwadzilla's rant on road rage i felt good, happy that my friend was not hurt by some angry motorist and happy that perhaps my own anger isn't as out of control as it seems to get when i am crossed by a driver. i hate the whole us vs. them mentality, counter productive. yesterday i rolled a stop sign and a car going the opposite way, not turning mind you going the same direction-straight thru as i was called out to me that i hadn't come to a complete stop, i let it go, i nodded politely and pedaled on. not a word. not a gesture. i didn't get mad or say anything off-color back at them. maybe i'm mellowing in my old age, it felt good to ride on, i did roll thru it, i was wrong, but i didn't ask them if they had ever rolled a stop sign, if they had once not come to a complete stop.

cereal

sitting here getting ready for work eating saddam's favorite cereal; raisin bran crunch. b wasn't thrilled about sleeping in his bed last night-panic wake up at about 2.30 reminded me about a line from a song by belly "my dreams were so bad i had to throw my pillow away."

today

i don't really have many answers to a lot of the questions but i know bullshit when i hear/see it. i really need to get into this line of work, i think i would be outstanding in that capacity. this whole teambuilding, bonding line of crap. where are you going to take this beyond the getting out of work for a day? will i feel better about asking the higher ups who don't know shit about what i do day to day to help? or perhaps some will just ignore the problem and go about their day, why change, that sucks! wow, i just love the idea of getting together for a few hours in favor of work and then going back to work as though nothing happened. ah, whatever i got a free lunch out of it, but i know what they say about free lunches.

court

two really good days on the bike and some weird sightings along the front range. sunday was pretty good, no mtb for another week the road bike was the ticket. it still makes me smile how much ground you can cover on one. rolled out of boulder to get up to loveland, stopped by the new boulder cycle sport what a place! cool design, great bikes, amazing staff, tons of knowledge if you want to be fast, comfy and relaxed on a new bike. rolling out to the north the sky getting summer scary-lots of lightning and dark clouds just over the plains to the east, everytime the lightning would strike i'd start to reach for the phone as i looked around to see where my window of clear sky was heading. finally the waiting ended and i got lucky, just a bit downpour over the two hour ride. arriving safe and not fried was a relief. then monday was court, i had all the right documentation and it turned out all i needed was patience, they had the stuff i sent a few weeks ago, i just needed to show up and pay some money, not nearly as much i thought so that was pretty lucky! sitting there was pretty funny, chuckling at what playing in my ears (some new podcasts) and watching the people made the time go pretty fast, it was like a microscope on the underbelly of society, i gather mostly traffic violations, but i only talked to one guy and he was there for the same reason as me-no insurance card in the car-dumb!!! rolling away (i rode there) was a good feeling, knowing i wasn't wanted anymore and that it was going to be ok for me to drive was a relief. met up with rocco for a coffee over at the new whole paycheck and got to chill outside in the nice summer weather, fort collins really is a city now too, you can't ride on certain roads and others are just a major pain in the ass to get around on. getting from one side of town to the other sucked-it was like a cat IV crit, way too many slows and surges! shuabie and i got out for a cool (er, warm) afternoon ride in the foothills, saw the mini ponies, llamas, skunks, elk and sheep along the way-i'd love to have a farm and get to raise animals just for the sake of giving them a cool life, sort of like a pseudo-domesticated zoo, i don't like real zoos, i find them depressing- kept creatures that shouldn't be kept- you can see it in some of their eyes, they know.

strange

strange days usually start with an odd sighting, nothing too out of the ordinary. today riding to work i saw dr. hotplate, man what a mess! i wondered if she would run to daylight and get an eggsandwich with scrapple and cheese. mmmmm, cornmeal makes the scrapple, at least that's what my friends said in college who ate the stuff. blue water to cap off the morning, good stuff.

624

food sometimes i think the ghost of brian the tapeworm lingers. i just don't feel right. i'll get to sleep ok then wake up in a random panic with no reason to be that way, fall asleep again as though nothing happened. my stomach will shake me awake and then fade into nothingness that is good sleep. maybe brian is there and is still pulling the strings?

someday

i love to hear what people say when they hypothesize about what they would do with a million dollars, i would do nothing. just enjoy the fact. quit the job in a second, ride my bike and hang out with b and shaubie.

solstice

that's it, after today the days get shorter, a big part of my commute is going to go back where it belongs, in the dark. it's a slow path back to dark but it's a better morning ride in the dark. the octopus' ink colors my morning.

stream

the wrist is still really gummy, four days on the road bike hurt it plenty, i can only imagine what a mtb ride would do. i may need to suspend the single to ride it the way i want. oh well, at least i can ride. i want to go skate but i need a big enough block of time to ride there as i can't drive, there's a warrant out for my arrest. it's not for anything serious, just a simple lack of license plate renewal and a missed court date and a skipped ticket. so i can't drive and i can ride but the wrist hurts, a lot. a flower pedal just fell off, that's kind of sad.

special

i have always wanted to be special, after seeing cool movies like unbreakable i wanted to be that guy. not the super hero type with obvious powers but the type who has a quiet strength. realizing that i am no more special than the next middle-aged schmuck is one of those aging process things. i am not so special, i get by on what i do, not what i have. semantics to some but if it works for why switch it up? i like that now, knowing i'm not going to be any thing out of ordinary except in my world, other worlds have their own stars, i just want to be one of the stars of my world, not the star, that would be too selfish. even for me.

going

i feel like crap, my leg is so locked up i can barely pedal, now i'm afraid i might throw something out of alignment and keep me from riding at all. i can't ride the mtb for a few weeks but the road machine is still there and available. but the muscle i pulled last night is haunting me. good ride tonight, the legs are coming around. i keep wondering when i will see the glimmer at the end of the rainbow, almost like there is a solution, you know that perfect equation, that ideal sequence of numbers, letters, answers. i search for it everyday. i know it's there, in the lists, in the papers, in the millions and billions of numbers and words and characters that bombard me everyday. it's there i just need to decipher, to figure out what the wheat looks like in all that chaff, i know it's not going to shine like diamond in all that crap, it's going to look like all the other shite, just a bit different from the rest. it's there.

i got the cast off today and i guess the doctor's plan worked out pretty well, the wrist isn't broken and the week in the cast gave it a head start on the healing. good soccer game tonight, minor muscle pull, not bad for an old guy. great ride down there from breck. good legs.

little victory

last night i got out on it, it was just one of those rides, the kind where everything works the way you want it to. even with a cast on the left arm. the power and motivation were there 100% just flying down the road. over 2 hours with a good bit of pace that took out a lot of the junk from monday night's soccer game. it was finally warm, almost 65 degrees and sunny made the ride feel that much better. now d-day is friday, or it could be surgery schedule day, we'll see.

more

sometimes i feel like my whole adult life has been an experiment in sleep deprivation. not that it is anyone's fault but my own but something always keeps me from getting sleep by about 45 minutes, add that over 16 years and you have one tired old puppy. maybe if i clean up my diet and go full organic my body will get more out of it's rest time and i can perhaps catch up over the next few months. not that that will really change much but it can't hurt. more than that it needs to be a whole philosophy change, not just "hey more sleep tonight" more like a disciplined approach. then perhaps i can converse with the octopus on his level by the time i get to see early sky.

hue

our lack of diverse weather up here gave me a different appreciation for this morning's commute. the fog was amazing, it made the trees look like the they were touching the top of the sky, everything was reduced to a gray/black hue, kind of like one a b/w televison set showing an old horror movie. different from the octopus' colors the fog muted everything, keeping the stars farther away, and the colors out.

adjust

i need to figure out how to dress with this thing on my wrist. today was way too cold to roll without gloves and a proper undershirt, sleeves or something. i was dreading the descent as soon as i left home. a simple wind breaker isn't enough, i needed layers! i know i can find pieces to fit over it, but last night i was too tired to do it. it's only 10 days, there must be a way to get warm pieces to work. i don't want to ruin my nice stuff for just a few days.

navicular

i got up on time today, good legs on the longer commute, the bike felt pretty good even though the ache was there. my malaise faded into full on dread after i was told my wrist could require surgery to fix. a visit to the er and some xrays showed very little, a cast for a few weeks will hopfully heal it enough. i can still ride the road machine but no fat tires for a while.

better

the nap was just what i needed, getting half sleep last night wasn't the best for recovery. everytime i rolled the wrong way i would wake up, not in pain just discomfort. i crash infrequently that results in this kind of pain. now i'm up and waiting for b to wake up from his nap so we can go play some more. feeling better and excited to be on the bike tonight.

recovery

today will be day number one out on the road after my little spill. i'll hopfully be able to ride with out too much cringing from the cracked wrist. i'm shooting for 2-3 hours, yesterday i know i should have ridden but the body wasn't having any of it. shoulders neck and the rest just turned to crap. leaving your bike at 35kmh onto pavement isn't a good idea. by friday i wnat to ride the fat tires and maybe the board by the weekend but i can't really gauge recovery right now.

pain

if you know you are going to die is pain any worse or any easier to handle? i know this is a dark thought, it just came to me all at once, think about the uncertainty that lays ahead when you are faced with certain death. would you relish the pain and enjoy those last few moments of breath. or are you ready to just give up and throw in the towel in which case the body shuts down anyway and you don't feel anything but a subtle numbness as your life ends. i think the 24 hour news cycle brings the pain of people in other parts of the world close, too close. life sucks in other parts of the and it sucks for people right here but is it necessary to learn about it in graphic detail? i prefer radio news for that reason, my mind is imaginative enough without adding the gory video images to the mix. i know living in denial isn't a great idea but what about living the life we choose? if you want to see that stuff, have at it. i am still haunted by images from 9/11 and i was 3000 kilometers away. i prefer not to see the images.

on saturday at work i saw an albino girl, it was pretty cool to see how she glowed with a kind of luminescent sheen. not red eyed albino but pretty much laking pigment. her hair was just about white too. i raced yesterday in denver and was going well, i felt like i was going to make the race but then going around a series of corners a guy lays it down in front of me and all of the sudden i have a guy across the road in front of me. i hit him and went over the top of him and skidded on across the pavement. i got back in after checking to see if the bike was ok, riding over to the start/finish line and getting the ok from the officials. i was going really well, getting in the mix and not having much trouble rolling thru. then the adrenaline wore off and the pain set in. having trouble getting around the corners because of a throbbing left hand and right elbow, i thought i was going to be dropped, i did and rode a few laps out the back and then hit up medical for a washing of the wounds and an early change into the street clothes.

fenders

no matter what wheeled incarnation gets you around today, if you are in summit county you'll need fenders. today's commute had all of the potential of an epic, except i didn't get out of the house on time or else i would have enjoyed my wet ride around and in. getting wet thru my questionable raingear reminded of other rides too early in the day, rides where i unknowingly in the dark rode thru an elk herd, rode around them hearing their breathing not quite sure what it was i was seeing. i've always been afraid of the dark, since i started to commute before dawn that fear has faded a bit. the first couple 45 minute commutes on the bike path in the woods freaked me out. crappy lights on a bike going too fast over paths better suited for broad daylight made for intense riding. i got over the fear fast after realizing that driving wouldn't be nearly as fun or eye-opening. arriving at work in the dark or just seeing the sun peak off in the east was the highlight of my day, my favorite ride, a simple commute without fossil fuels directly in use. humans do enough direct damage why not avoid when you can?

i keep wondering what if i made a different decision, looking back i have very few second guessed decisions. i like where i find myself, i can't imagine another life, i got lucky. the wolves aren't at my door. the octopus paints the sky and i get to see it nearly every day. almost like my own private gallery every day. i get to see it without listening to the innane remarks of anyone. the private picture show that is my early morning. not that the artist has a ton of variety but the landscape changes by the season. i appreciate each day for what it is, an individual unique work. i want him to know that i like the colors, i don't really know what it takes to do what he does but it always is separate from the last.

punishment

i went to bed last night at 8.30, that in itself was a victory, the odd thing about laying in bed to fall asleep when it's still daylight outside felt like a summer evening i got in trouble and was sent to bed early. even as an early rising kid 445 was early for me to get up. i don't think i really fell asleep until after 9 but the wake up wasn't any easier. the best part was the light rain i got to ride through on my extended commute. a quick stop at the post office (i rode the hallways again, such a fun deal to roll through the p.o. before anyone arrives.) i'm still looking forward to the days getting shorter, at least in the morning so i can see the octopus' work. right now i would have to be on the bike at 4 to see the indigo sky and the stars fighting to poke through.

3 marmots

i saw three marmots on my ride up and down vail pass today. good work solo on the climb, not that fast but in the wind it was pretty good.

guy

i saw a guy who looked homeless yesterday, he also seemed to be shaking as though going thru withdrawl. i wondered what his story was. i wanted to know if he needed help, i wanted to know what happened in his life to get him there. i know people see this all the time in bigger towns and cities all over the world but this is a small mountain town, that's not very warm. if i was homeless i wouldn't choose to live here! i don't have the enthusiasm to get out and see if i can help, i feel more like a casual observer with an active imagination. my benevolence isn't that far reaching, i would feel sheepish to walk up to someone and ask if they needed help. i prefer to spectate, it really is none of my business. if this guy wanted/needed help he could find it easily.