drift

the pieces fit, i see it in the road on my way to work, not exactly like jigsaw pieces more like when i look at the world map and see that the continents go together. not perfectly but it's there if you look hard enough. screw up your eyes and push it close in your mind, it goes. lacking one thing is a whole lot better than lacking more, i feel good about it. yeah, i'm pretty sure it does make sense.

simple

seven year anniversary, amazing how time flies. no bikes, no crap to haul around to the far reaches of the state. easy going, just a few bags, simple and light. perfect. i am not the lightest packer in the world but i try to simplify wherever i can. everytime i have a chance to get rid of some stuff, it's gone. in a lot of ways i prefer giving it away to selling it. simple.

ready?

the chill i feel every morning on my way to work grows by the week. not that it's really cold but i know it's coming. cross season is just about here, the motivation is buliding. soon the bikes will be ready, i have begun to run, it's almost here.

thirdsecond

my third mtb race of the year, i rode well on the descents but the first lap descent was rough, they started us behind the vet experts whose back markers i caught on the first bit of singletrack, they had a two minute headstart. then on the descent it was nose-breathing as the guys i was behind gave the leader a helping hand-nobody on gears likes to give a singlespeeder room to pass, you have to make room. by the end of the first lap i was 90 seconds down, i drew close second time up but not close enough to factor. i realized that racing singles is like making lemonade; you need to get the juice out when it can come out, not later on where the course prevents faster riding, lemons have juice, but it dries out pretty quick-just like my legs. third mtb race of the year third second place of the year. not a bad record. the legs are slowly coming around.

2 minutes

i guess there really is a line. i know time has very little to do with physics, things are going to happen at their own pace, whether or not time is there. on the odd occasion however, the puzzle goes together a bit differently. today i slept until 5, that's what i set the alarm for. not 4.58. it made a lot of difference. i feel somewhat, ah, awake, i think. the trip in was good, the lights worked fine, i didn't even need to think the whole way, autopilot.

teacher

last night just before i fell asleep, watching the televisions in my head i realized a few things; that the tvs are all rotary, to change the channel i need to switch it by hand-which i do. the tvs also have a few channels to choose from, not a ton of channels, but there are about a 1000 tvs. i couldn't remember my first grade teachers name. somewhere in all of that useless info i couldn't remember what her name was. i think it was a woman but i really couldn't be sure. i think it was a german name but again i'm lost. i don't know why it bothers me so much but it does. i try to keep stuff like this in my head but i never really think about first grade. second grade on are pretty solid in my mind, but first grade fades for some reason.

loose

i think that the key to the finish is somewhere in between the negative and the possible. the way i see it the result isn't in the finish it's in the prep that goes into it. loosely related thoughts. but really ones that got me to thinking tonight.

4s

it's not like i ate a lot last night but i think the combination of foods did me in. sushi sake sapporo and smores. only a few sips of the beverages, but lots of sushi (relative to regular food) and one smore -i think the first one i have ever had- are kind of giving me rotgut today. at least my attitude is ok after yesterday's intervention and marathon meeting. i really hope to "step up" and "think outside the box" in the coming months, it really is very important, or so i'm told.

i had to sit thru a meeting yesterday, lucky for me it was only about an hour and a half, pretty painful, shit that could have been done with in 15 minutes. maybe i'll become a carpenter, fewer meetings and perhaps the only thing near my dream job of being a shepherd. less waste of time and more time doing whatever it is i should have been doing. it was like a management training vocabulary seminar, i should have counted the number of times "step up" and "think outside the box" were thrown out, i won't go into that as plenty of funnier people dissect those phrases better than i. my own insincerity towards these topics affects how i work, i want to believe what i'm told but the sheer quantity of bullshit is truly impressive. i needed three hours on the bike solo after work just to get it all out of my head, i was really mellow the rest of the evening, the ride just put me in such a peaceful place i really didn't leave. we went out for dinner and the group didn't even wake me from my place. it was awesome, sushi on a peaceful mind. if i believed in some sort of eastern philosophy because i think it could have explained how i felt last night. my work situation aside i really need/want nothing.

b let one go in the tub last night. i saw it on his face, he was going to let the trout swim, funny he had blue water at the time. his favorite, mine too. chris rockwell would have been proud. minimal clean up, we got lucky.

message

i got this in an email from a good friend who works a job not at all similar to mine.

the day before my first workday each week i am genuinely bummed, not that i have to go to work but that i have to go there. after i am at work it's not as bad but i would still rather be violently ill. maybe i'll get sick this week for a day or two. i figure this is common for most people but i didn't always feel this way. before the artificial importance popped up so much it was a pleasant place to go a few days a week, the meetings and the stress created what i feel right now, major boredom and general apathy as ben folds would say.

i can relate.

smart.

sometimes i'm really not so bright. it was a super cool morning to get out for a ride, the sky was really cool witht clouds hanging over the ridge and the air seemingly warm, or so i thought. i dressed for a 5o degree ride not a 4o degree ride. cold as i was riding north the sky and the clouds kept me warm, knowing as soon as i flipped i would be able to see just how warm i could get. i never got that warm, too far gone by the time i flipped to return home and warm up. the ride home was more survival than good work session. now the wrist aches even more. i'm really not so bright.

wknd

my sunday was filled with loud noises and motorsports followed by a nice little bike ride to recover from yesterday's suffer at keystone. single speed aca state championships, it was pretty hard. i chose a really bad gear (36-18) charlie hayes rode a 34-20, a lot easier than what i had, maybe i could have gone with him but i was way overgeared, good work anyway, i rode all of it, with only two dabs on the climbs-good stuff. coming second to charlie is never a bad ride. really fun singletrack but riding to the top of the mountain 3 times at keystone is never easy. the pictures are a few of the scenes we saw today, good mullet at the monster truck rally and then todd, being todd, on my bike.

patterns

the word little looks like a mini forest to me; the letters all remind me of trees and shrubs i see on the trail. different heights and girths, sort of like people you see walking down the street. in the woods you see these all over the place, just slowing down and looking about is enough to get it. numbers are everywhere, if i look at the bike path as it glides beneath my tires i see numbers in the texture, not faint but jumping out at me- a beautiful random sequence that i know isn't truly random at all, that doesn't exist on any plane. look at it all long enough and the patterns arise, slow at first then think and fast.

simple

blue water for the first time in a long while. i may start to leave the pod at home in favor of the camera, photographic evidence of the happenings out there, i see more patterns everyday, chaos theory states:

Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder.

this doesn't really apply directly to what i think i see, but in some ways on the 1000 tv sets in my head it does. on my terms in my definitions of it. i think i can get enough of a grasp to understand the basic tenets of thermodynamics.

nowhere

i have seen this little trail for a long time that i wanted to check out but never have until yesterday. it went nowhere fun. it turned into a 30 minute hike-a-bike, oh well. the rest of the ride was great, perfect damp singletrack that wasn't sloppy. this morning was a different story however. i guess it rained all night from about midnight on. by the time i got to work on the road bike i was soaked thru. the sky was really cool, inky clouds, low in the sky, with a smokey look more common in may or november than august. fenders, i need fenders.

no blue

no blue water in weeks, i think it's my own fault, i need to get in there earlier. i just don't have time to get it all in before the blue stuff is gone. no conspiracy, just bad timing. i like the way a blue water makes me feel. so fresh and clean.

back in it

it was dark and oddly warm today. maybe i was just out of it to the extent that everything was warmer. i was lucky in that i didn't need to turn on a lamp to get going and dressed. that was nice. the light from the iBook got me all the light i needed. on the single today for a change, nice slow commute, bearclaw to wake me before the bullshit tries to put me to sleep. maybe some good coffee or a smoothie to insulate my head from the idiocy.

nostalgic for misery

i almost puked today, that would be three times in eight days, but i don't think it's going to happen, i kind of sat on it for a while and rode thru it. sometimes going harder can put the nausea at bay. there was a crazy lady on the pass yelling about flys, weird vail people, i say vail people b/c i don't think she was the type to ride up and over-and back. you don't have to walk down a city street to find the crazies. they're out there, wow, are they. i was drilling it to get home before i got to re-taste my clif bar,shot and honey stinger. at least no shit-pizza today. good music to get it done. old stuff from when i had more trivial things to worry about, the worst part of my week was the long hike-a-bike in the race. or the wringer my head put me thru. enough of that. blew it all out though, perfect way to get over the hump that is the rut i feel. got home with a smile on my face and no vomit on my bike. life is good, better than i ever thought it could be.

food...bad food

i think i ate bad turkey the other day, but i wasn't sure so i ate some more the next the day. that was the one that finally did me in. rot gut for two days and puke today while doing hill repeats. well, it was my first hill of the day, not a good sign. i 'm not very bright, i ate free pizza today, domino's, but it was free. you know the budget stuff. so i got to taste that delicious acidic hormone-laden canned tomato sauce twice. mmmmmm acidic. that kind of sucked the first 15 minutes of my workout to puke. i should know better, i just don't, even the two coffees today didn't affect my constitution too much. a mocha and a weak cup of coffee was fine, but shit pizza, that i'll throw up.

bumps

i see a pattern in the potholes and the seeming endless bumps in the path. i know it's because of the lack of fat tire time this summer. so much time in the rain and sun and heat has made the potholes align into a great contiguous line. all the urns are sandy or filled with gravel. hours on the bike melt into one smooth path, filled with the pictures of standouts along the way. the wierd things i see, or think i see on my way to work. the wierd things at the end of 5 hours on the bike. not always the same thing, when i see something that's not there, i wonder how it got there.

beams

ok, i'm riding down the road this morning, the car coming the other way has a good 5 seconds to see that there is person on a bike on the other side of the road. so what do they do, they hit the high beams. wtf? i gave the driver a few more seconds to turn off the beams before i said good morning with my middle finger. i have a solution to some of what bothers me; waste less time, economy of language shouldn't just apply to literature. all of these meetings, the bullshit i see around me never seems to stop, ever. what about cutting away the tripe? it's easy for me to criticize, i'm in the ivory tower, insulated from a lot of it. well, really an ivory cellar. in a lot of ways the folly falls upon me, i'm the one aiming lower, the idea of success holds a different meaning, i guess i just want to be left alone, i'd like to put a dollar value on that, what would it cost to not be bothered? i missed playing lotto last night, that could have been it.

closer

the darkness gets closer every morning, i like it, rolling off the porch onto the morning's purple tongue brings the thoughts of the new fall air and chill thru me. rain still on the ground, cooling the day off before it starts, it's only august but it's coming, not too far away from the dark, cold days. it wraps me in it's subtle chill no matter how bundled i get to hide from it.

challenge

it's a funny thing, i want to try something new, not that i have that protestant work ethic thing, i'm really an agnostic, i just want to get a new thing going. i don't like feeling this way, maybe i'm so accustomed to my own subtle complacency in preofessional life, opposite of my life on the bike. i try to do all i can to stay out of the way at work, it sucks the whole set up is really a joke, admittedly management heavy and they solve this by adding another management job. brilliant. i try my best not to say much but it's difficult, i know i'm an asshole but i like to point out the folly.