Jim & Jane

There are few times over the course of one’s life that the awesome power of pure beauty strikes your heart and takes your breath away. Fewer times yet that you get to watch it rolling and growing knowing it’s good and then get to see it suddenly blossom more spectacular than your high expectations conceived.

I’ve listened to music perhaps more deeply than most. Pursued it as my lifestyle and my living but didn’t have the maturity or courage to see it through. There were other battles to be fought that I had no clue were coming at the time but turn out to have been the right path for me. It did, however, crystallize in me the utmost respect for those can and do see it through.

I have been enjoying the talent of such a soul for better than forty years. I even had the honor of tossing my riffs in the same wind for quite a few years back in the day. So there’s no surprise when the next chapter unfolds with greater strength and maturity. No surprise to find this soul connected to another of parallel depth and talent pushing relentlessly to perfect their art. No surprise that others are noticing too.

We all grow and live or stagnate and die. We can’t change those rules; we can only adapt. Those with vision and strength thrive; those without miss the opportunity to enrich both their own lives and those lives they chance to touch.

I’ve been hearing some of the new tunes and waiting for the new CD that will carry them home with me where I can savor them in my own space, my own time as I have with their first. Good music always touches me, great music moves me but just every once in a while it grabs me by the lapels, pulls me out of my chair and pushes me into a universe previously unavailable to me.

Now when Bach’s Ave Maria builds dissonance with sweet counterpoint then resolves in a grand crescendo and stops my heart or the Carter Family brings tears to my eyes, I’m prepared for it since their legend precedes my hearing. When someone whose music I have been enjoying for most of my life puts out a better then average performance, it warms my heart. When that performance is catapulted forward by songwriting of unconceivable depth and grace, words fail me but I’m really happy to be alive.

This CD is an amazing work of art with so many fantastic pieces but at the top is “A Dodger’s Prayer” which surpasses the Carter family for melodic line and John Prine for lyrical richness. It's quite clear that Jim and Jane are on the "grow and live" branch of the tree and we are all richer for it.

Riding like I never will...

What does it mean?

Sometimes the message is clear but accidental

Sometimes not so much

150 MPG!

I don’t think about it anymore, I just do it. I moved closer to work a few months back, from 18 miles each way to 6 and committed to full time bicycle commuting. I took the bus once, my first day in the new house, but have otherwise not missed a day. I rode two or three times a week from the old place but it took more time than I had to ride everyday so I drove part way and took the train the rest of the way. At first it seemed like a big deal to ride everyday. I had been in the habit of bringing my work clothes on the drive/train days but when you ride everyday that option goes away so I had to figure out how to manage with no petroleum power. Turns out not to be nearly as difficult as I had feared. Business clothes folded around a 10” by 12” stiff plastic board (a flexible plastic cutting board trimmed to roughly the size of the cardboard that comes inside new dress shirts –don’t forget to round the corners and sand off any sharp edges…) arrive at work much the same as they left home. Oh it’s not without changes. I upgraded my pack to be able to carry enough clothes for the better part of a week. This was the best investment in my cycling gear yet. I can even carry my laptop in it when need be and unlike the cycling specific models, it centers the weight on my hips and leaves my back completely ventilated. Anyway, since I don’t think about it, it didn’t occur to me that riding home might be a problem on the day I donated blood. Not, that is, until I was wired for harvest and was handed a small innocent sheet of paper titled AFTER YOU DONATE which informed me that I must “avoid over-exertion or strenuous exercise for 12-24 hours”. Did I mention that since my ride is only six miles, barely enough to get warmed up, that my routine is to ride hard and sprint at the end? Well OK, I don’t have to ride hard but it is slightly uphill and there was a pretty stiff headwind so there was a certain amount of effort required just to get home. So it all worked out OK though I was about a 50 mile ride tired when I got home. The point of this story is that while I was lying there in the capable hands of the phlebologist, it occurred to me that I no longer think about bicycling to work as my only transportation. I just do it. It’s no longer different or unique. It’s not a big deal; it’s just how I get to and from work. So I think to myself, how many others could ditch their car and ride their bike to work everyday? What would happen if suddenly lots of folks no longer thought about riding their bicycles to work but just did it? With the recreational rides I do above my commute, I ride nearly 800 miles a month but only drive my car around 200 which takes roughly 12 gallons a month. So just for fun I did the math and it turns out that I am getting around 83 miles per gallon. If I take out the special trip miles that aren't happening anymore (which is about 100 miles), it would be only 6 gallons a month or 150 mpg! And I don’t even think about it, I just do it.

Drafting Dragonflies

Summer’s here, roadies swarm the pavement Small clutches of carbon, scandium, aluminum, ti Rolling smoothly, glistening flesh in the sunshine Sweet whirring of gears shifting through the wind

Click, click, click

We are all alone out here together Grabbing a wheel, Pulling through the breeze Grinding up the hills at our own pace

Grind, huff, click

Slingshot as we may, cluster as we must Expanding each to our own limits A spotty paceline but always returning Swarming to defeat the wind

Whish, huff, rest

Today we were joined, our lycra swarm By dragonflies playing on our currents Grabbing our draft, darting in formation Spinning off on their own pleasure cruise

Playing, flying, free

Life 2.0 in full production

It’s been a long road. Inventing a life is never easy, harder still when the old one must be systematically destroyed to obtain the raw materials for the new one. As I traverse my life, I realize I am building the bridge upon which I walk across the chasm and dismantling the bridge behind me to recycle my past into my future. It’s a tricky construction project because the foundation must be maintained or the whole experiment falls into the abyss.

After many years of marriage, I realized I was dying. Not the immanent death you could see if your car was sliding towards a cliff and you at least knew it was time for taking preventative action. No, it was more like the glacial pace of growing up in Love Canal where years, even decades passed as the toxins invaded slowly, steadily. For me it was marital monoxide, a one way corrosion eating away at my spirit, my vitality, my life.

I don’t always take care of myself as I should, raised in the Christian tradition of God first, others second, self last. I took the self last part and crafted a life of adaptation, subjugating my own desires to those perceived of others I chose to be close to. Now I don’t think being self-less is a bad thing but without getting my own oxygen mask on, I was starving myself and letting my own life slip away as I struggled to attach others’ oxygen.

But then I woke up.

I believe that happiness can be cut out of whole cloth. I know that satisfaction can be derived and self-worth maintained in the most hostile crucible shat out from the twisted depths of humanity’s darkest bowels. Viktor Frankl ripped the covers off the part of my psyche behind which this knowledge lived but mine was a more insidious demon; my liberty wasn’t taken from me, I systematically handed it over to someone else in the name of love. No, it wasn’t as horrific as the holocaust by any means but I volunteered for it; I thought I was acting in my best interest by acting in her best interest.

I missed the most important of life’s lessons: I failed to replenish my own reserves as I nurtured the reserves of my other.

Modeling is the process of creating a vision of something. Implementing the model doesn’t always work out as intended since the world is more complex than we have sensory capability to perceive but it always has an effect. When lives are joined, a model is agreed upon and the more the elements of the model are exercised, the more solid and self-perpetuating the model becomes. It’s nearly impossible to redraw the model once the vision becomes reality (which of course is why getting the model right is so important).

When I realized I was dying, that the model could only sustain one life, I was faced with a fork in my road. I could sustain the other until I expired or I could redraw the model so that I could sustain my own life. The options were as different as oil and water and could not be blended. In choosing to sustain my own life, my other believed that sustaining my life could only come at the expense of hers. True or not, that was the unintended truth of the model we had used for nearly twenty years. I roughed in my self-sustaining model some time in the last millennium but only recently completed Life 2.0 based on that model. It’s not perfect but it is sustainable and having survived what seems like a near-death experience makes life even sweeter than I had been able to envision. While the intent was to save my life, the richness now woven into my days is beyond what I could read in the model as I was developing it. Life 2.0 has been going for a while, perhaps it’s now 2.3 or 2.6 but that doesn’t matter anymore. What does matter is that Life version 2 is in full production and Life version 1 is no longer supported.

Ice Bike!

After a winter with almost no snow, we seem to have gotten it all in one weekend and now Ice Bike is happy!Finally something to really sink those Nokian's into though they didn't help much for the parts where the snow was over the handlebars... OK and it would have been nice to have had Stella along for the ride. Nothin' quite like chasing along with a sweet young thing like her smoothing out the trail with her shocks and I swear she has more gears than I can even count. Funny though, how you can be without someone at some point, and still know you're more together than you can remember. Yup, Ice just thinks Stella's the cat's meow, just the thing you know.

Oh, and thinking about just the thing, there's no point shoveling out more of your driveway than you need so I stopped when there was just enough room to get my vehicle out!
No point spending energy shoveling that could go into riding...

Draining the city

It's Friday and the hoards are fleeing the city. They are all there; The young lady sobbing quietly in her seat, The homey subdued without his crew but with blood on his hands (what's up with that?!) The young executive wanna be still pouring over the last Blackberry messages The grubby cyclist trying to get some warmth between ride segments The cute young couple being glared at by the $800 suit The middle aged worker, tired beyond words from the long week (maybe a long weekend ahead...) Packed like sardines in the colorful tube rumbling steel on steel until Freedom at last as they depart silent but with purpose Spreading like the waves left behind a stone Skipping across smooth water Each to their own, riding their own waves Disbursing into their lives, thinning as they go Alone together as I watch them/us all depart I am melancholy today, wrought with cold Wishing I could hear the Grinding of my chain on the gears Forward, carrying me forward on Thin rubber tubes, a small cushion in a big world A big cushion in a small life, no smaller than anyone else’s But toiling away in the gears of the corporate machine Leaves me feeling small and wanting My gears where I can choose When to shift and make progress When to brake and breathe in life's splendor When to make no progress at all and Be propelled forward for the choice It’s Friday and I have fled the city I am all here; My quiet sobbing for life’s trials My hard confidence, caged and pacing with data on my hands My inner, dying executive used-to-wanna-be no longer giving a shit about the last messages of the day My restless pistons trapped by the cold dreaming of ride segments to come The dream of my sweetie in my arms caring not who sees, judges, indignates I am a middle aged worker Tired from life’s challenges Exhilarated by life’s potential Draining the city from my psyche Draining The City

Cold weather wimp - Inspired!

I just started a job in downtown Minneapolis last week and am riding the train, a very cool first for me. All well and good but I am really missing my bicycle commute. I don't handle the cold very well, too many frostbitten toes as a kid I guess, and I just can't keep them warm. I am, however, very heartened to see so many folks who are riding even though it's been below zero nearly every day for the past few weeks. I decided to count how many cyclists I saw but ran out of fingers every day, sometimes before I even got to downtown where the count goes up dramatically. With only one exception, cyclists have gotten on the train everyday (just in my car, I don't know about the other car!) for part of their commute. My new job will take 5 or 6 miles off my commute leaving me with only 12 or 13 miles and I am champing at the bit to get back into the routine. I can't defeat my biology but as soon as it gets up to the double digits, I gotta get back on two wheels. This time, I can add the train as part of my commute leaving me with only six miles to ride before my first option to jump on the train. My inspiration comes at the cold expense of those who never stopped riding and my thanks goes out to them!

Things

I got things

Lots of things

Things to do this

Things to do that

Things from when I couldn’t do this

Things for when I had to do that

Things that prepared me for then

Things that reminded me of when

Things beget more things

If I just had that thing

If I could only find this thing

One more thing and I will be...

But wait,

Be what?

Why did I want to do this?

Why did I need to do that?

What did I need when I couldn’t do this?

Where was my heart when I had to do that?

How did my preparations leave me then?

Who did I think I would be when reminded of when?

When did begetting things beget me?

What if I just didn’t have that thing?

When should I stop looking for this thing?

How did I not see?

If I had one more thing,

I would just have

One more thing

And still not be