Reasons for Thanks

I talked with the doctor today and my Fibula has healed well.  (with the help of a lot of screws) The Tibia is still awful looking, but I can now put full weight on the leg!  When looking at the X-rays, the doctor pointed out several pieces that he said he was literally putting and holding in place with his thumb during surgery.  There were so many splinters of bone it was a complete jigsaw puzzle.  Bleh.  It still looks pretty bad to me, but to the doctor, who honestly is the only one that knows what bad really looks like, it has healed enough for me to walk a couple of weeks in the boot without crutches.  After that, I'm free of all this.

Now that I'm limping around without the crutches, I'm thankful for several things, and I'm noticing more and more by the hour.  I imagine that I will continue to notice things that I can now do that I just couldn't a day ago.

First of all, I'm thankful for all the people that helped me through the worst of this mess.  Thanks to my friends who got me home from Montana, my wife who has since driven me everywhere for the past 9 weeks and has put up with my numerous lows in dealing with this.  I also need to give some thanks to the people at work that helped me get through the day when I couldn't carry anything.

Things that I am really happy about:

1. I can walk/limp without crutches.  (Now would be the time for one of those awesome pimp costume canes)

2. I can DRIVE again!  (I think that Brenna may be the one more thankful in this particular case.)  I might hug my Honda when I get home, but the 2 feet of pollen coating it would just make that idea gross.

3. I have been cleared to get back on my spin bike!!  While it's not riding through the trees on my favorite possessions, it's a major start down that trail.

4. I can carry my own coffee back to my desk at work without fear of wearing it or endangering others.  (one of those small yet oh-so-important elements of every day life)

5. I can walk down stairs instead of scooting down on my rear end.  (I won't feel like such an invalid but the kids won't like that I'm harder to catch and climb on.)

I'll stop now, but life is getting back to normal and I feel encouraged that I will be able to do something aside from sit by a pool when I head to the deserts of Nevada and Utah in 6 weeks.  Now I have to get stronger, drop some couch surfing weight, and get back to life as normal.

A comparison but not really...

A fellow co-worker was reading through this blog and compared me to Evel Knievel.  Heh Heh...

I enjoy fast paced and somewhat risky sports but I'm hardly a daredevil.  Just look at the Red Bull website or any number of GoPro videos if you want to see what I do NOT do.  Well, at least things I don't do anymore on the skydiving front...It's official though, I injured myself much less falling out of airplanes/helicopters than I have done in several other sports.  I only broke an arm in 10 years and 730 jumps back in my skydiving days.  Hence, Skydiving is way safer than wake boarding, road and mountain bike riding, ice skating (lame story), and skateboarding down stairs.

And NO there is absolutely nothing wrong with my statistical sampling there...so just take your mathematics degrees and stuff them.

In the humorous moment of thinking about the comparison of me to Mr. Knievel, I went to the one source that could give me some random trivia for the day.  Al Gore's interweb* thingy directed me to this other thingy called Wikipedia, which I guess is becoming the repository for all of human knowledge and will eventually become self aware like Skynet  and destroy us all... 


Back to my random trivia after a collection of tangents.  Sorry.

Evel Knievel broke a lot of bones...and by a lot I mean, “The 433 broken bones he suffered during his career earned an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of "most bones broken in a lifetime."[2]” Wikipedia: Evel Knievel

Holy Cow!  How did he even walk after his career was over...or did he?  In retrospect, I will probably break bones again since I don't really have an intention of quitting the sports I love, but I hope to hold out for at least a decade before the next skeletal catastrophe.  This current one sucks worse than any of my others.

I'll see a doc this week and see if I can actually walk without crutches anytime soon, and I'll badger him to let me on my spin bike.  I'll let you all know how it goes.

*No, Al Gore didn't actually claim to invent the Internet...He's just a typically self aggrandizing politician and not very good with phrasing in interviews during an election season.

A new Bike and an old Rant...

Most of you have probably seen the bike through my other post, or listened to me rave about it well before I even got around to buying it.  I did finally get it done this past week, and after quite a number of years of fits and starts about buying a new mountain bike, I got it to the house and then took it to the trails as fast as I could possibly get it there.

I videoed the inaugural ride...which most of you have also already witnessed via some social meida outlet.

I will take this moment to:

1. test out embedding a Vimeo video into this blog.
2. rant about digital rights management in my stupid videos.


deep breath aaaannd...  Rant away!

YouTube, where I have posted most of my stupid video concoctions blocked my mountain bike video from the whole planet.  Yes!  I guess I have enough viewership to warrant their censorship from the whole of the 7 friggin' billion people that live on this little blue/white/brown-ish orb.  The most hits a video of mine has ever garnered was about 100 hits and it didn't even have music!  We aren't talking millions, or hundreds of thousands or really even multiple hundreds of hits.

Now, it's not YouTube's fault.  They got sued so now they are gun-shy of people using copyrighted material, so I won't really rip on them.  It's the music recording industry that I'm ranting about.  I bought a song legally through iTunes.  I put it on a dumb video that about 30 people will watch in it's entire viewing history, and 10 of those hits will be me...'cause the bike is awesome and I need to see it sometimes when I'm not home...

The video has my credits and a link to iTunes and Amazon where you can buy the song if you liked it.  Those links for purchasing the song were even put there automatically by YouTube aside from my crediting the artist and naming them on my own.  That comes down to FREE ADVERTISING for the record company and the band!  Very few people on the planet will be intentionally playing YouTube over and over again instead of buying a song that will play on their iPods, so that can't be the reason for blocking the video.  I just don't understand the concept of not allowing small time people to use music they have legally paid for and credited to the artist.  If I were getting millions of hits on a video, or if I was somehow profiting from the playing of their song or my video with their music, I can start to get the idea that I probably should have asked permission over and above buying the music, but for 30-50 views on a video?  Come on people...  Free Advertising...where probably 1 person would go and buy the song after watching my admittedly awesome video...

Anyway, as a result, I am trying out Vimeo, where the company doesn't mess with their users.  Probably because they don't have the traffic a YouTube does...yet.

Enjoy.  The trail and the new bike are awesome...even if I might have used purchased music as a lame soundtrack.


Ride of the Niner from Brad on Vimeo.

The Bike Project - Monster truck wheels

I ride and race bikes as a hobby, and if you hadn't figured that out, you probably don't know me, haven't been around me as I babble incessantly on about them, and probably haven't read much of this blog.  The blog isn't entirely about bikes, but somehow my hobby has found a way to take up 2/3rds of the posts I have written.  When I come to think of it, I guess I'll take this moment to apologize to my friends that sit listening to my inane stories, and I must say that, at least most of the time, it looks like you are half way interested in whatever cycling related nonsense I am spouting.  If you are, good, I feel better subjecting you to my one sided discussions of bicycle related stuff.  If you aren't, you should seriously take up acting as a career.  You are good...Keanu Reeves ain't got nuthin' on you talent wise...  In fact...I'm pretty sure you are like way better 'cause Keanu couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag and yet he makes A-list money for his movies, and I am somehow compelled to watch them all...Whoah ...

Some fine examples of Keanu's acting.

And here...




Ok, I really didn't mean to get off on how much I love to watch Keanu Reeves movies and still bash on his questionable acting.  I really wanted to talk about bikes! 

Yeah. I know...now you're just dying with excitement...

I, for whatever reason find myself in need of a new bike, and yes, I use the word "need" quite liberally here.  Like I need a new bike like I need to breathe or I need food or something of that ilk.  Ok Ok it's, semantics people!  I WANT a new bike...Happy now?!?  sigh...

Let the butchery of the English language continue.

I decided to try out some huge wheeled mountain bikes before I actually purchased something and burned through the family's savings as a result.  See, how thoughtful of me considering that the family might actually need a place to live and food to eat vs me needing a bike.

Ok, I'm running off topic again.  The point of this was the size of the wheels on this particular bike were going to be significantly larger than my current mountain bike.  This would allow me to take my mediocre downhill and technical abilities to another level without actually getting better.  Big wheels don't get stuck in ruts, roots, and rocks as easily as smaller ones.  Note the fine example of alliteration in that last sentence.  Plus big wheels on bicycles are just like totally waaay cool.  You know...like me...sometimes.

I picked up a demo bike from Cahaba Cycles that would be a good test for 29r wheels.  It's a Niner S.I.R 9.  Now you might think that the cycling industry would have some heavy technical jargon that the S.I.R. stands for, so I asked one of the staff there.  "Steel Is Real" was the answer.  High intelligence and engineering jargon coming from the bike manufacturing industry? -- nope.

I took the bike out for a long 35 mile ride around Oak Mountain, and it felt completely different.  This thing would monster truck over obstacles and rocks that rattled my teeth loose on my current mountain bike.  It was a much smoother ride as well, and that simply came from the size difference of the wheels.

The one big drawback I noted was going uphill.  My current bike definitely climbed better due to the smaller wheels.  There is a trade-off in everything it seems.  The big wheels weigh more and have more mass so making them spin takes much more effort to get going or, in this case, keep going up a hill.  Still it was worth it for the enjoyment of the ride, and fortunately, as I was struggling up steep pitches of fire trail, I could look down at the top tube and read the handy little reminder that Niner Bikes gave me.

 

Thanks guys.  I nearly forgot. 

 

I would have had video of the new ridge line trail to post with this high end cycling analysis, but the GoPro rattled loose and it rendered a beautiful bluebird day filled with scenes of the bike bounding over dirt and rocks completely unwatchable.  Looks like you guys, my loyal readers, dodged a bullet on that one.  Count yourselves as lucky.

 

I'm off to demo a full suspension 29r this weekend which would allow for the rear wheel to absorb some of the shocks as well as the front.  That should be a fun ride, and maybe I'll get the video this time.

 

Have a great weekend everyone.

Chemical Marionettes

A thought crossed my mind this morning, and you can guess by the title of this post, that the thought was serious. I know…that’s really unusual for me, but nonetheless, I thought I would explore it in a post on the blog since putting the question to Facebook is like the ADHD version of writing. Not like this blog wouldn’t be a prime example of ADHD writing in the eyes of Conrad or Tolstoy or Hemingway to name a few, but it actually requires thought to come up with a paragraph or two vs. the vapid style of Facebook status changes.

The question that flitted through my consciousness as I took a pile of aspirin and vitamins with my coffee this morning was, are we all just Chemical Marionettes as a species? What would we be like if we didn’t rely so heavily on chemicals to modify our daily lives?

Now I’m not talking about food since those are chemicals in essence but we use them to fuel our lives and keep our cells functioning at some level. I’m also not talking about antibiotics or cancer medications since those save our lives (most of the time) from pretty horrible and undignified ends. I’m talking about chemicals that have no other function than to modify our worldview by direct action on our brains with no other use by the body. You can ignore my mention of the concoction of aspirin and vitamins I was taking this morning since those impact mainly my physical structure rather than the chemicals in my brain.

What are we doing? Is life so bad? Why do we need these things?

A few stats:
-Over 10% of the 300 million people in the U.S. are on some form of antidepressant.

-Basically 95% of the population use caffeine on a daily basis and 75% of children over the age of 10 consume caffeine on a daily basis.

-67% of the U.S. drink alcohol

-Estimates say that 20% of the U.S. population would test positive for marijuana use if we tested everyone today. (Or maybe that’s skewed by the 99.9% of the Northwest U.S. that would test positive…)

I’ll skip including the harder drugs because while the % of the population using them is high, they generally are not a common drug used daily.

Yes, I googled all this stuff and the sources looked reputable, but could be totally wrong…it did come from the “interweb” and we all know everything out there is based in truth and good statistical science…so a grain of salt is required on my quoted stats folks…
In the end, are we all just totally reliant on chemicals to perform our daily tasks or to make our lives a touch more tolerable? Hence my marionette reference…the drugs pull the strings so we can perform… Ok, maybe it’s a lousy metaphor, but you get the point.

I doubt my headaches would allow me to quit my coffee addiction anytime soon, nor do I really plan to try to quit, but this thought on our society, or perhaps the whole of the human race, was interesting. What would our real “unmodified” behaviors be like? What would our lives be like?

Some facets would certainly improve if we didn’t use chemicals constantly. For instance:
-Traffic accidents would certainly decrease.
-Violence and crime rates would drop with drop without alcohol and drug use.
-Would road rage decrease without everyone hopped up on caffeine?
-We would have more cash to spend.
-Society would be healthier as a whole.

Some things would certainly be worse too:

-Without caffeine, early morning, 2pm, and late night work productivity would drop precipitously. I think I just named most of the day with those times…America’s GDP and it’s higher educational system would be in shambles. (Or would it if people didn’t use alcohol in the evenings?)

-I’m not sure about the usefulness of the vast application of antidepressants across our country.

Make no mistake, antidepressants serve a good purpose and some people really need it, but many are just looking for a way to be calm all the time. There is this perception that we should all be blissfully happy all the time, but things happen that make us sad, or make our lives miserable for a period of time. When we were kids, we didn’t take drugs, we just got through it and moved on. Kids now just take the drugs… I guess we as a species are flawed and are unable to be happy all of the time, but taking a steady diet of serotonin re-uptake inhibitors probably isn’t really effective or necessary for 90% of the people that are now on them.
- Also in the “most certainly worse column”, parties would be totally lame…see I couldn’t stay serious… But honestly, there are only so many board games and rounds of Charades one can handle before the gathering would break up like a glass in a Jewish wedding. We would all be in bed by 10 on party nights and would probably be more productive in the morning.

-New Years Eve…10pm and out…Times Square and a flashy ball? Meh…

The world would definitely be a touch more even keeled. The highs of boozy elation would end and the lows of the resulting bleary eyed mornings would be no more as well.

It’s interesting to think on how human beings became this way. Is it a way to give us some sort of competitive advantage or take the edge off the drudgery of our daily lives? Why we are motivated to find a way to make the chemicals fire in our heads to produce experiences that we perceive to be better. I guess we are designed to try to change things and produce out of the ordinary feelings. Even children spinning in the front yard until they fall over are modifying their perceptions and making themselves feel altered. Is that everyone’s first mind altering experience? The kids that do it until they throw up and then get up and keep doing it are the ones that their parents probably should be worried about.

If society stopped all unnecessary chemical intakes of caffeine, alcohol or whatever for a month, would life be better, worse, or just the same once the addiction headaches were gone?
I’ll bet the profits for Betty Ford Clinics would be simply astronomical for a time. Better make it two months in that scenario to get a good sample month once everyone got back to normal after de-tox.
I find myself finishing this rambling post without a good answer on the topic, but I do hope you found it an interesting to think about, and that you didn’t find yourself heading for the liquor cabinet to make yourself feel better about wasting time on this blog.

Hair Loss and Residual Self Image

I needed a haircut, or at least I thought that I did. Normally, I keep my hair really short because it gets all poofy and ya’know like totally unmanageable and stuff. It could even get so long and unruly it might actually take on a life of its own and I’ll be combing it in the morning and it will purr or gnaw on the comb or something.

I mentioned this fact to my wife during dinner last night (the fact about needing a haircut not the thought that my hair might start to purr or something equally horrifying). At that moment she made a comment involving the length of my hair and how having my hair cut professionally instead of doing it myself might hide my bald spot.

The last two words took a second to sink in…

Bald Spot…Bald spot…Bald Spot… echo echo echo

WHAT?? I laughed at the ridiculous nature of what she had said and blew it off as best I could. All the while, those words rattled around in my head. “BALD SPOT??? What bald spot? What the heck is she talking about? I don’t have any such thing… I’m only 38, brilliantly handsome, witty, athletic and pretty much super-cool in every way… People like that don’t have bald spots… Unheard of…

I must have looked a little shocked, so she deftly pounded the topic home with a verbal pile driver by saying, “It’s not so bad, really. You are tall enough that most people don’t see it.”

“Ack! Oh yeah, that reeeally helps assuage my fears.” I thought. (Although I may have actually voiced the “Ack!” part.) Her “You’re tall” theory didn’t help at all, especially since I know that I spend 99.9% of my time sitting at a desk behind a computer where all the people that walk in are naturally taller than me!” Crap! I was shaken to the core…

Everyone has an image of what they look like in their head, and that is how everyone assumes everyone else sees them. I think Morpheus called it “Residual Self Image” as he explained the computer world to Neo in the first Matrix movie…uh…I’ll move on now…

Sooo, I had this image in my head, and it wasn’t too far off the one I see in the mirror every morning. Well the reflection wasn’t too different except for the parts where my mental image was more handsome, less scruffy, less bleary eyed, somehow younger, and exuded an aura of sheer-mega-awesomeness as compared to the skinny, goofy looking guy staring back at me from mirror.

Even after last night’s comments about bald spots, I went about cutting my hair this morning and pulled out a mirror to look at the back of my head to make sure I didn’t miss anything or accidentially shave a Nike Swoosh back there. That’s when I finally noticed a version of me that…uh… everyone… else… sees…

There it was in all its unflattering glory. Good Lord! There is this great thinning patch on the top of my head! What the heck is going on here? I’m sure it’s never been there before!!! It’s like a miniature version of the deforested Amazon river basin…without the Toucans and Howler Monkeys… Which, by the way, just might just take up residence if I let my hair get too long. How long has this follicly-challenged patch been there??? How could this have happened? What’s next? Am I going to wake up one morning and discover a second face on the back of my head or something? Like the evil Voldemort that appeared on the back of the head of the Dark Arts professor in one of the Harry Potter movies.

*Side note* Ok, the super-cool and witty part of my super-extra-mega-awesome-self-image is a little tarnished now that I realize I have referenced both a Sci-Fi movie and something from a Harry Potter movie in the same post. Crap… I’m about 2 seconds from realizing that I am a serious mega-geek.



Nope…I’ve repressed all that now. I’m like totally waaay cool again.

My reaction to the previously unknown/unrecognized balding was quite calm, reserved, and most assuredly dignified… In other words, I don’t think I sobbed too loudly at the shattered remains of my self-image scattered on the floor.

In hindsight (i.e. now that I have stopped pitifully moaning about it) I guess I knew about the euphemistically “thinning hair” since I have been cutting my own hair for a decade or more. I had always managed to explain it away as yet another bad self haircut that I convinced myself I would get right the next time.

Man, sometimes life sneaks up on you I guess, or maybe I really will try letting someone else cut my hair…

We are all just M.A.M.I.L.s?

Dang. One of the fun activities I personally identifiy with as being great fun, somewhat unusual, and kind of Out-of-the-Mainstream-Edgy is actually just another typical mainstream commercialized un-original joke.

I remember thinking that skydiving was like that during the decade I spent in that sport, until the X games started. Then it turned out that everybody and his brother seemed to have become “Jumpers” even though they had only done a tandem once and threw up on themselves in the process. Now cycling is just another of the activities pushed off as standard fare for the mid life crisis crew.

M.A.M.I.L. = Middle Aged Men In Lycra.

They even cheapen the thrill I had on the recent cycling vacation saying that the typical "Fred" has to make a spiritual cycling journey to the mountains. It’s not unusual, or a way to differentiate one's self, it's just another average and predictable thing that mid-life people do.

Oh well, here’s to just being one of the masses that our youth oriented culture laughs at while rolling their eyes. To paraphrase the article (because I’m too lazy to find the line and copy it), It’s better than finding mid-life-mediocrity at the bottom of a pint glass… (My version is better anyway.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10965608#story_continues_2

Moab Utah the supermodel of landscapes?

Have you ever known "that person" that couldn't take a bad picture? Someone so photogenic that they could fall into a trash dump in the dark, get covered in mud, and still end up looking good? Well, when it comes to landscapes, Moab is "that place". I'm sure that there are loads of places that you could be blind with a finger over part of the camera lens and still fire off good looking pictures. I took so many pictures of the place while we were there, and aside from me being in some of the photos, many turned out really well. I mean it was really difficult to sort through and actually decide which shots were better than others. From a photography perspective, that's a pretty good problem to have.

From Moab Mountain Biking Trip

Postcard country anyone? The collection of professional and amateur photographers were lined up as the sun set on these amazing natural structures, and all were respectful to allow a quick shot and to get out of the way in order for the next guy to have a clear view. These arches, more than 2000 in the Arches National Park, are so striking and unusual that you simply must see it to believe it. Delicate Arch is probably the most photographed arch in the place, and even after seeing it on a zillion postcards, when we climbed up to the sandstone overlook, it was simply awe inspiring when it came to view. It is monstrously large, and we were able to shuffle down the steep sandstone bowl to get to it's base. The next shot is of me laying down under the arch to shoot upwards, and then there is one with Brenna and myself at it's base to give some perspective of size.

From Moab Mountain Biking Trip

From Moab Mountain Biking Trip

We look like ants under it. Strangely, Nathan (taking the picture) kept telling Brenna to stay put and for me to "back up another step". I wonder why when there was this big cliff back there? I'll ask him sometime... just kidding

The geology of the area is quite amazing. What produced all these arches, the massive sandstone cliffs, all the different types of sandstone, and why are these features where they are in relation to town? Well, it wasn't what I had expected. Initially, I assumed that all the area had been ocean floor at some point to create the sandstone (which it had, twice actually over the past 300 million years), and I thought that the Colorado river and the Green River had carved out the landscapes. Naturally the rivers did do some of the carving, but the really strange features were created more by what was left behind by the ancient oceans. Salt. Loads of salt. There was, and is, a massive quantity of salt under the whole area. Potash salt is a product mined from the area, and there are vast evaporation ponds out on one of the rides that cast a strange conflict of blue water against the desert cliffs surrounding the ponds.

When you put huge amounts of salt under tremendous pressure, it takes on a strange property. It behaves something like a semi-solid goo. It is able to squeeze around and shift. This shifting salt is what produced the Moab that we see in the movies today. Millions of years ago, the weight of the rock above a large deposit of salt eventually collapsed downward creating a depression in the middle, this in turn, squeezed the salt out to the sides and forced the sandstone cliffs upward nearly a thousand feet up on either side of the town. The rivers cut through the rising sandstone and the rain and wind eroded the soft rock over time leaving these amazing structures of arches and thin fins of rock that stand alone in the desert.

This is one of the potash evaporation ponds. They dye the water blue to speed the evaporation process and it looks really cool against the background.

From Moab Mountain Biking Trip

To show you an example of how much salt is in the area, look at the top of the rocks in the picture below.

From Moab Mountain Biking Trip

I noticed these rocks in a stream crossing out on the Amasa Back trail that I rode on my last ride in the area. That is salt dried on the tops of the rocks. I'm glad that I didn't run out of water because the creeks would have afforded me no relief apparently.

Thanks for humoring me on my poor attempt at a geology lesson. I only left out about a million things that happened over a couple hundred million years. Deserts like the Sahara producing sand dunes and other nifty geologic happenings that forced up the La Sal Mountain range you see behind the arch in the first picture. All that stuff fascinates me, but probably not everyone. I really will get around to writing about the bike rides and other adventures. This was just a piece of natural history that I thought was worthy of passing along to my throngs of avid readers... Now that I think about it, I hope I didn't lose too many readers by doing this post. It would stink not to be recognized as I walk down the streets anymore by my adoring fans.

Living Out West? Would it be fun in the cold winter?

The thought has crossed my mind to move. Again... Naturally I get this urge every winter to some extent, and when living in a place for more than 5 years, the urge calls even more powerfully with each ensuing winter.

Winter in the south, while only moderately cold, is basically useless. Too nasty and gray to really entice one out of the house regularly, but alternately, not cold enough to provide interesting things to do that are winter related. You end up doing the same summer sports in junky conditions for 3 months a year. There must be something to fix this.

1. Move back to Florida and get rid of winter altogether. (Not a bad thought but "been there done that".
2. Live in a new place with new experiences. Life is short and I know I'm smart/marketable enough to get a job anywhere I set my sights. The job is the same anywhere, so the real deciding factor is life experience and good schools/environments for the kids.

In all this inner turmoil of dealing with winter and knowing that all finance P&A jobs are the same no matter where one lives, I also wonder how the kids would deal with the change? What would a southern boy do if he ended up out west in Denver or Salt Lake?

Well, I now have a good feel for what winter weekends would entail based on this video courtesy of "dug". He took his recently-turned-15-year-old and some friends out to goof off for a weekend, and took this 4 minute video. This is exactly what a useful winter looks like in my mind. Mountain biking may not be open for another month or two out there, but hey, when you can do stuff like this? So what?

I'm sure I would only be watching the kids if my family was doing stuff like this on weekends...riiiiight....

Ian's Birthday Bash in American Fork Canyon from Doug Anderson on Vimeo.

Honda - The opposite of a Toyota

It seems, when watching the news these days, that the world is filled with thousands of poor souls in Toyotas being flung along roadways at life threatening speeds, but in the case of our Honda, we have something of the opposite problem.

The old and ragged-out Honda Odyssey that we have had since the beginning of time (or the beginning of our parenting lives) seemed to develop a case of unintended and uncontrolled stopping rather than the alleged acceleration issues that Toyotas are dealing with. And while stopping would seem to be a better issue to have than having one's vehicle race off of it's own volition, it does cost some serious money to fix; a point that I will explain in more detail later. In this particular case, it wasn't a stuck brake pedal that produced the unintended stoppage. The unintended stoppage was caused by the other vehicle, MY VEHICLE, that I left parked further down the driveway.

Now hold on there... Before you jump to conclusions and start saying that there may be some issues with a certain driver not looking while driving, DON'T. I'm not pointing fingers. Nay! I will now attempt to re-construct the events of that evening using my vast experience in forensic accident analysis and disaster reconstruction, and don't doubt my qualifications, I am quite versed in accident reconstruction. I have accidentally destroyed loads of things in my life, and sometimes I have even been able to put them back together! Never mind that none of these things were cars...pfft...

1. The lead up.

The kids were out playing in the driveway when I got home, so I left the truck, that would soon make it's debut as a large tool used to stop minivans while simultaneously re-shaping the van's rear doors, at the end of the driveway. The Minivan that experienced the "unintended stoppage" was parked 30 feet away at the other end of the driveway near the house.

2. The conditions.

It was dark, and raining. The Honda, has a set of Miami-tinted windows that are practically opaque when its anything other than broad daylight. They were great when living in FL would produce seat belt buckles that could permanently sear marks on your hands, but they're not so useful now.

Here is an example of looking out the rear window of the van at night.

This simulated view is actually quite accurate

3. There were distractions.

I'm going to guess with my quite enviable set of guessing skills as to what these distractions may have been. You may vote in the comments section on your favorite if you wish. I'm sure that thousands of you will...

• The driver was suddenly made violently ill by driving the van for the billionth trip to the store, which for some reason made her shut her eyes tightly and stomp on the accelerator.



• Acid Rain got in the drivers eyes and made her squeeze them tight while stomping on the accelerator.



• A meteor or UFO flashed through the night and startled the driver causing her to squeeze her eyes tightly while stomping on the accelerator.



• Ninjas, obviously mistaking the driver for someone else, jumped from the hedge and in very poorly dubbed English threatened her -- "You kill my master! Now you die!" To which the driver squeezed her eyes shut and stomped on the accelerator.



• Kids toys were strewn all around the driveway like a pink and purple plastic laden minefield, and the driver was looking for these items that retail for $19.99 while backing up with her foot stomping on the accelerator.

In my mind, all these are perfectly plausible candidates for what actually happened that fateful night. You decide...

4. The aftermath

To lend even more credence to my forensic accident analysis abilities...like you needed any. I used high-tech satellite image technology to come up with these very technical accident scenes for you. They unequivocally show where the incident occurred and what happened.

In this first image you can see that the minivan accelerated from the tree shrouded garage area. It achieved a speed of precisely 327mph (27,000 kph) prior to the impact with my car which is conveniently noted with the orange spiky looking thing...

I wish it had been as sunny as these images. I wouldn't be writing all this absurd stuff now had it been...

There was also a google street view image that shows some evidence of what happened. How lucky the google van was driving by!
I think the skid marks were from my truck being pushed along the driveway while slowing down the van. The reddish spot may help prove my theory on the presence of Ninjas on the night in question...

And Presto! A new door that resembles modern art done by a drunken punk band!

She looks waaaaaay too happy in this picture. Whatever could cause that?

Fortunately, there were no injuries other than to pride in this accident, and my truck looked like it weathered the beating pretty well. We looked at the option of insurance...briefly...briefly like for .28 milliseconds. The total value of the car (prior to the attractively re-shaped door) was 1,800 bucks. The 1,000 dollar deductible pretty much totalled it. Then something really weird happened.

We went right out and bought a new car for her! See I told you it was weird.

It's not every day that you crash a car and then get rewarded with a new one with all the goodies you ever wanted on it.

Honestly, my wife has driven that old van forever. We put 181,000 miles on it and carried our family everywhere in the 8 years we have had it. Yeah, we drive a lot. She has put up with it for a lot longer than most people would have kept a car, and we got our money's worth out of it. It was time, and I had saved up for a car, so this wasn't totally out of the blue. Especially when the former van's transmission failed at the state line and she was stranded there until someone could come get her and the kids. A really funny thing, and a testament to how good these vans are, no matter how un-cool and un-desirable they may be, is that she picked the same car again! It's a charcoal gray Honda Odyssey, but with a whole lot of good stuff in it. If I didn't know better, I might surmise that this may have been a pre-meditated plan? If it were, couldn't she have at least hit the tree instead of my truck? sheesh...

Brenna with her new wheels!

Behind the wheel and enjoying it!

And the kids doing what they do best. Not posing for the picture. I think that Aiden's face says it all...

Thanks Brenna and I really hope you enjoy the van. You deserve it.

Also, Please forgive my snarky/silly commentary on how you arrived at getting this new car. It makes for a fun story.

Oh, and watch out for Ninjas when backing up, you might hit something...

Top 10 Reasons I haven't been writing

1. Work
2. Kid Basketball
3. Kid Cheer-leading
4. Sick of computers when I get home from work
5. 3 active kids
6. Not riding bikes or motorcycles with all the rain, ice and cold so no adventurous posts.
7. I'm tired and not feeling "chatty" (Stupid darkness)
8. Wii games
9. Projects to worry over but not complete (or completely avoid) around the house
10. Motivation

I really want to write something in order to keep this blog going, so I guess I'll find a topic and at least get something down on paper, as it were. I'm sure all my devoted fans have been struggling with my silence of late.

My deepest apologies, and I'll get a story written about some amazingly compelling topic...soon.

Now where did I put that Wii remote??

The End of Daylight Savings

Every year, around this time, I dread what I have come to call The Darkness. Otherwise known as the end of daylight savings time. For some reason the powers that be decided to make Alabama part of the central timezone, and this has the effect of turning most of the useful part of the day...into night. This is when the coming winter, that already curtails my outdoor fun, has the added dis-incentive of being pitch black at 5pm. Once this happens, the only outdoor activity after work is tied to whether or not I have batteries charged on my bike's God Lamp.

Since I have moved here, I have handled the late fall and winter's seemingly constant nighttime with different methods. Some more effective than others...

2004 - Working 90 hours a week...Who cares, it's going to be dark anyway.

2005 - Watch DVR'd football on the couch and eat...lots.

2006 - Go out with friends and watch sports at a local restaurant regularly, and eat...lots.

2007 - Jeez...It's still dark and cold. I'm tired of this...Maybe if I eat a lot, and pay a bajillion dollars for the NFL Ticket on Direct TV, it will go away.

2008 - Last year, I realized my pattern of "Hey, the sun just set at 4:30pm, time to go get fat!" wasn't helping my Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I started attempting to do more healthy things. It's demoralizing to have to re-lose 10-15lbs every spring only to have it show up instantly at the end of October again.

Just what are they saying for Saturday? How ominous is that??? Click on the image if you can't make out what the Weather Channel had put on their forecast just for me...

2009 - This year I have a plan, and I'm going to do something different. With the darkness that sets in starting tomorrow, I plan on spending the winter making myself more active when it is light, and more active in general. That way I don't have to work so hard to shed pounds and the accompanying bad mood come spring. (I'm sure Brenna just rolled her eyes wondering how I could be "more active in general")

When the time changes, it is light at 5:30 in the morning around here. I am going to attempt to move my patterns to fit the sun as often as I can. I have to have more daylight and more activity outside, and I plan on being out in it whenever I can, no matter the temperature. I'm sure they have invented these nifty things called warm clothes by now.

We'll see how all this works when I actually get around to setting the alarm...beep beep beep...

You Bought a What?

Yep, I finally did it, and I didn't have to make up some story for my wife about how it followed me home! Can I keep it??? Not to say that I wouldn't if it came to that...

After putting money away for a couple of years to finance my laughably early mid-life crisis, I bumped up my life insurance and bought a motorcycle. I haven't owned a bike in over 10 years, but the time seemed right and I was really looking for something that didn't involve pedaling so much. I needed some sort of change, and what's better than deciding to get something that can be equated to an instant roller-coaster ride without a Disney-esque line to wait in?

It's a Suzuki VStrom DL 1000, and I have driven it quite a bit and covered the distance from Atlanta to Birmingham on it's inaugural ride. It feels great and handles like a dream on the mountain roads too. I have some plans in the works to equip it with some hard luggage and take it out to Texas to ride with my Dad before it gets too cold. Well, cold for a southerner, so if you're from Michigan or some other similarly permafrosted locale, I don't want to hear it. A 45-50 degree winter day IS cold...end of discussion. If you think those temperatures are fine warm riding conditions, you can keep them for all I care.

I laughed when I thought, "Now my garage is complete." I have all the two wheeled entertainment than I can hold in there, and if it will stop stinking raining, I'll get more chances to use my toys! (Note that I didn't say "all the two wheeled entertainment that I need..." There's always a "need" for some other kind of mountain bike or something...)

I woke this morning to yet another line of storms that dumped a few more inches on the saturated southeast, and the news had bright red warnings about "Flash Floods". For all the media hubub about it, they may as well have put out a PSA about how we all need to wear those arm floaty things just to survive the day...

Waiting for Summer

Like you may have figured out, I have some time on my hands to reflect and look around as my collar bone heals. This weekend, we drove over to Atlanta, more precisely to Lake Lanier north of Atlanta, to celebrate the Easter holiday with the family. I took a couple of minutes to walk down to the dock and to look at the lake levels, which while low, look infinitely better than they did when we closed up the boats for the winter. I liked the photo of the ladder still up in its winter storage position, but it seemed poised to do it's job for another season of endlessly getting kids in and out of the water again.

The wind was cold, and even though it's spring, it's certainly no time to be out on the water for any length of time yet. I thought about the timing of getting back to skiing and getting the strength back into my arm, and it looks like it's going to fall in the June time frame before I can start that process. I thought about all the warm weather, the sounds of the kids swimming around the dock, and spending time skiing and floating with the family that I have to look forward to. All that will pretty much coincide with the time I am cleared to get back in action from this injury, which made me smile. It means I'm not going to miss out on some of the really good stuff this summer, as has happened in the past with some of my other breaks... Yeah, I break bones much more frequently than I like to think about...

I can't wait for summer.

You Just Had To Look...

After a few days my broken bone and bruised shoulder do seem to be feeling somewhat better. I am still loopy from the anesthesia but much less so than even yesterday. I have probably done more damage to my health and to my life expectancy by going under general anesthesia and then using the morphine pump to deal with the pain than actually breaking myself.

Well, the doctor told me that I would be able to take a shower and get the incision wet by Sunday, and since I didn’t want a green cloud of death-inducing-funk billowing around me in meetings Monday, I prudently procrastinated until Monday morning for that shower. (I did take a bath over the weekend so I wouldn’t have to remove the bandages, and so I wouldn’t kill off any of the family members. Seriously, I was in no condition to deal with the police investigation had someone died from the stink.)

I found that the tape they use to used to put the bandages on doubles for a wax hair removal tool.

Just tear it off! Quickly! AAAAAAahhhhhh!!!! Whimper…


Then I took a good look at the 7 inch long scar that I will sport for the rest of my life, and here was my next reaction…and possibly yours as well.


Yeah, it’s like a train wreck or someone falling from unsurvivable heights. You just have to look.

Gross. Just gross.

Next post – back to the riveting topic of Mayan culture as I promised a few posts back.

I’m moving to live on the Riviera with this idea!

I was sitting with a friend of mine the other day and I came up with a fantastic business idea.

I can’t remember quite what sparked the idea, but even after a few days it seems to still make sense. What’s sad is that this idea will more than likely be wasted on my lack of experience, serious risk aversion, and my superhuman ability to procrastinate until someone else comes up with the same idea and actually acts on it.

I blame myself for having not tried something entrepreneurial prior to having kids and needing a proper stream of income to support my family and feed my bicycle/coffee addictions.

It’s tough to abandon good income once you have got the family attached to a certain level of living.

I truly respect people who have the guts to risk it all…

Now after all that has been needlessly typed out, drumroll please!

The Idea!

BAR IN A BOX

The idea is to provide a short portable 8x8x7 size box (think a PODS storage size box) with a ready-made bar in it. One of the long sides of the Box would swing up as a kind of patio roof, and inside would be a narrow bar, complete with kegger-ators, taps, coolers, Xmas lights for party atmosphere and decorations fit for any party.

The open side would allow walk in access to the bar where there would probably be room for a few stools in a row. There would be a supplied generator to run all this during your party as part of the rental.

It would work for any fun neighborhood party, summer back-yard party, weddings and other functions where indoor bar space is limited, perhaps outdoor frat parties, and church functions…

Well maybe not that last one…

I know that the equipment is available to lift and transport these Bars In Boxes thanks to the advent of the portable storage companies, so that part is simply a question of getting some trucks. Now the capital requirement to build the actual Bar Boxes would be something for more research.

The final question in this back of an envelope business plan would be alcohol.

My thought on this, due to legal concerns and licensing issues, would be to let the party goers that rented the box supply the booze. Bar In A Box would just supply the very über cool and unusual bar itself. If left to my initial thoughts, the container would come fully stocked, but then the first schmuck that serves a 16 year old that kills him or herself behind the wheel and I become the guy they sue for everything.

Even with a disclaimer signed by the customer that stated explicitly that the renter is responsible for anything and everything that could potentially happen during the use of the Bar In A Box including but not limited to catastrophic meteor impacts, I would still be ruined by the litigious morons that populate society in the US today, so I guess the decision is made.

The customers provide their own booze.

If anyone actually reads this silly drivel, please don’t steal my idea, secondly give me some feedback on it. Does it sound viable? Would you change anything?

Based on your feedback, I may decide to research it further, because it could be a fun enterprise.

And I know you are all dying for more Tour Down Under coverage. I will catch back up on that tomorrow. I needed to post something different that actually required creativity vs. just mentioning something about cycling racing.

Havana Daydreaming

Thank goodness Brenna is home.

I am happy to report that she had a fantastic "Girls Weekend" and she absolutely deserved it.

Now, I would report how my weekend went with all the kids, my work demands, a visit to the office Sunday morning after a visit to my house by my boss on Saturday, and one broken computer laptop that will probably cost me more than my right arm is worth... After thinking about it, I feel my weekend report might be a bit too negative for this brilliantly funny and positive family blog to handle, so I'll move on to the real thought behind this post.

I was called by a certain close friend of mine who is on a vacation binge that I can only look at as epic. Fortunately, I am part of one of these trips later this year, and I can't wait...

He calls me from Key West to gloat. And after receiving a couple of explicative laden voice mails about me not picking up my phone, I called him so he could officially, and gleefully, tease me that he was there I and I am here.

I was waiting for him to break into boisterous and somewhat off key song on the phone:

The beer is too cold, the daiquiri’s too fruitful
There’s no place like home when it’s this far away
I don’t care what they say...

-Jimmy Buffet

I doggedly defended living in Birmingham this time of year... And I do like it here, but man I could use some warm sunny stuff pretty soon.

It's like I have been magically transported to Portland this winter. It hasn't stopped raining. The kids are cooped up, it's cold, and riding a bike with suicidal earthworms, that have been flooded out of their homes onto the roads, leaves interesting (and gross) stuff to clean off the bike after a ride.

I decided, Dangit! I'm gonna have some warm fun here if it kills me, so when I got home, I threw off the suit and tie, and put on my loudest Hawaiian shirt (over a long sleeve tee shirt...it's winter for goodness sake and I'm not totally stupid). I put on every Jimmy Buffet album I own in a shuffle playlist and got to work on my change in lattitude.

I cooked up some Hawaiian chicken for dinner. Never mind that I didn't notice that I didn't have actual Pineapple until I had to make due with sauteed pears after noting that I was lacking this major ingredient to my recipe. The kids liked it enough...meaning not much of it got thrown on the floor, and the wife liked it...meaning she didn't have to cook it.

As I cleaned up after dinner and was feeling a little bit more island-ish, I stepped out back (onto my massive deck) with my drink to look at the stars. As I looked up into the heavens and imagined a starry night with warm breezes and waves crashing on some very far away shore...it began to snow.

Getting old

For my most recent blog update it is probably somewhat incongruous that my subject is about getting old and the method of blogging is via a cell phone... ah nevermind.

Two things:

It's official, am getting hard of hearing. I swear I just heard my daughter yell from the bath that she needed me...ahem..."to make lobster bisque for Aiden". As I am sure this is not what she said, I am sure I have lost my hearing.

Secondly, since I have not bothered to go and find out exactly what she needed, I am sure that I have become "the old man" around the house.

Fun fun!!

Roomba's

I always thought that the Roomba was a pretty dumb invention, but the concept was interesting.

Unfortunately for the inventor, through rigorous study, I have discovered that it never needed to be invented.

Somebody simply wasted their time thinking of it, designing it, creating a prototype, debugging it, testing it profusely, getting some factory in China to build it for 4 bucks, and marketing it to Americans for 500 bucks.

Such a waste of effort.

You may ask why I make these statements? No, it's not because my random brain comes up with stupid thoughts and I am compelled to expound upon them in this blog.

Quite simply, because I have found 3 models that accomplish the same thing without a power supply or docking station, and they are all Environmentally friendly…relatively.

Roomba model 1: Small, lightweight, and amazingly effective.

Price: $900 dollars


I have never seen a robotic vacuum able to anticipate food being dropped and to be in the right place at the right time, so I figure this is waaaaay better.



Roomba model 2: Not small, certainly not light weight, and probably causes an equal number of messes as it cleans. But again, it’s “Enviro-friendly” without batteries and plastics.

Price: $1,000

And after seeing this model in action, I know it will never ever need a battery change. In fact, we should hook up some generator unit and solve the worlds energy woes at the same time as it cleans up the floors. Could you imagine a futures market for pooch power?


Roomba model 3 (Mega Industrial Mess Version):

There are still some bugs in this model. It does collect day old Cheerios from the floor and take care of them effectively though…eeeew…

The issue with this most recent prototype Roomba is that it is actually keeping the aforementioned models 1 and 2 well fed and busy. Roombas’ 1 & 2 hang out near Roomba 3 in anticipation of something being flung off a high chair tray amidst loud giggles.

The other issue with expecting Roomba 3 to clean up the floors while I am doing other stuff is really that whole “expecting” part. It is much more apt to dump over toy boxes, fling food, squirrel sippy cups of milk in creative places, and them toddle off chanting, "Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma boka boka!!!!"

Price: $200,000

Yes yes...The price is jaw dropping, and I even hesitated to mention it. My deepest apologies if you were considering picking up one of these models. Honestly, the initial investment is fairly inexpensive, but you have to factor in food, clothes, college and a couple of wrecked cars worth of auto insurance… Ouch...

Hmmm...Who to Vote For?

(Thanks to Chan Lowe)

Presidents can do little to impact economic cycles aside from ride on the coat-tails of good times (Clinton with his "balanced budget") or slide into the economic abyss with bad times (Both Bushes). I'm not commenting on the other things that the second Bush has done for and to the country, this is purely commentary on how little the presidents actually impact the economy.

I thought this cartoon pretty much summed it up on several levels. I fear for the next 4 years under either of these two... Taxes, programs that help a paltry few, growing government that will collect more and more of this country's resources and channel them into the most inefficient wealth redistribution engine created, and spending. Loads and loads of spending.

Ask yourself, would you run your household finances the way the government runs the country's?