Family bike riding and a new camera

Yep. Wasting time in front of the computer again.

Brenna said that I needed a "toy" for Christmas, and now that I have wasted literally a few days trying to edit HD video off the GoPro camera for a simple 5 minute video. I finally got the video done. Not to say that it's good, or finished, or going to win me any awards at Cannes.  I just got tired, and said, "There...that's good enough."

First I tried the pre-packaged Windows Live Movie Maker. It would render a video for 5-6 hour and fail. (I would kick it off and go to bed) It failed miserably. It was a free program and you get exactly what you pay for. I also tried the Adobe Premier Pro CS3, which I already owned when I got Photoshop, and it was so complicated that I couldn't make it do anything at all. I would need to take classes and get a Liberal Arts Degree to make that work. Then (insert angelic choirs here) there was the free test version of Sony Vegas HD 9.0. Thank you Sony for making a product I could understand and use. It was robust enough to let me render a cool little intro with lens flare and other effects (It will do so much more, but I didn't want to take the time.) It's a good balance between the junk insta-movie makers and the professional stuff that real producers use. Now that the software review is over...I know I lost most of you already or you are now asleep drooling on your keyboard, here is my first (see I'm making excuses for the pitiful editing and filming already) attempt at High Definition video making.

The subjects combine just about all of my favorite things on the planet. My ever so patient wife, my kids, and bicycles on a sunny day. Dude, there aren't too many things better than that combination that are legal in the States.

Have a great weekend. I'm going to ride the new trails at Oak Mountain before the snow starts falling. Yep, there is a panic in the south. It's supposed to snow 6-8 inches tomorrow, so there might be accumulation of 1-2". I know this because: 1. It's the south. 2. Weather forecasters are always either flat wrong or embellishing. 3. There are no eggs, bread, or milk to be found in any of the local supermarkets. I love winter weather in the south. (deep resounding sarcasm there) It's just chock full of lame...

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…

6 gap - levels of acceptable?

The rain started early. That's one way to put it. When I rolled into the parking lot of the Dahlonega high school to attempt my 5th Six Gap ride, the heavens opened up and became a downpour complete with flashes of lightning that would make any Miami photo-shoot pale in comparison. It was only 6am. I had a long day ahead of me. I hadn't slept well knowing that I hadn't trained quite as well as I have in the past, and a rain soaked starting line didn't help to ease my fears of how quickly this ride could become un-fun. Riding bikes is all about fun, right?

The more times I have done this ride, the more I have dreaded the endless hours of preparation that are required simply to make sure that one can complete the distance. I trained all right, because I have experienced what poor preparation can do to a person out on the steep inclines of north Georgia. It ain't pretty people. Trust me on that one. This year, I had done the work, all to make this challenge as enjoyable as one can. It's supposed to be a difficult task, and by doing it I find a purpose to keep fit and keep myself from becoming completely consumed by the office and all the other difficulties that life throws at you.

As the rain came down and battered the car windows, I was still happy to be there and happy to be able to face some of the hardest roads that the south has to offer.

I don't have many pictures of this soggy several hours, and I have had less time to actually load them, but I figured I would offer up a teaser entry to the blog. I'll write more tomorrow and post a couple of shots of the rain soaked splendor that was Six Gap 2010.

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

Sleep Talking

Aiden has been on a roll recently. He may talk all the time in his sleep, but recently he has ended up in our bed somehow, so I get to hear his nightly commentary. Each time he does it, I think that he has woken, but when I look, his eyes remain closed. Sometimes he will sit up and laugh with his eyes closed and then flop back down on the pillow...my pillow that he manages to pilfer when he sneaks into our bed.

Here are my favorites quotes so far:

1. Following some loud laughing he yelled "MIIIISSSSED MEEEE!" in the typical sing song style you would hear on a playground.
2. "That's the Ferris wheel for all of us to ride on..."
3. "Mine! MINE!"

I wonder if his dreams are any more real to him than daily life. It certainly doesn't sound any different from what I can tell.

Changes

Another summer of fun and vacations comes to a close as the kids head back to school. I look at these pictures and realize how much changes in the space of a year. I got a picture of Bryce and Ansley on the first day of school last year, and the differences are really quite remarkable. Bryce is excited about Second Grade, and Ansley is already a First Grader.

I'm glad I have photos to freeze these moments because they are so different looking and their personalities change so much in such a short period of time.