Snakes On A Plane

Yesterday Terren took my 2 cent softball and tried to knock it out of the yard. He's gay like that.
Terren

"Honestly, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to shit in the oven. It seems like at the very least you'd have to remove the wire racks and then awkwardly stick your ass in while straddling the oven door, all while maintaining your balance. And if you're considering this act, you're probably not sober. Anyway, to your point about the news. I think most everyone (myself included) seeks escape in one form or another from things we think of as bad. For some it takes the form of news, but it can also be food, sex, sports, drugs, video games, tv, the internet, gambling, and so on. Even say, I don't know, biking. :-] There can be a fine line between healthy activity and escapism. You're not usually aware of it when you cross the line. I'm constantly examining my crystal meth habit to see if other things in my life are suffering. They are. Not. I meant not. As in not suffering. Much."

No actually this is good because it keeps this from becoming JOBABOFP (just another blog about biking Orion fucks pie). Does it do me any good to throw in references that I know only 1 person understands?

Walter, any chance you can get details of how exactly this guy was shitting in the oven? Was it just on the door? Or did he really stick his ass all the way in? I know it's probably a touchy subject with soon-to-be-ex-Mrs-Oven but do your best. We're curious.

I think this conversation could go on forever. And I think a clean, cohesive discussion is out of the realm of possibility sitting on the train to Hoboken. But I'll throw out random thoughts as they come. One "deep thoughts" question is, what is reality?

I have read part of the book, Wherever You Go There You Are. Same premise as Be Here Now but without the funny format of book. The basic premise is to stop diverting your attention from the here and now. I tried this on and off over the past few years and the question that invariably spring up is, what if Here sucks? When I'm on the subway going to work, "here" is the last place I want to be. So I read to escape Here. Is that bad?

This happens a lot, too much maybe. Is it too much or is it normal? Is my tuning out on the train to write this blog entry too much? What about in the shower this morning? I was thinking of how to approach this entry and basically went through the motions while I got ready for work. Without realizing it I'm rarely Here, Now.

Body of woman found in car

Does that headline do anything but convince me the Here and Now sucks? Or does it desensitize me to the Here and Now? If I read that the government was selling low-rate caskets in 2000 because there were not enough deaths in Dessert Storm do I think it's good that people didn't die or am I reminded that death is just another industry? Or do I ignore it all and seek the sports scores from last night?

I do think there's a difference between discussing back-fires and biking, but let's leave that alone because it's too personal to be objective, since I see biking as participation in life not escapism from it. I also think food, sex, and drugs are also in the realm of participation not escapism, within reason of course. But I'm being naive if I suggest that Americans aren't overweight hogs that fuck anything that moves and gets high to free themselves from their caged reality.

At this conversational juncture I'll ask the question again, what is reality? Is it what we observe? What's in our head? Or is it what Huxley experienced when he took peyote? Is reality with the Doors of Perception opened or closed? There's no answer but the conversation invariably comes back to this no matter which avenue you take. Some suggest that reality is an illusion, one of the Big Questions posed by philosophers and some scientists along with Is time an illusion? Why do we need to sleep? How do entangled particles communicate? Where does information inside a black hole go? Why don't we understand turbulence?

Seriously on the entangled particles question, how does information travel 7 million times faster than the speed of light? Why does the solution to Bell's Inequality suggest that either we have no free will or that reality is an illusion? When I get to work, am I going to say fuck it and get a buttered bagel?

I know, I know I've gone into the realm of mental gymnastics except with the last question. It's fun, neat, entertaining. But it always begs the question, what is reality? And if I have a set answer to that question do I then ask, should I immerse myself in it or seek escape from it? Is life on earth really Hell and we seek that Heaven in some form of escape?

Or getting back to the ground here, are we just bored? I'm bored with work. It's my generational upbringing to get sick of any job in 2 years I guess. It's not that it sucks, per se. It's just not challenging. At the same time I admit that my daughter and biking present enough challenges in my life so I don't really need another one. So I'm fine with the status quo as long as they don't wake me up.

I'm going to wrap this up because I really haven't gotten anywhere other than flinging a bunch of shit on the walls. Maybe this fall we can build a fire in my back yard, drink beer, and discuss it further. I'll invite Walter and Woody as well. Figure the more people the more different kinds of beer to try.

Time to pick up a book and divert my attention from the Path and then the subway. You ever try and just be on the Path? People hate eye contact. Look around in most public places. Here and Now isn't where most of them are.

PS. I got the bagel

PPS. This morning apparently my daughter looked at this image and said, "Daddy."

More Attention

There's more to yesterday's blog entry. If you haven't read it yet have a look now. And let me show Walter's comment:

Walter

"How ironic, this past Saturday my neighbor shit in his oven, and today he was served with support, custody and divorce papers. Huh, imagine that."

So there you go, the oven stuff is a real story, I didn't just make it up. I now need to backpedal a bit and make a note that sometimes, life is so miserable that you don't actually want to pay attention. Paying attention is often the straight road to insanity.

Sometimes I can understand why backfires might be more interesting than the life that surrounds you. I still maintain you should drop the silly News fixation. In front of me on the train right now I see this headline:

Cajun jockeys a dying breed.

Can't make this stuff up. Here's the tough part, the support, custody and divorce papers. So often the abused women won't follow through on that. I understand it - yet I'm not going to be so naive I claim to understand what Walter's neighbor is going through. Still I do "get" that Walter's neighbor once fell in love with a man who didn't have a girlfriend on the side, didn't come home drunk, and didn't shit in the oven. She probably remembers that and, when push comes to shove, thinks that this man before her is a facade, a brief low point in an otherwise acceptable life of fatherhood. The support, custody and divorce papers serves as an indication that she has finally started paying more attention, and knows this isn't the case.

But it's hard, I understand that.

Boy this blog has taken a detour from the normal bike obsession, huh? Well it's the offseason now so there's not much to talk about. I did an hour on the ToD last night, Trainer of Doom. I'm pretty fucking motivated now, the race season still a vivid recollection as I spin away. I'm sure it will fade some but the end of this season has shown me what I need to work on and I'm stoked to get there and make it happen. I've been wearing the HRM again recently as another metric. I'm probably already going at a higher clip than I should be.

For reference the "offseason" lasts until I get back from vacation on November 15th. That's a solid month of no structure. After that we start the long, slow build to 2008. Stay, as they say, tuned.

My whirlwind week is getting closer to being done but man I cannot believe it's only Thursday. Tonight I get the child while mom goes out and decompresses, whatever that turns out to mean. Again, I'm leaning towards TV and lessons on sloth.

Pay More Attention

I wonder. How pervasive is "news" in our lives? As I'm waiting for the train this morning 2 guys walk by talking about the fires out West. Now, even I know something is on fire out West and I never watch any TV, read newspapers, or surf online news. Even with that, I saw a newspaper headline yesterday, plus the CNN channel at work was talking about it all day. So even a News Recluse like myself knows about it.

Is news an entity, like weather? Should they be given proper names? News and Weather? Sports? Yes these are all sections of the newspaper but it's more than that. These are entities in our society, more than just radio noise that keeps us occupied. People wake up for these things and talk about them all day. For some, for many, news is a hobby.

Not everything in the paper is News though. I see a story headline, "Hunters may help researchers learn about coyotes." This isn't news, this is filler. I'm talking about the big stories, the journalistic home runs, the stuff you can't miss. The fire out West is one of these. As the 2 guys walked by me this morning one of them mentioned building back-fires to try and contain the fire. News gives us something to talk about, something to over-analyze, something to make us forget what exactly it is we're living for. How boring.

That's how I see it, sorry if "news" is your thing. This week it's a fire. Next week it's some celebrity getting drunk and shitting in his soon-to-be-ex-wive's oven. The following it's a toy recall and how awful Chinese products are. The list is endless. And in the end, none of it makes a shit of a difference how your day goes or what you do with your family when you get home. It's all a bullshit diversion. Wake up, stop diverting your attention from where you are now to somewhere you'll never be.

Most of the people on the train get irritated by the girls going to their private school and the giggling they do all the way to the Summit station. Today one of them is going on about Devin, presumably some guy who probably has no idea he gets so much attention from this group of 6 girls. And to be sure, it can be annoying some days. But at least they're talking about real life. When they get to school Devin will be there, or maybe he'll be home sick. Regardless, it affects their lives, it's real, tangible. Most of the people are so locked away in their little bubbles of secrecy that nothing they read or talk about has any practical application other than serving as a diversion from the Here and Now. Wherever you go, there you are. Or, be here now. When I get to work the knowledge of back-fires isn't going to help me one shit.

I don't know what the hell my point is. Pay more attention, I suppose.

Fairly Mundane

Not a lot going on in my head right now, so not much to blog about. Steve, Jake, and I have a meeting with one of the team sponsors tonight, a shop in north Jersey. I'm not exactly sure what we're discussing but they asked me to come. Perhaps they need some comedic relief, I don't know. Should be a long day, the second of 4 long days in a row.

Yesterday I got stuck at work, home at 7:15, on the trainer at 7:35, and out of the shower close to 9:00. Before I knew it, it was after 11:00 and here I am with about 6 hours of sleep. Today I won't get home until 10:00 or so. Tomorrow is some sort of post-work ride. Then Thursday is my evening with Julia. We may just watch TV all night. Someone needs to teach her about sloth.

On the team front, sponsors have come to a halt but I'm still adding team members, which translates to us having money going out but none coming in. So I'm just about done adding people unless Ben or someone of that caliber comes around, which I think he will if he decides to race off-road next year instead of on-road primarily.

As for me I'm just trying to get any time spinning the legs that I can. Last night was 47 minutes of trainer before I got sick of it and called it a ride. I'd hoped to avoid the trainer until after vacation but I failed. So it goes. The alternative is not riding enough. Wednesday I may go out for a night ride instead of sitting in the basement but it's looking like rain now. Fun.

No set plans for this weekend other than not drinking, or having a beer at most. I still feel the effects of this weekend as I sit here Tuesday morning. It's good to remind yourself just how bad beer is for you. Life changes. I may go up to Wawayanda Sunday for a big ride with Brett or maybe I'll do something else entirely. Also want to try and hit the Mountain Man biathlon at Lewis Morris this weekend as at least 2 of our women's team members will be doing that.

Pretty mundane all in all. No formal training right now. Team is taking shape. Work is possibly heating up for a year-end run. I could use a coffee when I get into the office. So I'll buy a coffee when I get into the office. I'm a problem solver like that.

Fat Useless Pig

That's how I feel this morning. I think my time "off the wagon" is about to end already. In a mere 8 days I've managed to show myself exactly why drinking is bad. Maybe I'll slip back to a beer a week and call it a drinking career. I eat like crap, feel worse, and generally have less motivation than I should. I get on the bike and feel lethargic, though that may be because I have no real need to go anywhere. I'm still strong though. Don't want to lose that.

We had the MTBNJ picnic Saturday and it went really well. I think many people had many good times. So that's a good thing. Truth be told I'm glad it's done though. There's just so much going on that it's one less thing on the radar to think about. Now I can just set my weekends aside and ride for the sake of riding.

Having said that it was a good time. It was nice to see a lot of new, as well as familiar, faces. And I look forward to the next gathering, which will only be bigger (and better organized). Now that we know we have a critical mass of people we can plan x, y, and z and know we'll have enough of a turnout to support it. Good stuff.

This is a heavy Monday. Just tired going into it. It's going to be a busy week too so I need to work on getting to sleep earlier or I'll never make the weekend.