Seeya Pappy

It's utterly shocking for me to be sitting on the train and realize it's Thursday morning right now. Things are a little bit back to normal, whatever that means. I woke up, ate breakfast, and reviewed a few Mandarin podcasts on the train to Summit. But my brain isn't quite ready for that so I figure it's about time to sum up the last 5 days.

Saturday, I don't remember what we did in the morning. Maybe went to the Chinese market up on 46. After Julia's nap we went up to see my parents at my aunt's house. They were basically tending my dying grandfather, or more accurately my step-step grandfather, my step father's step father. I got to see him for the last time still breathing, but he'd been unconscious for a week previous to that so he was more or less already gone at that point. I don't think he had walked or spoken in a month. His health had been failing for a year.

Sunday I rode my bike at Wawayanda for 2 laps of the sport race. Despite all my hand-wringing I managed a 6th place finish, which helped me hit my goal of a top 10 finish. In driving up to the race, I was thinking of Pappy, aka Budsy. I don't think I ever called him Pappy until maybe the last 2-3 years. So to me he'll always be Budsy. My step father will always be Bird. Bird's brother will always be Tubby. And their sister will always be plain old Kathleen. She used to have a nickname but I forget what it was, maybe Skitso. She was a bit neurotic.

So I tried, but I couldn't win one for the Budsy, as the silly expression goes. I had kept it all out of my mind until the very end of the race, when it was just suddenly there. There was a guy in my class ahead of me, and it was all I could think about to catch him. I poured it all out there trying to close the gap, and eventually I did. When I passed him he was toast, and I continued to give everything I had for the last 100 yards to hold him off, which I did by 5 seconds. It turns out the guy wasn't even in my class.

Then I blew up. I rode down a fire road, got off the bike, sat under a tree, and cried. Crying isn't something I do very often, unless the dark chocolate runs out at home. So I was a little surprised at myself when I found myself sobbing under the tree. Nobody likely saw me, but if they did I'm sure they would have called me a big pussy for crying after a bike race. So it goes.

I didn't know it but he was dead by then. We knew it was only a matter of time the night before, but you don't know if that's 4 hours or 4 days. Well it turned out to be 4 hours. I told him he could go, that he had a good long life, which was true. I doubt he heard me and if he did he would have told me to piss off. But that was my peace to him, I guess. We all need to say goodbye one way or another. That was my farewell. If he had made it another day I was going to head up again Sunday after the race. But after a phone call I found that wasn't necessary.

Monday we spent the day with my parents. The amazing thing about a 2 year old is that they're oblivious to this stuff, so life just goes on. Of course, that's what we need during these times. So we just hung out, Julia demanding that grandpa walk her up and down the hill incessantly that afternoon. We washed the car, ate salsa and chips, drank coffee - just stuff to do while enjoying the beautiful day. At one point I asked my mom to make me a coffee and Nat admonished me for not doing it myself. But that's one thing Nat doesn't understand about the culture. At times like this, you need normalcy. For my mom, being able to take care of her son in any way is normalcy, the way things should be.

Tuesday was the funeral, where it became clear to me that I'm the "now" generation. You know how you were young and your relatives would get together and if something needed to be decided it was your uncles who discussed it? Well that's me now, just that there are no other uncles in this picture. The older generation is gone, our parents are now grandparents, and you're the one who needs to do the right thing when it needs to be done, like spending the day drinking coffee or walking the elderly back and forth to their cars during the viewing or giving up your train seat to the old man or pregnant woman.

So that's life. It's ironic for me to write that given I ride a bike as a hobby and post pictures of 17 year old pole vaulters. But the way I see it a person can do the right thing and still be a goofball. You still need to enjoy yourself.

I also got to see 3 of my cousins that I hadn't seen in like 15 years. One is a drinking and drug using neurotic, one is a snippy little bitch, and the 3rd is just the sweetest little girl you could ever meet. It's hard to believe the first and third are sisters. I'm the oldest of the bunch by 8 years, so to me they're all still just little girls. When we're all in our 50s they'll still be the same.

So that's that, 4 of my last 5 days. To top it all off I woke up yesterday, got on the scale, and saw 200. What a kick in the balls after that weekend. So I went on red alert and ate nothing but dandelion flowers all day. It worked, as I managed to pare off 6 pounds and this morning I'm back down to 194. Talk about a yo-yo. Monday 195, Wednesday 200, Thursday 194. I think I'm going to stay red alert for a while though, because I look like a fat slut in this picture, apologies to all the fat sluts out there:



It's hard to look at that picture and think, "By golly, there goes a top 5 sport class racer. I can just see it." Christ, it's hard to look at that picture at all. That's all the reminder I need to stay on red alert. I need to get serious about paring off this vacation hangover weight. I'm starting to sound like Joel Fleischman (how pathetic there's no picture of him?) or one of the Sex in the City chicks.

Anyway, so long Budsy.

Scattered Stuff

On the train - I think it's unfair these girls have to wear skirts to school. Aren't they cold? These things are like 3 inches above the knee, not much coverage going on there. Some of the girls wear sweatpants but to me, uniforms seem a bit out of touch. I know there's a big debate on it and I'm not interested in exploring either side. But to me, telling another person how they should live their lives, especially how to dress, is always sketchy ground. I'm sure there are a million counter examples and I imagine if I were to go into a public high school I would be shocked at how many girls look like tramps there. Why not dress these kids up as mechanics with overalls? Removed the sexual innuendo entirely?

Last night I was having a beer and my daughter marched up, pointed at my glass, and announced, "BEER!". Neither of us have taught her that, she just picked it up on her own. Further, it wasn't just an identification, she announced it with authority, like Moses Malone putting the biscuit in the basket and taking the backboard down in the process.

I rode Mahlon Dickerson and Round Valley this weekend. It was the first time on the mountain bike since the Ringwood race and it was really nice. I was out of touch at Mahlon, technical was harder than it should have been. My saddle is a bit higher for racing and it makes me feel like I'm about to go OTB too often. Add in the leaves and I was a little sloppy. Yesterday at Round Valley I was much more on, cleaning several climbs I had never cleaned before. This racing thing sure helps make you stronger. 2008 should be interesting.

We go on vacation this week. Should be fun. We're going on a cruise with Terren and Cheryl and their daughter Livia. No idea what to expect with the flight, the boat, and all that. I think Julia will be fine. No clue how fun the boat itself will be or what will be available to do. Stuff. Always plenty of stuff. The kids play well together so that's cool.

After that my 2008 biking season starts. My first offseason goal is working so far, which is stopping my night eating. I think it's been 9 nights without waking up to eat. This is the second week of the 3 weeks I mentally set aside for any new process. The first week is the initialization, getting yourself into a new habit. The second is establishment, making it a habit. The third week is rebound, where the new habit has the tendency to fall off and disappear. I think after 3 weeks you can start to think of it as at least partially established, though I don't know how long it needs to go to really be considered set in stone. After 3 weeks I'll try something new. I think the next habit will be abdominal work and riding 4 days in a row with 3 days off. Though I am considering 5 days again for some of the winter months.

Terren

"Heinz Von Foerster wrote "objectivity is the delusion that you can make observations without an observer." Which is another way of saying that you can't separate reality from your experience of it. We can treat reality "as if" it exists outside of us, but that's a construction, or model, and one that breaks down at the extremes (which is why quantum mechanics is so weird). Unfortunately, we can never know what the ultimate nature of reality is, if it even exists, since we invent our personal reality based on information from our senses. There's no guarantee that the way we construct our own personal realities corresponds with anything "actual". In this light, you can see that schizophrenics who suffer from hallucination and hear voices are living in a world just as real as our own. Regarding escapism: anything at all worth doing can become an escape, that was my point. I'm sure somewhere out there is someone who sews too damn much. But I think what you're wondering is "is it bad to escape". In general, no. I mean, that's what a vacation is, an escape from routine. But if all you do is escape then that's a problem. Put another way, I don't think "be here now" means too much unless you also have "go somewhere else for a while". It's all about balance, which is different for everyone."

I don't know that I have anything to counter but I wanted to get that out there. To me it would seem a bit of a breakdown in logic to really claim anything about reality, as referenced as "reality" here. In a sense it's sort of like god in that maybe there really is an objective reality, a set of "this is how it is" that defines everything. Or maybe there isn't any "reality" and we all construct our own and that's as far as it goes. I think it's a really interesting philosophical discussion but it doesn't seem we could really pin down an answer on that, either for or against it, though admittedly it seems a lot easier to make an argument against. I'm not talking about what reality is. I'm referring to there being an objective, observer-independent reality at all. In another sense, it's almost "god dependent" in that if there is a god, maybe there is a universal answer to what shade of green a fully bloomed oak leaf really should be perceived as. Or maybe this god character would laugh at our attempts to pin down this reality, saying something like, "silly people, reality is for philosophers."

On Terren's specific statement of, "Unfortunately, we can never know what the ultimate nature of reality is, if it even exists, since we invent our personal reality based on information from our senses," I would agree that with our current physical abilities this would seem to be the case. But in a mental foray into LaLa Land I would offer that an advanced society with telepathic or more spiritual observational powers might be able to overcome this limitation. Yeah I know I've crossed over into the Science Fiction realm here but who cares? This is all discussion fodder anyway at this point.

Reality: I'm on my way to work. Cold, hard, objective fact.

On escapism I'm not sure where an escape is defined and a routine is not. Isn't any action a bit of an escape from life? Just making a piece of toast brings your center of focus from the "here and now" to thinking things like, "get the toaster...should I use butter or jelly?...and so on." I think anything we do beyond basic biological functions could be labeled an escape. Anything else is a partially random assignment as "escape" or "not escape". Eating is fundamental but if I take an hour to prep dinner, isn't that an escape from just delivering calories to my body? This line of thinking would sort of dictate that the cold hard bottom line of life is that you do nothing but observe, eat the same nutrient-dense paste for every meal, piss, shit, and sleep. But then maybe observing is an escape? I don't know, this sounds an awful lot like some Eastern religion. I've gone off on a tangent but it seems like everything we do as humans is an escape in some way, shape, or form.

Man that was a scattered blog entry.