I Dig Pain.

Henry Rollins once said, "I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

I don't like mine yet, but I don't fear it like I used to. Too much of what we do to grow as humans requires pain as a gateway. To avoid it and expect progress and difference in our lives is, at best, folly.

Yes, this is going to turn into another biking story.

I met a friend after work to ride a trail that I'd heard of, but never explored myself. He'd ridden it several times this year, and lured me with tales of adventure, glory and heaving up a lung. I was skeptical, but you can't really argue or ride slower than a guy that has to use an asthma inhaler and still consider yourself manly.
The dadgum trail has two parts. The first has 1,343 vertical feet of climbing over 2.4 linear miles. Except the miles are not linear, they're UP and nothing currently available to science can accurately measure a rockfall. And the whole trail, basically, is God's gift to rocks and purgatory for guys on bikes.
The second half of the trail, or the 'nice scenic loop' was 884 feet of vertical gain and 733 of vertical loss. In other words, Not Level Ground.
Also, more rocks.

I ride very much like a paranoid father of four children (i.e., a complete chicken) when I don't know where the drop-offs to oblivion are on a new trail.
The fear of being afraid is stronger than the fear of the actual fall in me. Once I know where the things are that may cause me to pause, stop, get hung up and crash by losing momentum, then I can ride past them.
The power to do the thing comes by having done it.

I didn't rock the climbs, I didn't bomb the descents and we got passed by a lot of guys with suspiciously large trucker guts. Nice to find out that the definition of 'fitness' has nothing to do with actual shape after I've given up the good soda and junk food.

I also found that the urge to stop is enormous when multiplied by nervousness and fear over being someplace that may be over your head in terms of technical skill. Add in a dash of fatigue and a few thousand rocks and, well, it's not an easy or pretty victory over gravity. In most cases with anything technically difficult, slowing down will lead to a harder fall than trusting yourself and the bike and riding through it. Having a friend that's done it to show you that it can be done is priceless.

We saw a lot of folks turn around before the halfway point, and they all seemed pretty happy to have made it as far as they did. Makes me wonder if there isn't always something more, a set of skills and endurance out there further that someone else already has mastered; they see me and think, 'Yes, he made it halfway... maybe one day he'll reach the end and see what I've seen.'

My legs hurt. I have small red marks on my legs from the yucca plants I ran into. I have bonus red marks all over from rocks that kicked up from my front tire. I rode with most of my mouth numb from Novocaine. I managed, as I do every stinking time I ride, to push my chainring into my right calf and leave a giant greasemark and welt. My lungs burned and my legs felt half-numb on the climb up... almost at that point where the muscles just refuse to fire when the brain says GO.
I'm not saying this to give the impression that it was climb worthy of notice and to beg accolades for having done it. There were far too many riders of all skill levels, some with K-mart pig-iron bikes that were ahead of me for that to ring true.
But, I rode it. I didn't cave in and walk when I could have... and that means that the pain from pushing past mental barriers and the desire to stop may bear fruit. I'll be stronger tomorrow than I am today. It was ultimately as much of a reward as I decided I wanted.

Incidentally, I grinned like a monkey with the full run of a banana plantation on the way down. There are rewards to long climbs, and one of them is the descent. Remember the feeling when you'd see Bo and Luke Duke jump the General Lee over the creek and get away from the sheriff?

Yeah, it's better than that.

More Lies

Burke is trying desperately to finish Eragon before the weekend is over so he can watch the movie. Tammy bought it for him, but being a good mom, movie comes after some brain exercise.

Photographed in the moment by Tammy:

















I loved the poster filter in Photoshop so much that I left it in place. Click on it to enlarge it - really cool effect.

Burke also started his own blog, here.
Warning: for those with a low dragon tolerance... look elsewhere for your entertainment.

Lauren couldn't take it anymore, and she's got a blog up as well. Lauren's blog.

Time for dinner - cordon bleu and peas. I'm a well-kept man, I am.

- Ryan

Lies My Camera Told Me

I'm going to try and resist the temptation to turn this into a photography blog, but...
with new camera in hand, I don't think I'll be able to avoid it entirely.

















There's a lump under the blanket, giggling, but she didn't come out for the picture. Guess we'll have six more weeks of winter.



















We get phenomenal light coming in off the back of the house in the afternoon. I left this picture of Ashley untouched, other than cropping it a little.
Turns out that Photoshop doesn't have a 'hairdryer' filter, sadly...

I've been asked to take pictures of the prom queens as they primp, lacquer the walls of the bathroom with hairspray and suchlike... Ana and a group of her friends are going as whatever the opposite of stag is. Doe, I guess? Can you go doe to a date dance?

Update:

Shot a ton of pictures, girls looked great, but since I still feel the urge to be snarky about having to shoot a bunch of girly girl things, here's my version of the event.














Mwaaahahahaha.

- Ryan

punkrockacademyfightsong

Been a while since I've posted anything of significant content. I blame the encroachment of adulthood on a life otherwise unblemished by the intent to grow up.

There are a few like-minded folks here in the area that had been wanting to go out and pretend to be seventeen again, so we did. Caught a four-band-for-twelve-bucks show (says a lot about the caliber of the bands, I'm sure) a few weeks back. Great, great fun, other than being the old guys at the club... Most of us are follically challenged to one degree or another and have fought back by shaving our heads, so we looked like the poster children for the Aryan Nation. Oi Oi Oi.
The show, other than the opening act, was great. The opening band seemed to have lost the thread of of the master plan somewhere, leaving something like:

Step 1: Buy instruments
Step 2: Get booked at a club
Step 3: Act like goons on stage (does beer help? test theory!)
Step 4: ?
Step 5: Mansions, fast cars, nekkid girls; sacks of money

There's just something electric about seeing a band play live in a small club, close enough to see the emotion and belief in the songs. I love it.

Authority Zero in full roar.



There were a trio of delightful Daughters Of The Sons Of The Trailer Park in front of us at the show. They'd apparently decided in early childhood that beer and Ho-Ho's constituted, in spite of all contradictory experience, a valid diet. They also thought that enough beer would be in the bloodstreams of all and sundry so that no one would care about the fact that they... had really great personalities.
I've never seen a mosh pit empty out so fast when they waddled in. No safe place to push off of them, nothing you'd want to touch, and no penicillin wipes handy in case you accidentally made contact.



Top photo is mine, bottom one was just too good not to include. Note the face being made directly behind Moshzilla. Classic.

I'll try and post the story of the 40-mile weekend, the best food ever and the If You See It, You Can Puke On It tale of one girl's fight to cover everything in the house with yuck. Tomorrow, barring real work or good weather.

Bike has dibs on my free time, capice?

- Ryan

Landmines

One nice thing about having my own laptop is that I can finally keep all my music with me, in digital form. One not-so-nice thing is sharing a music library with three other iPod users in the house.

We have substantially differing musical tastes, which means that when I'm rocking along (that's pronounced 'rawkin' to you neophytes) I randomly hit the song equivalent of a surprised and angry buffalo in the headlights. Brake, spin, end up in the ditch...

(Yes, girls, your music is bad. As in cukka-poo. Once you're adults, you'll realize how smart your dad is and how his musical tastes are impeccable and the only true path to audio nirvana.)

No, mom, my musical tastes haven't changed significantly, I just have less tolerance for poor musicianship and poor recordings. Thankfully, there's still plenty of shouty music with which I can annoy you and dad when we move back into your basement. With all four kids and the dog. And maybe a pony.

Mantra

I suppose I should be emulating Samuel Coleridge and writing my own opiate-induced epic poem before the good stuff wears off... but my muse doesn't work in that way. Vicodin has completely failed to invoke Kublai Khan, pleasure domes or, really, anything. Unless I shouldn't be able to hear colors.

I can't tell.

As for my muse, she's asleep. After working her usual wonders with the kids and taking care of me as I tried to form words and gum some eggs for dinner, she's all funned out and is sleeping the sleep of the just.

I tried to find my inner island of peace and sanctuary during some rather un-fun dental work today, and I completely failed. The immediacy and proximity of the surgical instruments, and the method in which they were being employed to exact payment for past sins... it jarred me back, all too aware of what was going on.
The only image that I could focus on that would stay through all of the noise and pain was Tammy. Not surprising, as she's always been there for me through the chaos, mess and insanity of my everyday life.

Here's to good women with endless patience, beauty and the ability to cope with it all, with astounding grace and love.

I'm running out of pillars to put under her.

...brainnsss...

Pinkeye? Not so much. Kids just got back from the pediatrician, and it's looking like adenovirus.

I'll clean the post up later and add a some real content, but you should realize it's all just an excuse to post this picture. Be kind to us as we lurch and stumble up the street, eating stray dogs and whatever else our decaying synapses identify as needed sustenance.



On an even scarier note... we measured Sage last night. My childhood pediatrician had a neat trick - you measure height at 2 1/2 years old, then double it to predict the adult height. It worked within an inch of my height, and was about dead on for my brother and sister.

Using this, Ashley's due to hit somewhere around 5'10", Burke should be about 6'0", Lauren may reach 6'2".

...and Sage, you ask? She's a meter tall as of yesterday, two days before her un-birthday. Rrrraaaawwwwwrrrrr STOMP STOMP STOMP CRUSH.

- Ryan