Things I Have Eaten Today

A muffin.
A banana.
A lot of soda.
A CamelBack full of water.
A sandwich.

...and a LOT of my brother's dust.

Great, great day. Perfect singletrack, best company in the world (my wife, my kids and my brother) and one of the coolest resorts on the planet. Robert didn't make an appearance himself, but we think we heard him hollering, "GET OFF MY PROPERTY." That's how people say howdy in these parts.
Lauren took a pretty good hit, then got up and rode out the rest of the trail, as usual. Total TonkaBabe. Ashley did great, carving corners and eating roots like a pro. Burke knocked out a good ride with me and rode the ski lift round trip a ton, unafraid and fierce in his righteous pride.
Sage got a Tinkerbell playhouse to keep her happy while we rode, but ended up discovering the joys of feeding potentially disease-ridden marmots Oreos.
And, yes, Tammy made it out of the Sundance store without needing a sherpa to cart all of the awesome back to the truck. Plus whaling down the mountain like the World's Coolest Mom that she is.

Such a cool place.

I am tired and my bike is tired and my kids are tired and Rich is uncatchable on singletrack and is not tired (and on a rented bike, no less) so I'm going to go sit in the backyard and radiate happiness at the world.

And answer emails on my Blackberry.

Ah, well, the price of being employed... I can be happy about that too.

- Ryan

Look Ma, No Fingers

While lacking that certain je ne sais quoi of pouring gas into a storm drain and then lighting it, causing seismographs in Ohio to wiggle madly and elephants in the zoo to think someone dropped a lightsaber... our experiments with flame and fury were, nonetheless, fun.

Rich graciously hosted us over the holiday, and the giant purple smoking holes in his lawn should fill in just fine. Eventually.

I hear the hammock in the back yard calling me. I must obey its summons.

- Ryan

Things My Bike Taught Me

If I ever publish a book, that's likely what I'd title it.

There's a state blissfully devoid of all the usual banalities that occurs when you've pushed your body hard for too long, and it begins requiring conscious thought to breathe. In that moment, thoughts and linkages come, sometimes strangely, and sometimes profoundly.

Case in point:

Bikes are like marriages. You can buy a low end bike from any given store, ride it, and it'll work. Leave it in the garage for a year, let sawdust build up on it and grease harden in the bearings and linkages... and it'll still ride about the same when you take it out.

A high-end bike takes more thought (and possibly debt) to obtain in the first place, and it will ride and work sublimely when you take it out. Leave in the garage for a year, and it'll do its level best to kill you on the trail. Shifters won't, brakes will, but at a volume to raise the dead, things will squeak and chatter... but give it a little maintenance every time before you ride, and the places it can take you are far beyond the reach of the lesser bikes. And with much less butt-hurty, too.

As for marriages... well, you get it.

And, as people keep telling me that I should write, I say this.

I am writing. No book would give me the pleasure of putting something out there for the world to see that chronicles the adventures of our family, that shows the small glories of growing up, or that allows me to express my love and appreciation to the people that matter most to me.

Now, should someone choose to pay me for this, I'm okay with double-dipping. We can have family adventures in a Mercedes just fine.

- Ryan

Tree, Apple. Apple, Tree.

I suppose that to God, to whom our behavior and course is much less of a mystery, we may seem to be more than just the static individuals that we see each day in the mirror.

Should time be manipulated so that we move through it less in a linear fashion, only able to recall dimly where we have been, we would perhaps be seen as thus:
Collections of desire and patterns of behavior, potentiality both realized and yet unfulfilled... hyper-kinetic children, myopic teenagers, young parents, and so on, through the latter part wherein we have seen all that life has to offer, all at once in a glorious tangle of human yarn.

This is how I've always seen my father.

He's always been older than me (again, hooray for the linear nature of time... would be awkward to have Dad just starting to date when I was looking forward to my mid-life crisis) and so has been the figure of wisdom, the place where the answers were kept, and the one that could solve the puzzles and show the way through the night when monsters lurked all-too-close.
And yet, with that, there was never a somber, joyless approach to being my personal Oracle and Hercules. I remember the 300 yard cross-canyon shot that dropped the buck... and the happy dance and whooping that followed it. I remember firecrackers smuggled from Wyoming and the how insanely happy we were as kids to witness the illicit thrill of watching orange juice cans rocket into the sky.
I remember the day, time and place when I was first complimented by one of my parents friends, and told "you have your dad's sense of humor."

There is no higher honor in my book. Although, having Grandma (his mom, no less) mistake me for my dad on the phone was a close second.

The sense of eagerness to go explore and the appreciation of something seen through new eyes or from a new vantage point hasn't changed as long as I've known him. The solidity and sense of self hasn't either. My mom often remarked that he was the most secure person she'd ever seen.
Then again, you'd have to be secure in yourself to wear that only-visible-hummingbirds-T-shirt with rainbow suspenders and camouflage pants in public... but, to be fair, he had a lot of grief to pay back to the three of us kids, too. Dad, you win, we give up, please, UNCLE.

I love the fact that dad chased (chases, really - he hasn't outgrown that, either) the fantastic and the sardonic as well as the pragmatic. The bookshelves in the basement outside of my room growing up shaped more of me than I think he knows. Asimov and Lienster, Vonnegut and Heinlein, Ambrose Bierce and Tolkien all took me far away from being a small bit player on an immense stage and let me peek behind the scenes of places unknown and unsullied by, well, let's be honest here, chores and homework. Still, the ability to close my eyes and send my thoughts out and amidst the universe is owed a great debt to being allowed free reign with subject matter that would have, in a 'normal' home, be considered beyond the reach of an eight-year-old. I have many of those books in front of me now, as it happens, and there's another generation ready to read them under the covers with a flashlight, assuming I can find and burn all the Twilight books first.

Don't get me wrong, I missed most of the points and explanations and hard science in the classic SciFi that dad had amassed... but only on first read. Once I asked dad, I got the explanation and knowledge that some of the SciFi was really more fact than fiction. Pretty cool thing to discover that your dreams aren't out of reach, and in fact, have blueprints drawn up somewhere. Which brings up another crucial point.

Dad does not hide behind 'magic' for an explanation. Want to know why the Earth doesn't rotate any faster than it does? Want to know what color shows in the flame when aluminum is finally coerced to burn? Want to know where your lap goes when you sit down? Want to know what happens when you put a grenade inside an anthill?
Dad knows all these things, and may even know where Hoffa is. You'll have to pay him to get that, though. And you'd better be ready to handle the answer. Some things are predicated on tiers of knowledge, and mere surface curiosity will leave you with far too much answer and not enough comprehension.
Not for nothing did Solomon write, "With all thy getting, get understanding." Dad understands how things work, and has been the World's Smartest Tour Guide, at our sides for years, indefatigable.

It isn't all roses with dad, though. There's the uncomfortable fact that you know that he's smarter than you are, so any given game of Scrabble isn't likely to end well. The fact that he cheats just makes it worse.
Worser yet, he has a VERY good idea of what your potential is... so coasting in life and not expected to be called on it is a pipe dream.

You can't succinctly render the parts of fatherhood into a comprehensive whole... and I doubt very much that you could even do so with an infinite amount of time. Too much of it is in the wordless radiance of a small boy feeling loved and treasured even after making a hash of things. Took me a while to realize the linkages than spanned the miles and the years: of friendship, love, shared life-voyager appreciation and (hopefully) pride in how all his work is turning out.

Still wish he'd assigned the no-body-fat genes to me instead of Rich, but you can't have everything.

Dad, happy Father's Day. We'll have the kids call you every half hour starting at midnight to make sure you really, really enjoy it.

- Ryan

I Wanted An Alligator But All I Got Was This Lousy Duck

Still in the process of converting the pictures from RAW... having too much fun to stop and mess around with post-processing nonsense.

Absolutely, insanely good here. Weather has been around 80-82 every day, occasional showers and also, occasional monsoon-level deck-clearing downpours, but they've been short in duration and get the bugs off the windshield.

Oh, yes, we're in Florida. I kinda miss the hectic fun of my projects at work, but I think I can suffer through withdrawals in the penthouse suite that my brother got for us.

More in a bit, have to go play now.

- Ryan

What's Purple, Has Four Arms, And A Pouch Full Of Milkshakes?

We drove through Vail at nine at night in our quest to escape Denver before the coming storm reduced us all to cannabilism. I don't want to die, stranded in my home, to have my well-fed family emerge without me, blinking and wan, after the snow has melted.

It was a brisk fourteen degrees, with ice forming on the windshield and yahoos a-plenty on the road in rear-wheel drive sedans with bald tires... On top of which, it was snowing about four inches an hour and drifting three times that. We passed them, in the median, if necessary, to make sure any subsequent dumb happened a long way behind us.

We played games with Sage to improve her mind on the way over.

"Sage, what's yellow with brown spots and has four legs and a loooooong neck and likes to eat leaves?

"ummmm, a zebra? "

"No, it's not a zebra. What else could it be?"

"A duck."

"...no, it's not a duck. It's really tall."
"Uncle Richy?"
"No."
"EYEBALLS"
"Yes, you're very clever, it was 'eyeballs.' Go back to sleep."

No mention of a helicopter was made, so we're at least semi-hallucination free. Some of you will understand this.

Grand Junction was a balmy thirty-five, and it hit a high of fifty degrees at two in the morning, pulling into the motel in Moab.

I turned off at what I thought was the Cisco exit that drops you down the river canyon, and instead ended up on a road with tumbleweeds growing through the asphalt and several pygmy buffaloes scurried away as we approached. We ran away before the ghosts of forlorn drifters and ex-convicts could infest the truck and made it safely back on to I-70.

No lukachooki adventures resulted. Only dad can do those.

During the first night at the motel, I slept soundly through the storm that had Tammy at the window, making sure the truck hadn't become a spectacularly heavy kite. Lot to be said for fatigue overcoming the smell of strange pillows and bed built for people shorter than 5'6".
Tammy was ever so pleased to find that I'd forgotten to pack her suitcase when we started unpacking the truck the next morning. She showed her delight at wearing the same socks and suchlike by hitting me vigorously about the face and neck until I was very sorry. Luckily, her dad pulled some strings with a courier agency and we got it overnighted to Grand Junction. Hooray for clean skivvies.

...and, it's still snowing here. First time in thirty years that I've ever seen it snow in Moab. Beautiful, but strange, like the first time you saw RuPaul.

Hey Look, Snew!

It done made winter here agin.

Sage was out running in little circles on the lawn when I got home from the store, covered in snow, lank hair and wet-little-girl smell (it smells like cinnamon and hugs.)
Lauren took a more measured approach and just frolicked briefly in a photogenic manner before retreating to warmer climes.

Moab in two weeks, a true return to earlier days when we'd go... and freeze to death in a land shaped by baking heat. Mom, I hope you know how much we're giving up for you here. Just seems so wrong to walk amidst hoodoos and arches while wearing mittens instead of shorts and a thick coating of deer flies.

Party last night with friends, learned many fine Spanish words and managed not to accidentally blurt any of the ones that I already knew... not so appropriate for mixed company.
Party today for Burke's friend and the one-year party for the kiddo next door.

Not sure what happened that we're suddenly not hermits anymore, but never fear, we'll go turtle as soon as possible.


... and yes, still snowing.

- Ryan