2022 - Relative Suffering

I sit here, at this beautiful coffee shop, in Walnut Creek, CA. It’s a bright sunny day, I have a latte and a biscotti next to me, and there is some light jazz playing.

6000 miles away, people who are really no different than me are being bombed by a murderous mob armed with military weapons and intent on wiping them off the earth for really no good reason.

The juxtaposition of these facts is hard to get away from, and breathtaking in its scope and immediacy. It feels urgent. A fact so bold and meaningful feels like it requires some kind of immediate attention. Do something!, it says. Do something now! Learn! Grow! Act!

A long time ago, in a previous lifetime, I was in a long meditation retreat when someone raised their hand and asked the teacher “how can i understand my own suffering, my own depression and anxiety, when I know how lucky and privileged I am?” I understood this question. I had struggled for years to make peace with my sense of guilt about my own anxiety and depression and this response was soothing. It gave me permission to feel what I felt, and I was grateful. My suffering wasn’t any less intense because of my privilege, it said. I didn’t have to wait for every starving child in the world to be fed before I was allowed to be sad. I could explore, acknowledge and inhabit that feeling, which was the first step to moving past it.

The teacher gave a nice round answer at the time: “we all suffer enough to be enlightened; there’s no need to seek out more suffering.” That made sense to me. I nodded my head, sagely. We all suffer enough. There is no “hierarchy of suffering”. Problem solved. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

But now, face to the bald reality of a vicious war of the type I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, a war that affects those close to me - now that pat response rings hollow. Have I, in fact, suffered enough? Is there more I could do? Saying that all our suffering is equal doesn’t feel right in this moment. Our suffering isn’t equal. My sadness, my loneliness, my lack of purpose is a problem I get to have because I am not currently buried under rubble in a drama center’s basement. My worries about my balding hair are a concern I get to indulge because nobody rolled a tank into my neighborhood and pointed the barrel at my window in return for the sin of simply living where I live and not particularly wanting to pretend I lived somewhere else.

Perhaps that teacher’s response was what I needed at that time in my life. Maybe, like many truths about life, there is both wisdom and ignorance in it. What felt right before doesn’t feel right now, and perhaps that’s a moment for growth.

Maybe it’s time to grow up.

2022 - Chronic War

Yep, there’s still a war. Still happening. Yep.

In my life, I’ve generally been lucky enough not to have a lot of chronic conditions. I’ve never experienced chronic pain, for example. I’ve been sick, but I’ve never been chronically sick. The closest I can really come to this is the way I used to feel about being single; for years, I perpetually felt lonely, tired and sad because I felt like I wanted a relationship that just wasn’t coming. I was chronically sad and, to many of my friends, chronically annoying about it.

What I’ve learned is that it’s very hard for others to care about you without experiencing empathy fatigue. Everyone is up for helping the first time. Good friends are up for helping the second time. Best friends and partners are up for helping the third time. But it takes a special sort of person to help the fourth, fifth, and sixth times. And the thing about chronic conditions is, there’s also a seventh, eighth and ninth time.

So we are now on Day 15 of the war in Ukraine. And make no mistake; it is still happening. It has not gotten better. I hear some well-intentioned things about how the Ukrainians are brave, resilient. I’ve even heard talk lately that they may win this thing. And they very well may; but I can tell you that the day-to-day experience of the war there has not improved; it has gotten worse. There is a looong way to go, and visions of some future victory and the glory of Ukraine can only hold so long when the daily grind is such mundane and terrible afflictions as thirst and hunger, or not having anywhere to go. Fear and anxiety are daily bedfellows.

For us, at home, it may seem like the war in Ukraine is old news. Somebody else’s problem. It’s normal - perhaps even healthy, under many circumstances - for us to have a limit on how much we are willing to care about the problems of a people and country that are so far away. But of course, for the people in Ukraine, it is not old news. It is, very much, new news. Every day there are fresh atrocities. And so there is this mismatch between our perceptions and the reality.

And what do we do about this mismatch? That is up to each of us to decide. I can’t fault anyone who just doesn’t want to think about any more. But don’t get it twisted; the illusion your brain is feeding you, that the problem is receding, is just that, an illusion. It’s not real. The reality is, it’s just Day 15.

2022 - Forgiveness Sunday

Today, I learned, is a Ukrainian holiday which in English translates as “Forgiveness Sunday”. It has its roots in orthodox christianity, but I love the idea so much that I’m going to steal it. On this day, you turn to people that you care about and ask for their forgiveness, after which they tell you that they forgive you and that God forgives you.

http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/122724

https://www.goarch.org/cheesefare

Forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools we have for improving mental health. Many people mistakenly believe that forgiveness is an act of charity or of weakness, but in reality it is a secret tool of strong, resilient people. Which makes it hardly surprising that the Ukrainians follow it. Forgiving others give us the strength to move on. The opposite.- holding a grudge - saps our energy and makes us weak. Anger is not a strong emotion, especially not in the long run. It’s hard to be angry; it’s exhausting. It makes us tired and forgetful. Forgiveness releases us, gives us the energy to pursue our own goals and not be trapped by response to the actions of others.

And so, on Forgiveness Sunday, whoever you are reading this, I ask for forgiveness for anything I have done. And I offer you forgiveness in return.

Or, as I learned in the Roman Catholic church: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

2022 - Yes, Ukraine Is Still Important

Nine days. Nine days ago, Putin invaded Ukraine. There is a quote that’s been going around by, of all people, Lenin that reads “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” History would appear to have a sense of humor.

We can be grateful to the Ukrainian people - with a bit of our help - for defending democracy and freedom for these nine days. It’s worth taking a second to appreciate what didn’t happen: Ukraine did not roll over. Russia did not achieve a quick victory. The people of Ukraine revealed themselves to be up to the challenge.

Now, though, for those of us in the West, who are lucky enough to keep eating our McMuffins and using our iPhones, comes the real challenge: continuing to pay attention.

This is not easy. There are, after all, a lot of shitty things going on in the world. Climate change, elections in Texas, rising inflation. We will be reminded of starving children in Africa, of conflicts around the world that are also still simmering, and of course, yes, all of these are important.

But we must keep our eyes on the prize. Ukraine is fighting for us. They are a proxy for our freedom. If Ukraine falls, the world will start to wonder if democracy is really all it’s cracked up to be. We will lose a piece of our moral compass. The world knows us as Americans to be a strong but fickle people, ready to roll from one terrible news story on to the next. There may be a hope that they can outlast our notoriously short attention spans. But this is not Minecraft or Tik Tok; this is the real world, and wars take weeks, months or even years. Sound bites about nuclear plants or captured soldiers calling their mothers are attention grabbing, but the real work is happening down on the ground where real people are dying every day to protect freedom.

Make no mistake; they are defending their land and protecting their own freedom first and foremost, which is a great enough cause for us to support. But they are also defending the honor of the West and the cause of freedom and democracy everywhere. The least we can do is notice.

2022 - Putin it all together

In the early morning of February 24th, 2022, Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, invaded Ukraine.

It’s easy, sitting here in my comfortable house on a beautiful day in Oakland, to ignore that. There’s really no benefit to me speaking out, and politics is always a touchy subject. But it’s just too much to ignore.

Note that I say Putin invaded Ukraine, and not Russia. As someone who lived through Donald Trump’s America, I got a glimpse of what it’s like to live in a country whose leader has gone mad. I know, or strongly suspect, that most Russians do not want this war, and that even more who claim they do only think that because they have been fed a steady diet of lies.

Putin wants death. He wants to shake and rattle his fist until, in his own words, “he hopes he his heard”. Well, I hear you. I hear a sad, pathetic little bully. I hear a man whom history will condemn. I feel sorry for you, trapped in your own little tiny world where the only answers are violence. Nobody in the world believes any of your toxic bullshit. There is no genocide in Ukraine. There is no hatred against Russians. You don’t look strong; you look sad and lonely.

Leave the people of Ukraine alone. Take your tanks, and your planes, and your bare chested toxic masculinity, and go home. Nothing good will come of this; not for you, not for Ukraine, and most of all not for the people of Russia. This does not burnish the reputation of Russia; it makes Russia a pariah. Ukraine is not a perfect country. Neither is America, by the way. For that matter, neither is Canada. Should we invade Canada? Bring our version of peace to those maple-syrup-loving wanna-be Americans? Should France invade Britain? Australia invade New Zealand? Your sad geopolitical worldview is anachronistic and would be actually kind of hilarious if it wasn’t so sad and serious.

And so, many people will die. You won’t win. You don’t even really know what you want. There is no future in this strategy. Along the way there will be suffering, but the sun will rise again, as it always does.

I’m sorry this had to happen, Ukraine. I’m sorry you had to live next to the crazy neighbor. I hope he comes to his senses soon and there is a minimum of bloodshed.

2022 - Whistler

Over the holiday weekend I spent two days at Whistler skiing with my good friend Kaska, who lives in Vancouver. It was an amazing trip of 35,000 vertical feet of downhill skiing and I can see what all the fuss is about. Even though the conditions weren’t perfect, I had an amazing time. Kaska is a snowboarder and actually prefers Blackcomb, so we spent a good bit of the time there. We skied the whole first day and never left Blackcomb until the very end and never repeated a run; that’s how enormous the mountain(s) are. The second day we cut a bit short because it was -14 degrees Celsius. That’s cold. There was also, of course, amazing French fries and caramel nut ales and a run along the sea wall because this is Vancouver and I’ve come to expect that. We stayed one night in Squamish to avoid too much driving and traffic snd the hotel we picked came with a water slide which Kaska barreled right down and so of course I had to follow. We shared a gondola with an older couple Who told us about a style of income generating timeshare (I know, it sort of sounds like a scam) up at Whistler which was…intriguing. I love the Bay Area snd don’t want to live in Canada but visiting whenever I want sounds pretty great. It was great to get back on the skis snd I’m proud to say I hadn’t lost a step.

2022 - The Importance of Making Your Bed

A few weeks back, I was on Facebook - of all places - and saw an ad - of all things - that actually said something interesting. I forget the way they phrased it, but they listed a few common mental health ailments, one of them being anxiety, and a few concrete suggestions they had, one of which (for anxiety) was making your bed every day. Now, as you know, I definitely suffer from anxiety, and I’d heard this idea before but it never stuck with me and for some reason this time it did, so: I did. I started making my bed, every morning. And, you know what, it did make me feel better. I mean, nothing magical, but I felt a bit more in control of my day and like I had a plan for things. It reminds me of that towel idea from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which, if you don’t know, was this: hitchhikers were encouraged to carry a towel, because the assumption was that anyone who saw you carrying a towel despite hitchhiking across the galaxy would know that you, at the very least, were capable of keeping track of a towel, and therefore there was at least a chance that you knew what the hell you were doing.

So, yeah: if you suffer from anxiety - and maybe even if you don’t - perhaps try making your bed!

2022 - Return To Yoga Teaching

As many of you who have known me for a while know, I was at one point a yoga instructor. Well, it’s time to turn the clock back! It’s time to shake off the pandemic blues and get back out there on (or, in this case, in front of) the mat! Big thanks to the folks at Left Coast Power Yoga and especially Rachel the studio owner for giving me an “on-the-job audition”. She believes - and I totally agree - in getting potential new teachers to just come in and teach and see how it goes, so that’s what I’ll be doing! You’re welcome to come join me for a beginning yoga class next Friday the 25th at 10:30 am at the Laurel location. Check it out at http://www.leftcoastpoweryoga.com. I’m really excited to take this step back towards a more normal life and also to add to my new community in this way. I always enjoyed teaching yoga, especially at smaller neighborhood studios that “get yoga right”, and that’s definitely Left Coast. I think I’ll do a series on appropriate upper body twists, so if that sounds like your jam, come give it a shot!

(P.S. No the class is not outside, this is just a shot of me getting ready in my backyard!)

2022 - The Specious Present

Today I learned about a concept so intriguing and powerful that I thought I would share it with you, dear blog reader. I was watching a video on Veritasium (which, by the way is an amazing YouTube channel) entitled “What Exactly Is The Present?” I admit I was drawn to this particular video because of my roots in meditation. I felt like he was going to present one of two things: 1) a treatise on the science around being in the present/mindfulness, or 2) a physics rant about the inability to measure time precisely (him being, in many ways, a physics nerd).

But, in fact, he referenced neither of these 2, but a much more interesting and human-perception-centric paradigm called the “specious present”. (A warning; if you watch the video, the part I’m referencing here doesn’t start until about halfway in, though I think the whole video is worth your time). The idea is simple: through a series of perceptive experiments, psychologists were able to determine that there are times when the brain makes decisions about what to tell you it sees based on information from the future. Specifically, in a certain experiment, a disc was shown moving about, and the perception of the disk at a specific moment in time changed depending on what the disc did next. Now, of course, this does not imply that the brain somehow can tell the future. Instead, it implies something perhaps even more odd: the brain waits to tell us what is going on until it’s sure. In other words, when visual perception occurs in the optic nerve, the brain sometimes holds on to it, packaging up some future perceptions until it can tell a cohesive story to us. This period of time varies depending on the person and the environment, but a rough estimate is about 0.1 seconds. Which, depending on how you look at it, is either not very long or an eternity. As someone who studied computer graphics, that’s about 3 frames of a film, or 6 frames of a video game.

This implies, philosophically, that what we think of as the “present” is in fact a moving basket of input about 0.1 seconds wide, which varies depending on the moment and what’s being presented to us.

Kinda crazy, huh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specious_present

2022 - Getting Back on the Blog Horse

One of my goals for 2022 is to start back in on the blog. I’ve created a little hidey-hole writing desk inside my new house that’s set up just for blogging. I’m sitting there right now, listening to 80s music coming in over my Google device while I stare at a drawing of myself that a friend made. It’s still a bit surreal - OK, more than a bit - to consider that I’m sitting inside my own house, in the Bay Area. Much like many things about the last few years, it has an aura of unreality about it, as if it’s all a bad dream and I’m going to wake up. The house is, of course, a positive thing, borne of long sacrifice and choices that past me made. And I’m grateful for it; but still, it’s come with a lot of stress and trauma and it’s hard, as I sit here, not to feel the weight of that.

Last week, I got COVID. I still feel a bit sniffly. It was a pretty unpleasant experience, the opposite of owning a new house, and yet, with the characteristic poetry the human mind is so known for, they have the same…smell. There is something compatible about COVID and my new house and perhaps it will fall to the next few days to shed some light on that conundrum. For now, I’m going to leave you with a picture of the little area of my house where I will be typing.

2022 - Buying a House

I find that I enjoy communicating with the world at large through my blog, especially if I don’t think about it too hard. I am really looking forward to 2022, I think a lot of great things are coming my way. And the first one happened today; I closed on my first ever house. I owned a house a long time ago in the distant past when I was married, and I have owned this condo for a year and a half, but this is the first time ever owning a real house all by my lonesome. I got to FaceTime my parents and show them the whole thing. The house isn’t really anything special but it’s my house, and it’s in the bay area. I feel very grateful and lucky to even get to do this at all. Perhaps in the next post I’ll share the experiences I had looking for the house, such as the leaky house listed at $849,000 that I put an offer on which ended up selling for $1.3 million. But for the moment, I’ll just content myself with leaving this here. More to come.

2021 - Vancouver Adventure with Kaska - Vancouver, BC

I spent the last 48 hours in Vancouver! Yay! Let that sink in for a moment. Pre-COVID, that might not have seemed like a big deal. If you were a time traveller from 2018, you might think “well, duh, of course you did!”. But here in 2021 we know that isn’t quite so simple.

First things first - for anyone who is scared of travelling this way, like I was, don’t be. Yes, the rules are real and you must follow them. But they aren’t trying to trap you; everyone was accomodating and pleasant and really the process went about as smoothly as it could be. I, personally, was worried about a positive test result trapping me in Canada - just like I was for Scotland - but there is a fun little loophole; if you visit for less than 3 days, you can use the test you took to get into the country to get back out. This means 2 things: one, you don’t have to pay for another test, but more importantly, you can’t get a positive result. Once you know you’re negative enough to get in, you’re negative enough to get out.

Anyway, on to the trip: it was awesome! My friend Kaska from Walnut Creek, who moved back to Vancouver, was an impeccable host. We did exactly what we said we were going to do: biked a lot and drank a bunch of beer. I got to meet several of her Vancouver friends and everyone was awesome and pleasant. Vancouver is very pretty, though the weather didn’t cooperate and it basically rained on and off the whole weekend. We still had an epic ride though, doing about 42 miles - sorry, 70 kilometers - all around Vancouver. She lives near Stanley Park, so we started out with a loop of that, then rode around the UBC Endowment Lands, then up over the Lion’s Gate bridge into North Vancouver, down along the north edge of False Creek, then back across the Second Narrows and home. Then the next morning I got up and - while she went jogging - I did it again (about 24 miles this time) with her friend Graeme. In between there were 4 or 5 brewery stops, a trip to her friend Maria’s for dinner, and pleasant conversation. Everything about the weekend was just really nice. I was exhausted from all my travelling, but the bike rides didn’t push me and I ended up sleeping really well in her apartment. All in all, it was a great trip and I am already planning a return, to go see Squamish and Vancouver Island. And maybe another to go skiing at Whistler.

Oh, and I finally got a Tim Horton’s doughnut. And some amazing Korean food. And a really great ham and egg bagel. Actually all the food was amazing.

2021 - New Apartment - Bend, OR

The adventure continues! I drove up yesterday - stopping by to say hi to Courtney and Halo in Pacifica - to my new apartment in Bend. No, I am not moving to Bend permanently, but I am attending school there for the semester, the program in Outdoor Leadership that I started five years ago. I’m really tired because I got in very late last night, and this morning had to do the “new apartment runaround”, stopping by Fred Meyer for a shower curtain, soap, toilet paper, etc., etc. The place looks so empty - it’s a metaphor for my new experiences up here that will fill it up!

I already miss the Bay Area and my friends, though. I’m going to go back as often as I reasonably can. Today, I drive to the Portland airport to fly up to Vancouver with my bike and visit Kaska for a ride and a beer. I’ll blog about that soon!

For now, hi from Bend!

2021 - Disney Trip - Orlando, FL

I spent the last 3 days with my family at Disney. I always enjoy these trips, but this one was particularly fun for some reason. We all just seemed to get along better and I felt relaxed. We went to Epcot one day and the Magic Kindgom the next. Things are definitely still weird at Disney; lots of little things that would only make sense to a long time Disney park goer like me. For example, the second day we were in Magic Kingdom and wanted some “Mickey Ears”, which are these dark chocolate ice cream bars in the shape of Mickey’s head that my family and I really like. Normally, at Disney, there are 800 people all swarming you wanting to sell you any and everything, including ice cream. But this time we actually had a hard time finding anybody! There was so much less staff on hand of every kind and it was obvious. A lot of things are moving to apps - at one point we went to Starlight Ray’s Cafe, which I like because of the totally weird Sonny Eclipse animatronic show, and in order to even get in the door, we had to show an online food order - you can’t just walk in and order any more. All of this is fine, it’s just a bit unsettling. The parks look mostly OK, but you can tell that this is a tough time for them. But we still had a ton of fun. The second day at Magic Kingdom was really nice because there were so few people - Space Mountain had a 15 minute wait! We did everything in Tomorrowland, and particularly enjoyed the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, where they do a short comedy show with real live comedians. I actually laughed pretty hard for the first time in a while.

Epcot was nice too; they were doing the food and wine festival which is fun, and we ate at the Coral Reef restaurant; the Lobster Bisque is my favorite and it didn’t disappoint. The Epcot resort area is a mixed bag; the Cape May restaurant, which is usually one of our favorites because it’s a buffet, had gone way way downhill. But the pizza at the pizza window was delicious, and my brother rented Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and we watched most of it until my mom got bored.

All in all, a good trip.

2021 - Wine Tasting with friends in Napa

Yesterday I went up to Napa for a quick little wine tasting with my friend Courtney and her two friends up in Napa. She just invited me to go and…I went! That probably doesn’t seem so remarkable to many readers, but for me, having a group of friends who are just full of plans and I get to tag along is not really been my life experience for the last few years! Pandemic and all. So the simple and easy nature of us getting together to just drink a little wine and eat a little cheese was remarkably nice. We were only up there for an hour and a half or so but the wine was tasty and the cheese was delicious and the company was great.

2021 - Swimming at the Oakland Estuary - 1100m

Today I got a last minute request to go swimming from my open water swimming friend Nataly, so we met up down at the Oakland Estuary/Jack London Aquatic Center and went out for a swim. Open water swimming is something I’ve gotten back into recently, mostly due to Nataly. At Jack London we go out onto a pier and just swim among the boats. This time we ran into a large group of high school students doing regatta/dragon boat practices. Usually the water - which is salt water from the bay - is not so bad, but occasionally it smells really fishy, and today was one of those days. I did some open water practice back in the day as part of my triathlon practice, but this time around I”m just swimming for its own sake. It’s a great workout. I swim with a wet suit because I hate the cold, but you really don’t have to have one, and Nataly doesn’t use one.

2021 - Running along Alameda Beach - 5k

Today I ran a 5k along the Alameda shoreline, just to get back into the swing of things. I ended up over there because I had an errand to run, which might end up being a blog post today or tomorrow. The Alameda beach is a bit of a hidden gem - it’s off the beaten track, there’s very little public transportation, but it’s only about 10-15 minutes from Oakland through the tunnel. In fact you can reasonably run all the way there from Oakland, if you’re serious. It’s often chilly and windy out there and the water is very cold, but it’s beautiful and there’s great views of the city, with public bathrooms, and it’s free with usually plenty of parking. I went out there once for a windsurfing lesson and you often find lots of windsurfers dotting the beach. It used to be a big military area - I hear they docked warships there and they refer to it in one of the Star Trek movies - but that doesn’t seem to be as much of a thing these days, though there still is a Coast Guard depot somewhat nearby on a separate island. Anyway, it’s a beautiful jog of about a mile or so along the coast that I turned into an out and back and did a full 5k, and it felt good.

2021 - Rogue Burn - Black Rock City, NV

I did it! I went to Burning Man! At least, sorta. Mostly. Granted, this year was the “Rogue Burn”. It wasn’t officially Burning Man. But in a way, I think it was - for me - even more Burning Man than Burning Man would have been.

Flash back to last Tuesday or so. I was feeling a bit down because I wasn’t going to get to go to Scotland. I pinged Carla to ask what she was up to and whether she wanted to go sailing. And instead she asked me to go to Burning Man. This is why you have friends. She proceeded to throw me in a car along with half of her tent and an air mattress and a sleeping bag, and 48 hours later off I was to the Nevada desert with her, her boyfriend, her boyfriend’s dog, and two other friends Dave and Rene. I told myself I would just have a chill time and enjoy being out there in the desert, and, you know what: I did! I didn’t party hard, just hung out with friends, had some good conversations, probably one too many cheap beers, and rescued a 21 year old by driving her a mile back to camp on a Panda.

So, here goes:

Notes From The Playa - Day 1

Notes from my experiences, here in no particular order.  Typed out on my MacBook Air as I sit on Carla’s boyfriend Andrew’s very nice chair, at 7:45 in the morning on Saturday while watching the sunrise over the dried lake bed that everyone calls “The Playa”, I assume ironically since water is the one thing that nobody has.

1) Coming In Was Surreal - even though I was expecting it to some degree, coming in to the lake bed was surreal.  Until you hit the turn off, it’s a pretty standard Nevada desert experience, familiar to me since I rode my bike across Route 50 with Bike the US for MS - pretty sparse, rolling two lane country highway, with some vegetation along the sides.  But once you turn off, it becomes surreal.  Carla tells me that in a normal year, there would be a line of cars and civilization starting right from the get-go, but in this weird renegade year, there was literally nobody there - nobody to greet us, nobody else to see, just a great vast expanse of nothing, as far as the eye can see.  There’s nothing to break the skyline, nothing for your eye to latch onto.  It reminded me of the Nothing from NeverEnding Story, or possibly a new map in a video game.  Just clouds of dust and a perfectly even white horizon.

2) The Tablua Rasa - this is obvious, of course, but the tabula rasa of the space really is powerful.  The fact that nothing is here - nothing to fight against, nothing to act with or against - just the freedom to define your own time and experience.

3) My Phone Is Chatty - I woke up this morning and looked at my phone screen and was surprised to see a dozen or so notifications.  I thought perhaps I had gotten a minute of internet - that does happen from time to time.  But it was just my phone telling me things that various app owners thought I might want to know - from The NY Times Crossword to Tinder and everything in between.  No wonder we have short attention spans.

4) Bikes - My god, the bikes!  Bikes everywhere.  Little ones, big ones, nice ones, crappy ones, fat tires, skinny tires, most of them lit up like Christmas or more.  As someone who loves bikes but in a totally different context and for a radically different reason, it was really awe inspiring to see so many bikes and it also weirdly made me feel like I was home, and welcome.  I think it’s my favorite aspect of the whole experience so far.

5) The Dust - it really does get everywhere.  It’s not as bad as people made it out to be - my asshole is not encrusted - but boy, don’t bring anything you want to stay clean, ‘coz it ain’t gonna.  I literally just sat my laptop down for a minute and came back to it, and the dust already was coating the keyboard.

6) The Music - Someone is always playing music, all the time.  Like, 24/7.  You get used to it.  I even managed to sleep through it, which is very unusual for me.  If I had one request/criticism, it’s that 99% of the music is the same basic EDM.  I would love to hear someone mix it up and start playing blues, or even rock.  So much great music out there, and really who’s dancing at 8 in the morning?  Couldn’t you take a 5 minute break?

7) The Temperature - it’s pretty damn cold at night, and pretty damn hot during the day.  Honestly, people exaggerated this part a little bit; but still, it’s interesting to watch the change of the way people dress and interact with the environment, between the hot, bright day and the cold, dark night.

8) The Lights - The environment at night is beyond surreal.  The bikes play a big part in this, as do the art cars; the sensation of random stochastic movement is intense, and could be disorienting, except that it is all so friendly and you don’t really need your sense of orientation anyway.

9) Backpacker Pantry meals - they’re tasty!

Thoughts from the Playa - Last Day

10) I really admire people who are emotionally and logistically self-sufficient, but are still capable of being emotionally and physically available.  I bonded with a friend of Carla’s named Dave Porter - he’s the guy that came and fixed my bathtub - and I admire his self-sufficiency without being distant.

11) I really would love to see what Burning Man people can do with the full art and organization.  I’m not looking forward to 8 hour lines and $500 tickets, but I guess I will have to come back.

12) One of the things that struck me immediately upon arrival was my perception that I felt I was in the company of mostly white people. In the interest of fairness, there certainly were some non-white people but I coudn’t shake that feeling all weekend. I’m sorry about the next sentence because I’m sure it will rub people the wrong way but it really struck me as a bit of a tribal experience for white people.  It certainly was not that I experienced any exclusion or racism, but still, I couldn’t ignore my feelings.

13) Living here for 7-10 days would require a whole new level of commitment and organization.  In general, you *can* sorta just plan to be here last minute, and you won’t die or anything, but the more money and time you put into it, the higher quality of life you can have.

14) Unsurprisingly, taking a break from the Internet is really great.  It’s funny though because there is some remote cell service, so occasionally the Internet pops in and dumps a whole load of notifications and such.  I call it the “Internet coming by to say hello”.

15) Carla’s boyfriend Andrew had these two cool scooter-type things for kids in the shape of animals - one a Panda, the other a Leopard.  They don’t go very fast but boy were they the highlight of the show.  One day a random stranger - a woman who looked about 21 - wandered into our camp, utterly lost.  I ended up taking her back to her camp on the back of the Panda (“Ling-Ling”, if you must know), and it was one of the best parts of the trip just because it was so fun to ride that thing, so fun to problem solve and fun to be useful and wanted.  She was really lost!  

16) It is so easy to get lost out here; I hear that the regular organization builds in roads and other such, but this being the “renegade burn” there was none of that.  I brought an AirTag that I left at camp, and that ended up being a huge success because even without any service or anything, it was easy to navigate back to camp.  For folks who don’t have that - like the lost 21-year-old - there is an app, What 3 Words which, while not perfect, is a lot better than nothing.  It basically just lets you communicate a point in space to someone else and then just sorta guides you to that point.  It doesn’t work anywhere near as well as the AirTag but you don’t have to have an AirTag.

17) My friends - and especially Carla - really went above and beyond for me on this one.  I have to do something nice for them in return.  I owe them one, big time.

18) I think one of the things I liked the most about the experience is that it genuinely inspires a desire to give back.  All cynicism aside, there is something about the event that makes you say “I want to do something cool and then give it away to everybody”.  If for no other reason than that, I think it’s an amazing event and accomplishment.  

19) I told Porter I was going to blog about it and he said “let me know if you manage to describe Burning Man because I don’t think anyone ever has”, and I see what he means.  On one level it is just a prosaic camping event/music festival/art show in the dust, but on another level it’s a bit hard to really pin down.  I think you would need some poetry; perhaps I will feel inspired in a few days.

And that’s it! Pics to follow.

2021 Post-Bike Adventure - Day 8 - Walnut Creek, CA

Today was a travel day, travelling home. I ended up flying through Atlanta and hanging out at the Delta club there. Airplane clubs are a really fascinating thing; they feel like some sort of anachronism, a holdover from the days of golf country clubs and the Knights of Columbus.

Woke up this morning at the Strubles and rode to the airport with Matt; stopped by McDonalds. The meal that I order which in the bay area costs about $11 cost about $6.50 there. I guess that’s one reason people live there!

It felt really good to be home and to fall asleep in my own bed. I ended up having to walk all the way home with my 50 lb. bike box because both Lyft and Uber are, apparently, really low on drivers. Nobody wants to drive or work in fast food restaurants anymore!

2021 Blue Ridge Parkway - Day 7 - Roanoke, VA - 49 miles

The last day! It went by so fast. The riding today was amazing as always. We rode past McAfee’s Knob - I need to go and hike there someday. I got to ride a lot with Caleb (the lawyer from Kentucky) and he explained how depositions work to me; it was pretty fascinating. It’s a much more human process than I thought at first.

The most important thing to mention here, dear Reader, is that I’ve canceled the leg of my trip going to Scotland. In the end, the risk of ending up stuck there and not being able to start school on time was simply too much to handle. I’m really looking forward to just getting home and getting ready for school, and working on my Master’s degree.

Today we had a great rest stop where Don made us tacos and we just sat around shooting the shit. After we got to the Strubles’ house, they made us some food and then we headed out to a brewery near Salem and ordered Mexican food. It felt really nice; just hanging out with a group of good friends. My bike friends over the years have slowly removed the “bike” part and now they are just friends. And the Colorado Burrito was really good.

So, one adventure ends, and another begins. I’ve decided I’m going to keep blogging, at least for a while until school starts. I may skip some days in the middle where not too much happens, but for now, we’ll keep things going.