Finally...

I think that the creative bug finally came back!!!

I took most of the month of August off work to bike the Colorado Trail.

Only part of the Colorado Trail was biked. I rode most of the sections between Breckenridge and Denver with my little brother. We camped out a couple nights and I realized that inbetween both of us being in much worse shape then we thought and lots of little things going wrong that the week with my brother would be better spent staying at my aunt's house and biking with my brother up there. Luckily I was right and biked a lot and cooked alot. And got some really quality time together. After he left I headed back out on the Colorado Trail made through one section and realized two things.

1. I was not having a lot of fun cause of the bike I had.

2. I was in much worse shape then I thought and the Colorado Trail was much harder biking wise then I had expected.

The night I decided to bail out, I sat on a log for 2-3 hours and thought about my thought process and how overly optimistic I tend to be about accomplishing goals. In the end I realized that I would have to ride the whole trail some other trip. So I rode back to Breck and got a ride back to the Springs.

I arrived back in the springs and fixed up the Kaboom and started biking as I waited for my motorcycle to get fixed. The Kaboom was such a revelation. To prepare for the Colorado Trail I had set aside the single speed and rode a full suspension. The purity and the simplicity of the Kaboom was amazing. I fell back in love with mountain biking. As I rode instead of concentrating on getting somewhere I just felt the flow of the trail and actually took the time to notice the scenery. When I was on the Colorado Trail I focused on getting to the top of the next hill or to the end of the next segment. The scenery and the trip are so much more important the accomplishing the goal.

I planned to head out to Durango a couple days after I got back to the Springs, but fate intervened and my motorcycle decided to need a little bit of TLC the day before I was going to leave. As I was waiting for parts I rode the Kaboom everytime I got the chance and realized once again that I do not want to live my life in an office. I want to interact with people in person, and I want to work with my hands, I want to create.

After my motorcycle was fixed I headed out to Crested Butte which is one of the coolest mountain towns I have been to yet. I rode all kinds of cool trails around the town and heard all kinds of amazing music. All the tourists were gone because school had already started in most of the country so I got to hang out with all kinds of local Crested Butte people every night at the locals bars. I think that there tend to be a higher ratio of people I really connect with in mountain towns then on the Springs...

On the way back home I rode one of my favourite trails in Colorado. It is called the Monarch Crest trail and if you ever get the chance you must ride it. It runs right above tree line for most of the trail and all the views are amazing. Plus it flows like nothing else.

Ever since I came back to the springs, I been restless, but that restlessness has led to more biking and also more drive to create instead of sitting around. Right now I am working on turning my porch into a small bedroom plus redoing the bike rack to be cool looking at fit in with the house better, and adding recycle bins into the bike rack (pictures soon to come). I can tell I am out of practice writing, it does not flow quite as easy as before.

Biking, Biking, Biking and more Biking

It has been way to long since I sat down to write anything.

I think, ponder and then go to write the ideas down and get carried away on a rabbit trail or just being lazy.

The past 2 months have actually been amazing months. I finally started to get into the groove of biking multiple times a week to work. I was finally able to sell a friend's motorcycle and since mine was broken and I have been spending all my extra money on bike parts, it forced me to ride my bicycle to work more often. I had wanted to get started but it is so easy to put it off when another means of tranportation is available in the morning.

The best thing that happened was that I was able to get 3 weeks off work this summer to ride the Colorado Trail. And what makes it even better is that my brother gets to ride the portion from Denver to Breckenridge this summer before he starts school.

So far it has been alot easier motivate myself to ride the bike to work, the store, the trailhead, and the recycling place since I found out. I definitely strayed to far from my love of bicycling and oddly enough I can trace that to the purchase of my first motorcycle in 2004. I rode the motobike more and the bicycle less.

As I ride my bike more and more I realize why I love it so much and riding the motobike is a secondary love! Riding in the snow tomorrow will be a blast!!

100 items I would take with me to class

My friend Elizabeth got me thinking about what I would take with me if I was bringing 100 items somewhere?

I've been pondering it over in my mind, the first couple are easy but what comes after.

1 Kona Kaboom (The single speed)
1 Samoa the Traveler (to right)
1 iBook
1 Earphone
1 Bob Trailer
1 4,5,6mm wrenches
1 Chain tool
1 digital Camera
1 Colorado Recreational Map
1 lb. Raven's Nest Coffee
1 Aeropress (cool little coffee maker)
3 mechanical pencil
1 sketch pad
1 cigarette lighter
1 Beanie
1 Cilantro Plant
1 Timbuk2 bag
1 Bike work stand
1 Dwell Magazine
1 Mountain Flyer Magazine
6 bottles Pipeline Porter
1 carton OJ
1 almond joy bar
13 Jelly Bellies
1 book Landscape as Spirit
1 Knog Light + 1 vegas tail lamp (so I don't get run over wherever I am going)

1 Hookah with 1 mango and 1 double apple box of shisha
2 theater chairs from Glen Eyrie (that sit in my living room)
7 bananas
1 pair chacos

I am at 61 and am kind've running out of stuff. but I think I can go on

4 Laus Tacos... One Mahi Mahi, one shrimp, one veggie, and one chicken
1 bowl of my mom's amazing japanese curry
1 blue nalgene full of good water
3 kiwis
1 australian shepherd
1 block pepper jack cheese
12 postcards
1 black gel pen

I am up to 85 and this is definitely bringing back memories of a book that I remember reading when I was a kid where you got to count lots of things. It almost seems like a Richard Scarry book so in that case

1 Dr Suess book, maybe Horton Hears a Who
1 Richard Scarry book
1 writing pad
12 stamps for postcards

I am still amazed at how hard it is to come up with 100 items to bring somewhere. The nostalgia is definitely flowing though. I feel like I am a little kid counting stuff. It's fun!!!

Maybe this is supposed to be an experiment in details and I am not very good at focusing on details of life. I am much better at the big picture.

Oh well...

2009 Goals

So I was at my small group last week and we went over our goals for 2009. I had not really thought about them in depth until then but it was definitely a good thing. Here they are.

SPIRITUAL

1. Spend 1 hr every week focused on God

LEARNING

1. Read 1 Book per week

2. Learn how to weld

3. Learn to cook 1 new dish per week

FINANCIAL

1. Pay of all Debt

2. Save up down payment for land for yurt and funds to build yurt.

3. Save money to buy my sister computer for high school graduation

PHYSICAL

1. Commute 60 miles per week

2. MTB twice a week

3. Compete solo in 12 hrs of snowmass

RELATIONAL

1. Talk to my brother and sister at least once a week

2. Invite friends over for dinner at least once a month

RECREATIONAL

1. Go on at least 2 trips out of colorado and 1 trip out of the country this year (surfing in baja?)

2. Volunteer with Glen Eyrie Garden Society at least once a month during spring, fall, summer.

Somewhat mundane but at the same time I think very attainable.

Eyes

A common saying is that eyes are windows to the soul.

As I was looking into someone's eyes yesterday I was thinking... This is an awful lot of fun, what makes it so. technically you are just looking through a lenses at someones retina and they are doing the same thing to you.

What adds meaning to an experience??

Is it what we are told to think??

I wonder if I would have come up with the idea that eyes are a window to the soul on my own or just some version of it or if I did not have preconceived ideas and notions what would I come up with when I look into another persons eyes?

Snow

I see flakes breezing past me in straight lines as the tires tear up the peaceful surface. The flakes are mesmerizing.

It is incredibly quiet for being in the middle of the city. The quietness makes it easy to think that I am the only one outside today, even as I see the beasts flying past at a frenetic pace.

Is there an ice patch hiding under the surface? Yep, and here comes a concrete wall... hope I have an easy landing.

I am on the road with the beasts and one of the people trapped inside yells out the window because the beast that he lives in causes him to live in a state of constant hurry.

I end up at my destination and the snow is no longer peaceful. It has been torn up by the huge evil beasts of burden who serve only man, only destroying not helping or creating. The only purpose these beasts serve is to put man inside a cocoon and keep him from the outside where he can experience life. Serving as a coffin of his own making.

The snow is now brown and ugly. The people are afraid of it from inside these beasts. They are afraid for me. They think that I will be hurt or cold. Little do they realize the wonder and the joy, the sounds, the smells, the textures they miss being inside the beast. All they can think about it safety, warmth, comfort. They cannot think outside of their boxes to the world that lies outside.

The people who get the chance to experience these wonders are thought of as crazy or eccentric, but your life is dead without taking chances and pursuing passions and hopefully in the process getting others to see the truth. How long will it take until the masses are jarred outside of there little boxes and are willing to take action to get rid of the beasts.

Someday the snow will be peaceful and undisturbed by the beast. The people will realize that the beast's only purpose is to serve as a coffin, that shields them from the wonders of the world. Someday all the beasts will be gone and there will be a better world for all to enjoy.

Trying to get inspired.....

I just took a test at work and finally feel free now that is over to think creatively again but as I sit on my front porch (which is usually a breeding ground for the blog) I seem to have writers blog.

I guess I could blog about getting pulled over today for having no license plate or turn signals on the motobike but that is just a downer but I guess one way to look at it is that I was weaving through traffic at about 15 mph above the speed limit and even though they said that wasn't a good idea I only got a ticket for having no turn signals... oh well.

Now that weddings are over and the motobike is running again I am also feeling the need to get back to biking to work... but of course have to see how that goes

Hopefully I will get inspired soon have to see

Community

Community is the essence of what a good life is I think.

Whether the community is based around a church or an organization or just a bunch of people who share a common interest in building a life together.

One really cool example is right behind the coffee shop I am sitting in right now.

It is a community that was built with the intentional purpose of building a neighborhood where people will naturally interact together. It has community Gardens and a public workshop and all the houses face towards the center common area. Also the Garages are not attached so that people have to go out their front door and walk past all the other houses so they will see their neighbors frequently.

My mind keeps twisting and turning around the idea of community...

Thinking what is the point of having a church if you do not have a community surrounding it. Why do people develop churches with the purpose of attracting people from all over the city instead of developing pocket churches in different parts of town so that people will be staying in their communities instead of going out of them to go to church.

One of my friends said this weekend that in reality you should be able to walk to the church you go to or at the most take a little jaunt on a bike to get there. Church is not about the message or the doctrine as it is about the relationship you form with the other people there.

People who are not already in church will be attracted by the community they see, not by a perfect message or a stellar building (well maybe but the community will get them to stay.)

I have talked to people before about Christian communities but really it should be about people investing in the community that we live in and then building a community of people of all creeds not hiding away from the world.

God

Listening to the neighbors fight and watching apple smoke rise up in to the air.

My thoughts drifted to my life and if I am actually more satisfied with it when I can see the hand of God in it or whether my life would be any different if it was God focused instead of me focused.

I am at the point where I feel like I could be just as satisfied with it whether God is in it or not, traveling around, making friends, seeing the world and experiencing nature.

I can pull off making people think that I am at least somewhat focused on what God might want for my life and how I can serve him, but do I really care???

Are the people who I know who are Christians really any happier, any more joyful, anymore driven towards anything. I almost feel like the majority of people look to God in there life because

1. It will make them feel like better people.

2. It is what they have always done.

3. They feel like it is the best place to get a sense of community and not feel alone in the world.

I really do not know if any of this is true, but I know that when I am involved in a church or seeking to know God better at the root of it all is the desire to be living in a community of other people. Where people are sharing everything and being willing to sacrifice what they have for other people.

Sometimes I see this in the church, but many times I see it in other places.

The desire to know and to be truly known by other people. To be accepted for who you are without regard to your faults.

True community is hard to find and I feel that I rarely see it in the church.

I admit in this that there are a number of people that I have no desire to get to know or to be known by. I tend to be judgmental of people who seek after status and riches or who think that they have to have the best when really they should be able to be happy with much much less. Maybe some of these people are seeking to replace relationships in their lives with these things, I guess I do not really know.

One of the things that has meaning to me and makes me feel that my life is worth something is being creative, building things, bringing ideas to life, but this can never replace the relationships I have with people.

Can it replace a relationship with God??

I think so...

But I am still trying to determine where that fits in my life and if it is really true. I always feel more satisfied with my life when I am being creative and have community in my life regardless whether I am seeking after God or not.

Does it really matter???

The Greenest of the All

This weekend I went to my Grandma's birthday party.


I sat reminiscing with my family about my Grandma and as I sat there I realized my Grandma is the most environmentally responsible person I know.

What is ironic about this is that my Grandma is not at all focused on or interested in environmentalism.

She reuses everything and rarely buys anything new. She even reuses the cartons she gets meat in...

She grows most of her own vegetables or buys them locally.

Instead of buying new Christmas presents for us she would go to the thrift store and buy us books she thought we would like.

Even though my Grandma can be seen as tight she may be a great example of what an environmentalist really needs to be like.

the smooth motion of the city

I sit on my back porch, contemplating my life as I smoke the hookah and listen to the sounds of downtown with a little bit of Zero 7 in the background at least for a little while.

I am inspired but at the same time distracted as I watch the smoke cascade out of my lungs up into the night air. I wonder how my dreams for what my life will become will come to pass.

I realize that even as I sit hear another second of my life has passed by and I think of all the ideas I've had and wonder why I have never really followed any of my dreams before this year.

I think that the last time I followed a dream was when I came out to Colorado in 2001 to work at Eagle Lake as a bike camp director. Actually maybe not, I think that going to Baja was following through with a dream.

Now the dreams I have of creating and building have begun to take over my life in the past couple months. I have to figure out how to put my ideas and my creativity into action or I think eventually part of my soul will dye.

So many of my decisions in the past have been reacting to what has happened in my life not really being motivated by any driving force besides the flow of life around me.

Now I am driven, not by the job that I have just to pay off debt or the guilt that I sometimes let drive me to distraction but by the need to let the creativity I have inside of me come out, to take every idea that I have and work it through and not let it go dormant. Dormancy and floating through life are not a way to live...

I must let the dreams I have for my life flow out of me and not be held back by circumstances or the expectations of others.

Freedom is just around the corner!!!!

Samoa has a friend

Finally after all the months of waiting Samoa has a friend.

He joined the house about 2 weeks ago and has made a permanent dent in the closet floor. His greeness the Green Demon is slowly getting to the point where he can roll again on his own and is not being carried around by a groaning, struggling master anymore.

He is still heavy and somewhat ungainly but he is coming together.

Samoa will be happy to have a friend!! =)

The Dark Side

Dexter's Laboratory is one of my favorite cartoons on TV. We don't have cable so I turned to the internet to download a couple episodes to watch in my free time. Little did I know that there are two shows with the name Dexter. Of course I downloaded the non-cartoon show by accident. Out of curiosity I watched it. It was kind've freaky and weird but intriguing.

The second Dexter is a show that aired on Showtime last year about a forensic blood specialist at a Miami police department. Sounds like another CSI copy or something like that, right??? It has a little twist Dexter happens to be a serial killer. In many ways, the classic anti-hero. He is a nice guy and He only kills the bad guys... Guys who are murdering innocent people.

All the previous things made the show interesting, but that is not what really drew me. Dexter hides the inner killer inside him from everyone around him. He lets no one see who he really is. He puts on a facade to hide the darkness in his soul. He is afraid the world will reject him if they know who he really is.

I think that most people in the world want to be loved by someone. I also think that most people in the world hide a darkness in their soul from everyone around them. I know I do. I put such extreme boundaries around certain areas of my life that it has effected the way I relate to people.

When I look back at the past 6-7 years I can see the wall around the darkness in my soul building higher and higher. I even remeber the first day the wall started going up between God, me and other people around me. I was so ashamed of what was in my heart that I did not want anyone to see it. (Regardless of the fact that I knew God would see it) I dissauded myself to the point where I built a wall so high that I figured it was easier to just drop any desire i had for God then to tear down the wall.

Last night it clicked that one of the reasons I harbored no desire to get close to God was because I did not want to let him see behind the wall. Actually, I should rephrase the previous statement. I desired God, but I would no let him inside the wall. I acknowledged parts of the wall to some of my friends. I asked God to help me stop the actions that resulted from the darkness in my heart without inviting him to see behind the wall and to help me beat down the darkness in my soul and turn it into light.

I wrote about simplifying my life in the past couple posts. I think that more then anything else I could do to simplify me life; tearing down the wall around the darkness in my heart and letting God see it and help me with it would simplify my life more then anything else.

No Car, No Loft but a simpler life

Last month I was looking at buying a loft up in Victor, Colorado...
The lofts were beautiful, well designed and the views were awe inspiring, but I went up to aunt and uncles house after I looked at the lofts. As i was sitting around watching TV that night i realized that the lofts went against a couple of the goals i have for my life.

The first goal was to simplify my life. Not to take away any of the fun I have or cool experiences , but to take things out of my life that I have just because I am supposed to have them... For instance a car to get to work in the winter or a yard that has actual grass in it.

The second goal was to get rid of my car and all the extra bikes I had. I drove my car a total of about 20 miles in August. I am still working on the bikes. I gave my bike rack away to clint, a friend who just moved to New Mexico. I am going to sell a couple frames and parts of bike racks on craig's list also.

I realized that 95% of the time, The Traveler and single speed mountain bike are all I need.

I really need a car about 3 days a month at the most and I can rent a car for those days.

The third goal was to use my bikes for everything except for a couple trips to work and when I travel out of town. I think that that goal is also totally possible.

To bring all this to a point... Buying the loft in victor, no matter how cool, goes against all that.

It is not that I am some crazy environmentalist or anything, but if I do not need to drive a car 60 miles each way and I can help out little by riding my bike to work why not. I guess now that I am selling my car I will see how the experiment works.

A loft, a post, a thought about life in general...

In Victor, Colorado an architect built some lofts. They are 50 miles away from my job, but the first time I saw a picture of one I knew that it would be worth the drive. Tomorrow, I am meeting the realtor to actually go inside the lofts and take a look. Jev and I road up to Cripple Creek and victor last week and glanced in them to see if they exuded the same cool design in person that was shown on the web. Loft pictures

On that same note I decided to simplify life and get rid of all my bicycles except my fixie and my single speed. They are the bikes i love and ride the most. Why would I need anything else??? I have ridden my fixie to work twice since it finally gained a front brake. I have decided that Samoa is to pretty a name for her. The Traveler is a much more fitting name considering how gritty and tough she is (and also how fast she eats crank arms for breakfast).

Work should not dominate your life. Life should dominate work. So if you love what you do and it is your passion make it a major part of your life, but if your don't, then live life to the fullest and let work fund the life that you love. I guess I say this because, lately I have beeen thinking that i do not hate work but it is there to fund the life that the Lord is leading me to live. I can incorporate it into my life but only in the relationships I have and hopefully encouraging people to save for retirement so that the will have the freedom to serve others with there free time when they retire instead of having to work till they are 80.

What a great revelation, my thoughts about work never crossed the boundary of actually furthering peoples ability to serve in there retirement. That definitely gives me some inspiration for work...

Looking for a small house

So I have been looking for a house for the past couple months. The whole time I have been trying to decide how much space do I actually need... Then I think back to the house that I live in currently with my roomates and realized that outside of where we sleep I only use perhaps three rooms most of the time... The bathroom, kitchen and living room. Do i really need anything more (well maybe a big porch to hang out outside on) No!!!!

And because of that I have started to look at smaller solutions. One of the main ones is the weehouse It is pretty cool. Follow the link and you will see what I mean. Once again the search for land is on. I am looking for some land around 30000 to plop the weehouse studio on and then add on bedrooms later as the need arises. I love the idea of a multi building house situated around a courtyard.

The only problem that arises with this so far is that if both buildings are built around a courtyard then one of the buildings cannot face south, which makes for a crappy energy efficiency.

I think reducing how much room that you need to live should be something more americans focus on. We tend to have such large footprints because we drive large cars have houses that are twice the size that we need and then wonder why we can barely afford what we have.

a Dart ----->

Ok it doesn't really dart, maybe a better word would be cruises.

But it is a car that I can love. It has character. The jeep was a bland middle age person that was about to have a heart attack. The Dart is a old person that still has lots of spunk and is someone that even with there eccentricities you can sit down and talk to for hours.

Below is a picture of her. She just got a bike rack put on her and she is still supplying me with a constant diet of talk radio and mexican polka.!!

Screw Green Houses... Right????

I just read a great quote today. Read and ponder...

"Trading in your conventional downtown apartment and constructing a state-of-the-art eco-house in the country may sound good for you and the planet. However the 'Think Green' bumper sticker won't change the fact that you are probably wasting more energy and creating additional air pollution on the two hour daily commute than you'll ever save living the rest of your life in that spiffy new house" (Clark Snell in the Good House Book)

Makes alot of sense doesn't it.

Motobiking and mountain biking

While these are not necessarily the top 3 things I love in this world, they are probably in the top 20 if not the top 10.

This week has been stupendoulous...

A couple of my friends have been telling me how great the mountain biking is on the air force academy.

I finally went on the Falcon trail today with my friend Allison and it was amazing. There was a ton if climbing but the trail swooped and swerved to the trees and reminded me of all the trails I loved in Tennessee. In Colorado trails like this do not exist. I can think of maybe 2 I've done that involve both trees and twisting and turning. As if it couldn't get any better, it is within easy biking distance from my house (4 miles up the bike path)

My motorcycle set in the garage for the past 2 weeks.

I totally screwed up.

I kept putting off getting the tire for it and all of a sudden I could see metal in the middle of the tire. Always a crappy thing to see. I love my motobike. She keeps me from needing a car... She is beautiful... and I love her.

On Wednesday her tire came in and I rushed to get it put on and I drove my motobike everywhere saturday. For some reason leaning into a turn is so much more soothing then having to turn the wheel of a car...

light, sound, touch

The interplay of light, sound, and touch are critical to every aspect of our lives.

Riding Samoa home last night, every little flicker of light on the path was welcome. My eyes darted every which way for the first 10 minutes after leaveing poor richard's. Slowly, as as I came back onto sections of the trail that i recognized, the tension started to ease and I basked in the cool night air gliding past my face.

In a book I've been reading about green houses (not green garden houses, houses with green construction methods) the author talks about what the human body needs to live. One of those needs is light. Not just a lamp or a chandelier that hangs in the dining room, but natural light. I think that when most humans are depressed they stay in dark places.

Not outside where there is a breeze blowing past you as you stare at the night sky, but a place with no air movement or sound .

Sound

the cracking of spokes as they settle in on a new bicycle wheel or the creak of a crank that will almost fall off when I get home from the ride to poor richard's.

the rush of gravel against smooth tires calms the soul...

The creak of the cranks make my heart race as I think of walking home 5 miles in the dark in my bike shoes.

The woosh, crunch, crunch of the tires against the gravel and sand makes takes all the cares of my soul away and lets me flow down the path without a care in the world.

Now if it would just stop raining I could go again tonight... A screw it I'm going tonight anyway

Samoa waits quietly in the garage for the ride downtown tonight.