Archive for July 2009
Mountains
It is strange to see the world class bike racers working the mountain stages of the Tour de France. Some of them are able to make it look deceivingly easy, while others so vividly reveal their limitations of climbing ability and almost look like they are suddenly riding in sand. It is really a spectacle to watch; if you can endure the frequent and prolonged onslaught of commercials throughout the broadcast. The network must realise how annoying it is, because they offer a half-hour commercial-free at the end of the stage. Unfortunately, it still isn’t enough to overcome the annoyance of the interruptions before and after that.
Only occasionally do the riders appear to be working to catch their breath as they ride so incredibly hard at the high elevations. I look at it and am reminded of how I struggled to breathe up above the tree line, and I wasn’t exerting myself anywhere near the level these guys are. It boggles my mind.
The announcers more than once commented on the incredible beauty of the mountains, and as they pan back to reveal the landscape from the helicopter view, I was thrown back to being in the Himalayas and how that felt. Mountains certainly do seem to have a universal allure. At the same time that they are intimidating to bicycle on, they are also very rewarding, as their beauty unfolds in the extreme from the vantage point of a bicycle seat.
Granted, during the act of trying to race up them, it is harder to focus on how beautiful they are, but I’m pretty sure it still finds a way to seep in somehow. And there is always the joy when you are at the top and have finished all the work of having to ride up them.
My mountain this weekend is less daunting. I am at the lake offering Cyndie and her mother moral support in their task of caring for Ben and Sara’s 3 kids while the happy couple are off celebrating an anniversary in Duluth. Even if it seems like hard work at times, it comes with such wonderful rewards that any difficulty is usually quickly offset.
I’m also sneaking some time of my own to play with my little wood sculpture. Still workin’ the shape. Beck stopped by to check on my progress and offer his approval.
“Smoooth.”
Multiple Realities
No two persons experience the same reality. I understand that the guy speeding up to get around me, and honking his horn as he rushed to his exit onto the cloverleaf, thought I was all wrong to be accelerating to freeway speed to enter traffic instead of stopping to allow him to exit without slowing down, but it is difficult for me to feel in the wrong. Wouldn’t he want to be slowing down in order to exit while I am speeding up to enter? In the grand scheme of things, does that mean we are both right? He will be telling someone about me being wrong to do what I did, just as I want to say he is wrong for what he did.
If I ran the world, everything would glide along like clockwork. As it was, we reached a stalemate at the end of the distance between clovers, where I slammed on the brakes and he got across in front of me to slam on his brakes into the exit circle and I had to then use the shoulder to accelerate and enter traffic.
Maybe he had been watching the Tour de France and was in a racing frame of mind and couldn’t bring himself to consider slowing down to merge. One of the tricks I use in attempt to clear the angst that such a conflict creates is to imagine that his reality included a genuine emergency, because if so, wouldn’t I be more than happy to pause to let him rush by? Still, I feel some regret, wondering why I missed reading the situation more quickly and sensing his need before I got myself pinned down on the flat with no momentum to safely merge.
Is it unfair to hope that he is regretting not noticing I was quickly accelerating to enter traffic and he could easily slide in behind me as he slowed to exit, executing the fine art of the merge? I guess I don’t get to define his reality.
Today is the first mountain stage of this year’s Tour de France! I’m going to put that squarely into my reality. Join me there.
Watchin’ le Tour?
How many of you are watching the Tour de France this month? I’ve heard from several people who aren’t normally inclined to watch sports on television, that they are watching broadcasts of this race. I’ve not seen this much television for a long time. I think I’ve got every commercial memorized already, ad nauseum. Versus Channel does a great job of broadcasting this race to the US audience, inbetween the commercials. In the morning, it is shown live as it happens, and then rerun throughout the day, culminating in a 3-hour prime time feature that is edited to capture the most important highlights of the race with the addition of informative stories and interviews with racers and managers.
I particularly enjoyed the review of the history of the race; how it started as a way to sell more newspapers back in 1903. This version says some of the roads of France got paved as improvements for the race as it became a bigger spectacle. It amazes me how big an event it grows to become, drawing the world’s attention and inspiring the amazing technological advances to equipment and training improvements for athletes. Imagine what it would be like for the 60 racers who competed before anyone had heard of this event, to see what it has become today.
It brings to mind similar thoughts I’ve had about the machine that is the National Football League, NFL, in the US. Of course, it applies to all sports, in the way a simple game that was probably more of a club level of competition catches on as a spectator sport and eventually becomes a corporate juggernaut worth millions of dollars. It begins to take on a life of its own and nothing is out of the question to gain an advantage or sell more interest.
This year, in the Tour de France, they plan to control 2 of the stage races in a throwback to the days before technology took over and disallow use of radios between riders and the managers in the team cars. I like it. I must admit that I am torn between the two worlds. I appreciate the intensity of the present level of competion and am in awe of the amount of information being processed in that car and how it translates to performance of the riders. But I also want to see how it will play out, racing like they used to in the days before the radios.
Whenever I can, I’ll be watching the morning live broadcasts to catch the excitement as it happens. Will you?
From the Archives
I recently re-discovered this word-painting of a July cloudburst I wrote back in July of 2002…
Playin’ in the Rain
Picture the protracted heat and tropic humidity of the consummate summer extreme. Consider the moment when days upon days of overexposing blasts of intense July sun and heat finally give in to the interruption of boiling piles of cloud and the electric anticipation of pending eruption, as opposing air masses collide overhead. Marvel at the quickness with which change takes place. Wonder at the speed of rushing air that intuition tells you should be cool, while senses still perceive heat. When the cloud finally bursts, and the torrents are crashing down, you barely hesitate. Regardless the natural inclination to seek shelter, you step out to feel the weight of impact on your head. With clothes now sticking and drooping with the weight of water, just try to act mature. The pavement steams and simmers, calming your feet with accumulated warmth, while at the same time infusing you with the irrepressible provocation to dance. Arms fling out, head rolls back and splashing ensues. No matter how old you really are, you are a kid again. Silence is not an option. You are as wet as you can possibly be, and at this moment, you wouldn’t have it any other way.
That surely must have come from memories of my youth. We don’t get rain like that here any more. The metropolitan area surrounding the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul has grown so much that we now have a big enough heat-dome over the area to impact the weather. The majority of weather fronts approaching the vicinity of my home, located at the southwest corner of the metro area, tend to break up and slide around to the north and south now days.
I bet if we got doused again like the writing above describes, I would be strongly tempted to go out and play in it like I remember doing when I was a kid. I remember one time when we were able to swim in the flooded corn field across the road from our house after a particularly heavy down pour.
Ah, those were the days. The good ol’ days. I can say that now that I’m old. I suppose the farmer didn’t think it was as good in those amounts at one time, but it sure was exciting. A time when we couldn’t resist the lure to play in the rain.
Maintaining Hydration
My cycling friends know all about this one. Hopefully, so do my soccer friends. Well, I hope all my family and friends know about maintaining proper hydration. My method of choice for monitoring my status is simply watching the color of my urine. I have been amazed lately, how quickly things can change. Clear, clear, clear, clear, whoa–yellow!
There isn’t a gradual change, but suddenly a dramatic change. Now, there are other clues, if I am paying attention. Certainly, frequency of needing to go is one. At work, if I don’t get interrupted by needing to visit the restroom multiple times per morning, I should know that when lunch break arrives, I may find a change of color, especially if I played soccer that morning. But when I’m busy at work and don’t get forced to take bathroom breaks, I notice that I also often don’t break to drink water either and then the drop in level of hydration appears.
But I still find myself surprised when the change happens, and often times when it does, at how significant the change of color can be. The good news is that when optimal hydration is being managed, changes like this can be very quickly remedied. I can easily polish off my 24 oz. bottle of water in short order and see immediate response in urine color and amount (or frequency).
It’s not so easy if allowed to get to the extreme of dehydration. I will always remember the time Lance Armstrong got dehydrated during a time trial in one of his Tour de France races and the next day they reported that even with intravenous fluids added to his attempts to drink enough after that day’s race, he was still not back to optimal hydration yet because the cells can only absorb water over time. You can’t put it all back at once. It pays not to let ourselves get behind.
Speaking of Lance, what a performance in this year’s Tour on Monday as he astutely positioned himself for a possible group breakaway that actually occurred and bought him some precious seconds to move from 10th place overall up to 3rd, while other contenders totally missed out and were gapped by over 30 seconds or more. Team Time Trial today!
I love watching le Tour!
Art in Progress
On the drive home from the lake Sunday evening, a thought of wonderment occurred to me regarding the phrase, “out of nowhere”. Obviously, we are aware of the space that we occupy at any given moment, but is it possible that at the same time we exclude the thought that other people and animals also exist in their own space? If something or someone suddenly appears to us, why would it make sense to say that it came out of nowhere? The space it occupied prior to our becoming aware of it, didn’t exist?
Thoughts like that can happen when you drive home, alone, for 3 hours.
Meanwhile, here are a couple of views of my sculpture in progress:
Celebrating Independence
We are free of that oppressive king and no longer suffer taxation without representation, so celebration is in order. Our tradition is to don the colors of the day, representing the teams we will compete for in the 4th of July games: red for the bats team and blue for the mice. It’s bats versus mice in an all-out battle of racing, tossing balloons, and kicking shoes. The funny thing about this exercise of forming teams is that we never get around to keeping score and there is no team victory to be had. It appears to be important at first, but once the activities get started, everyone gets lost in the thrill of competing and forgets to make any final accounting of the results. I suppose it may have something to do with the fact that prizes tend to be distributed to all participants endlessly throughout the day. My favorite was the popsicle. I went back for a second one.
Waiting eagerly for the "fish-pond" to open beyond the tub of ammunition for the water balloon toss.
No tricks: this year contestants had to pass their balloon to the person next to them after each catch.
After the games, we meet at the lodge to feast. Appetizers out front before heading inside for the main course of chicken and ribs
Kicking shoes... pretty much requires some form of trickery
Odds ‘n’ Ends
Leisure time with extended family, when it goes well, is absolutely priceless. In this case, I am with Cyndie’s family. Yesterday I got to watch two of her brother’s kids wrastlin’ and giggling and roughhousing on a couch, the youngest one in nothing but a diaper. They looked so much like a couple of little bear cubs battling away in those mock skirmishes that teach them all sorts of things about themselves. I bet these kids are ready to go out and hunt for their own food.
Later, kids were at the game table with aunts, uncles and grandparents, hootin’ and hollerin’ and guffawin’ up a storm, learning how to play a game so that winning isn’t everything and the fun is in just the celebration of the game. I had a thought about how different the environment an only child grows up in must be from those with siblings.
Recently, I saw photos of a family with 6 kids and I thought about how that seemed like such a drastically large number of children. When one of the photos of the kids was a pyramid of the six of them it struck me that my siblings and I did that very same pose for a picture. I grew up in a family of 6 kids! Siblings, cherish each other and everything that having brothers and sisters provided for your development (honestly, both the good and the bad!).
In the morning, after a late breakfast, we tested a couple of table games with dice or cards, out on the deck. It was an idyllic time, outside in the sun and shadows of the trees, overlooking the lake, with Cyndie and her parents, exploring new games and engaging in some good-natured competition.
I tagged along on a trip to town in the afternoon and picked up a new file for a sculpture I’m working on out of a branch from a pine tree that died in our yard at home.
I can’t get myself to work with power tools to sculpt, because they remove material too fast. I want to work slow. I like using a finishing tool to shape things because of the smoothness it creates in the piece to enjoy while I handle it during the process. I like seeing the wood grains that get revealed and change as I file and sand.
In town I did some people-watching at the grocery store while Cyndie and her mom waged war inside. So many well-to-do vacationers in town for the holiday. We are an overweight population. If I may pass judgment, on vacation, folks dress in all manner of embarrassing looking outfits. I stayed in the car, out of sight.
Happy Independence Day, everyone!
Writing Outloud
Sometimes it is hard to write about the vacancy that happens during times the mind and body and soul fall out of sync with the place I refer to as optimal health. I picture it as something similar to when a heart goes into fibrillation or when I start typing really fast and then look up to see my hands weren’t in position on the home keys. It’s not that nothing is happening; actually a lot is happening, it just isn’t very productive, and as a result comes across as a vacancy.
For hearts, intervention can involve an intentional and measured shock. Maybe there is a proper dose of some kind of measured shock that would help to reset the rest of me. When my energy reserves are being stressed, the simple mental steps that help to avoid getting out of sync must show up a little slow and then I find myself behind the curve and it gets too inviting to let everything slide. That sets up the self-feeding downward spiral, so an enlightened mind is wise to disallow that process.
For me, sometimes hearing and feeling a strong dose of my favorite music works well to interrupt the dysfunctional pattern. Another successful interrupter is when someone needs my help and requires me to take immediate action to assist them. Left to my own devices, I generally prefer to succumb for a while and lay low, accomplishing little towards productive outcomes beyond entertaining myself with low level, mind numbing pastimes, or even sleep, which comes easy at times like this.
Last night, I chose the opposite of sleep. I let Cyndie talk me into driving up to our lake place in the middle of the night. It does me a large dose of therapy to wake up and look out at the sun rising over the glassy lake at my most sacred place. The drive up was pretty therapeutic, too. Even though it was a bit cool, we kept the top down and the moon was on display, accented with a few clouds as we got farther north. 
We threw in a bit of music therapy, as well, playing live recordings of some of my favorite artists from my youth. We turned the amp up to 11 and rocked out to Derek & the Dominos (In Concert) and The Band (Rock of Ages) for the entire 3-hour, non-stop dash and arrived at 1:15 this morning.
Even given the lack of a full night’s liver-healing sleep, I feel better already. I plan to do a little additional sleeping in the hammock that swings just outside the door, looking out at the lake. That’s just the kind of measured shock I’m hoping for right now.
Relative Something 