Today was a 68 mile ride through Golf Town. I’ve never seen more golf courses per capita in my life. It was a very pleasant ride, with a number of bike paths sandwiched around some US-17. It’s a very wealthy area; at one point I rode past a set of houses near the beach, one of which had a private tennis court and was next door to one with a private water slide. One of the areas just south of Myrtle reminded me a lot of Jacksonville Beach, except a bit more upscale. I dipped my toes in the water and rode my bike on the beach for a while. It was a very pleasant day.
Today I rode 94 miles to have a homemade chicken taco dinner at Wayne United Methodist Church. And i also get a couch to sleep on, and had a beer out on the street. The ride itself was calm and flat with good pavement through forests which were logged and are now national forests. I rode with Carla a good part of the day and we rode in silence punctuated by my terrible stories. It was a good day.
It’s always interesting, and a bit of a deviation from our rhythm, when we come to a large city. We try not to do it actually as a matter of logistics because it always means a hassle. Cities by and large are not meant for long distance bike travel, and housing is always a problem. Plus there’s the traffic. Charleston is no exception, and we searched long and hard for accomodations before finding, all of things, a high-end gym/spa, where we are sleeping in the yoga room and using their 5-star showers and saunas. It’s especially odd to the vibe of the trip to be walking around with all the beautiful people in their Lululemon and their 2% body fat. It feels like a little slice of LA.
I did the rest stop van again today and, I won’t lie, it’s taking its tool on me, mentally. It’s just not something I’m well-suited for; there’s a lot of waiting around, occasionally some stress, and a good bit of being nice to people randomly. Also some driving, a good bit of heat and some biting insects. But it’s for a good cause and I will soldier on.
South Carolina has a particular kind of beauty. It’s not honestly my thing, but even I had to pull over this morning as a particularly beautiful sunrise came up over the marshes. I stopped the van and got out and in 30 seconds or less I heard at least a dozen different bird calls. I have to say it was a magical moment and one that will stick with me. Charleston itself is what you would think it is: Southern plantation architecture, huge vistas of water, and a lot of hospitality. It’s not my thing, but it is a nice place. And I had an amazing hot fudge sundae from Republic Ice Cream. Top 25 in my life, maybe.
That said, I won’t be sad to leave.
P.S. I ate a boiled peanut for the first and last time in my life.
Welp, here we are in beautiful South Carolina. The sunset over the marsh was quite excellent, and my meal was exquisite - they called it a “Low Country Stir-Fry” and it was basically sausage, shrimp and cabbage over cajun rice with cajun seasonings, accompanied by some cheesy grits. Sublime. I was in the Rest Stop van again today; it’s seriously a long day of work, what with all the lifting and carrying of boxes and waiting around for cyclists in the hot sun. But I know that the group appreciates it so I soldier on; we are the grease that makes the machinery run. I am reminded of my youth in Florida, and not neccessarily in the best way; I have to say I don’t miss the baking sun, the sand, the grass that I’m allergic to, the stinging insects. I acknowledge that other people might enjoy the sun, the open space, the warmth, the hospitality. But I’m happy where I am on the West Coast. Nice sunsets, though.
We also went through downtown Savannah, GA. Amazing houses and beautiful trees. Exactly what I always pictured; stately and elegant and southern.
Today was not the most exciting day. We rode 79 miles through southern Georgia, mostly on US-17 or directly off of it. From one church to another. I rode today so it was nice to put on some miles. They were more easygoing flat miles, part of it even with a tailwind. Spirits seem high in the group. Little flying bugs are becoming a nuisance. We stopped at a Piggly Wiggly; I didn’t even know those existed anymore. Tomorrow I’m back in the Rest Stop van. I did get to go in a hot tub for a while; that was great.
Today I did my duty driving the “Rest Stop Van”, which basically means that I have to take charge of providing the rest stops for all the cyclists along the route (and which also means that I didn’t ride). It’s an interesting way to see the ride; you get to speak with the folks along the way that allow us to sit in their parking lots or under their oak trees. As we start to ride north we get into what I would loosely call the Genteel south, where it’s not uncommon to use the word “plantation” unironically. The little bugs - noseeums and the like- are starting to creep in, and it was a pretty hot day. When we got to the church - which is big and nice - I wenton a little bit of a jog because I felt like I hadn’t done anything today (I hadn’t), and I was reminded of why it’s so hard to jog in the south and why I hated jogging when I lived in Texas. That unique, I’m-about-to-die feeling from jogging in the heat; I don’t miss it. Anyway, it was actually a very uneventful day which makes it a bit hard to blog about, but is really a good thing, especially for the cyclists. We stopped at Club Ponderosa, which was hilarious because it totally was a dance club but like the most southern, middle-of-nowhere-est dance club you’ve ever seen. And I ate at a Waffle House, hashbrowns smothered and covered and peppered.
Yep, the South.
On the road again! Today I got to ride; 73 miles. Some of the flattest, nicest and easiest riding you will ever do. We rode right past my parents’ house - and I do mean right past - so they showed up with Mega Stuff Oreos and oranges and bananas, and then i got to have lunch with them at the wings place, which may. not have been wise before I rode another 40 miles. It was great to get out on the road and stretch my legs. The rhythm of these trips is so unique, not least of which is the preponderance of churches we stay in. People often wonder “how do you stay in a church?” but the truth is that most churches have these large outreach/overflow/community centers, many of which even have kitchens and laundry and showers (including this one).
The ride started in St. Augustine but we quickly rode past all the mansions of Ponte Vedra and then into my childhood home of Jacksonville/Neptune/Atlantic Beach. After hanging out with my parents we took the ferry at Mayport and then rode 30 more miles of Amelia Island. As riding goes, it wasn’t particularly interesting I suppose, but it was flat, easy and safe.
And so it begins! After 3 long years, we are ready to roll out on another ride! It’s been a challenging journey to get here. For example: my bicycle is still on the tarmac in Dallas Fort Worth. :(. The best thing, though, is that I stuck an AirTag on it, so at least I know exactly where it is! (A: Fort Worth). St Augustine, at least the part we are in, looks a lot like Jacksonville: flat, hot, and perhaps a bit dull. But we are all bristling with excitement to get on with things and start our long journey. Unlike in past years, I don’t feel like I’m running away from anything; I enjoy my life in California and I can’t wait to get back. But this will be a nice relaxing break. I say “will be”; it isn’t yet because of all the logistical challenges. Carla’s bike arrived on time, but in about a million pieces, and with one very important piece (one of the headset sealed bearings) completely missing. So we had to drive around to 3 shops before we found one. So, yes, a day of logistics and of things-yet-to-come.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!)
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
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.
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.
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.
