I met and interesting fella the other day. A fellow cyclist, I suspect he has several years on me. As is usually the case with cyclists when they first meet each other, we went to great lengths to talk about how slow we ride. This is interesting behavior that seems consistent among road cyclists, and a bit unique to them. In most sports, the bravado takes over, and guys talk about how good they are. With road cyclists, everyone is always talking about how slow they ride, and how weak they are, and how their bike could never go as fast as your bike. All in the hope, I suppose, that they’ll take you by surprise when the riding actually begins.
But I digress…
The conversation got me thinking about how much my style of cycling is a reflection of the way I live my life, and how much that’s changed over the years.
When I was a younger man, I liked sprinting. I was physically built more like a sprinter, and in most things I did – sports or otherwise – I went at them pretty hard and relentlessly. Point A to Point B was what I was all about, with a strong focus on getting to Point B as fast as possible.
Today, I’m much more of a savorer than I am a sprinter. While I’m still aware of Point B in front of me, and I still arrive at Point B, I’m much more focused on savoring the moments along the path between Point A and Point B than I am with reaching Point B in record time.
I like to keep my head up these days, and make sure I catch the nuances of the world as I pass through it. I like to sniff the air often, to make sure I don’t miss some particularly sensual scent as it moves across me. When I hear some crickets or lizards singing beside the road, I’m much more likely to stop and soak in the sound for a few minutes.
This summer – on my bicycle journey from Monterey, CA back to Colorado, I had one day that I’d worried about as it was coming up. It was a 120 mile day across the Mojave Desert in June, the first 90 miles of which had no houses, services, or other ways to supply myself with water. I was on my own, and if ever there was a need to stay focused on Point B, that was the day.
A tailwind developed for me, and I knew if that wind continued, I could make record time in the day. Back in my sprinter days, I would have poured on the coal, and not let up until I reached the end. Instead, I stopped and took pictures often, (almost 100 pictures that day I think), and left several voice recordings. I was so wrapped-up in the joy of that tailwind that I didn’t really care about a record time.
On one stretch, the road was a gentle descent for over 10 miles. With the tailwind, I was able to gently coast down the empty highway, rolling by bicycle from side to side, enjoying the hot breeze and the sounds of the desert lizards on the side of the road. Sure I could have grabbed a great big gear and screamed down the descent at 40 MPH, but I would have missed that gentle rhythm of rolling the bike from side to side, and the song of the lizards, not to mention the gorgeous scenery unfolding around me.
The wind stayed behind me all day, and it turns out I did set a record for myself, averaging over 20 MPH over that 120 miles. Never for a second do I wish I would have pushed harder to set a better record. The joy of that day cycling still lingers in my memory today.
Point B is still on my mind, and there’s no doubt I enjoy getting there, but I enjoy it so much more now that I’ve leaned to savor the space between Point A and Point B more than I once did.
I sat with a chapel full of people on Saturday, and said goodbye to an old friend. While he was 71, his death was still a bit sudden and unexpected. Much like the death of my father, (which I write about in Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty), my friend’s death was preceded by a coma of some short duration.
It’s a common theme today – one that most families will face in one way or another. A loved one sustained mechanically and electronically, while their mind and body seems to be reaching for the thing that’s next after this life. The journey takes it’s toll on those who must make the difficult decisions on behalf of the stricken loved one, though I feel the toll extracted is much larger than it needs to be.
We count on those around us to have the courage to make the hard decisions that must be made on our behalf when we can’t make them ourselves. We count on the love of those closest to us to help us successfully negotiate the end of this life when we need that help. Providing that help should be an honor, not a burden. Being chosen, or asked, or even forced by circumstance into that role of both honor and pain is a privilege we should bear with pride.
The words just roll right on to this page, as-if it’s easy. But it’s not. I hope and pray that we can evolve our culture to fear death less, and to embrace all aspects of this wonderful journey we call life – including that final aspect we call dying. But until that happens, I’m certain I’ll continue to see the deep pain and heavy burden of hard decisions on the loved-ones who do the right thing for those who trust them to make good and right decisions.
While I don’t look forward to death, I also have no fear of it. I’ve had several quite mystical and spiritual experiences in life that have left me completely confident in the uncertainty that lies beyond that vague window at the end of this journey. These, also, I write about in Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty.
It may be that my end comes as a rapid and certain event, or it may be that I’ll need the help of those whom I love to find that window at the end of the journey when it’s time. In the event that I do need that help, I do all I can while I live to make sure those folks I count on for that help understand in advance how much I’m counting on them, and how much I appreciate the love and the courage they’ll show in helping me.
It’s a discussion we should all have, but a discussion that’s hampered by the fear of death that we seem to have in our culture. Getting over that fear should be a primary focus of growing up, shouldn’t it?
Not sure how I missed reading this classic in high school, but I must have, because I remember nothing about it. It’s pretty common fare for high school literature classes, and I think my kids have all read it.
Here’s the Amazon description of the book:
“In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write “something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned.” That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald’s finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald’s–and his country’s–most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning–” Gatsby’s rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It’s also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means–and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy’s patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.”
What a great story it is though. It reminded me of how “cheap†words have become in these days when we can all crank out so many of them on a keyboard at 100+ WPM. I’m as guilty as anyone else. As someone trying to build a living as a writer, it’s quite critical for me to get lots of “stuff†out there in the market. To publish lots of blog postings, and do lots of guest posts, and send out many emails.
But in the end, the written word suffers. In Fitzgerald’s writing, you can feel the depth of the prose, and understand clearly the care that went into the construction of each sentence. It was really a rich reading experience, and made me realize how “cheap†words have become today, and how rare it is to read something with the sort of richness you can find in an author from this era like Fitzgerald.
As enjoyable to me as the richness of the prose was the depth of the characters he built. This is one I listened to as an audio book, and Tim Robbins was the actor who read it. I suspect that some of that character depth may have been the really excellent job that Robbins did, but even accounting for that, I really enjoyed the characters. Gatsby especially was a character whom I could see and feel deeply as the story moved around him.
A bonus of this audio version was a series of letters Fitzgerald wrote in the years as he was trying to get Gatsby published – letters to his publisher and others. I think I enjoyed listening to these letters almost as much as to the story.
I will say that had I read this book in high school, I don’t think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it. My identification with and enjoyment of the characters could happen because life’s experiences have given me a deep pool from which to draw empathy, and my appreciation of the prose is enhanced in comparison to what I feel capable of as a writer.
Corsair – An Oregon Files Story
by Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul Author’s website
Another in the Oregon Files series, right out of the same mold that seems pretty successful for Cussler and DuBrul. While I like the characters, I’ve got to say I’m getting tired of the interjection of the authors’ politics into the characters. There’s no good reason I should object to this – it’s part of the character they’re creating. However, I do find it very objectionable.
I suppose it has to do mostly with the fact that the political bent that is represented is very different than the one my mind creates for the characters, and that creates dissonance for me as a reader. Just goes to demonstrate how much we invest of ourselves into the characters we create in our minds with the help of authors.
Here’s the author’s (or publicist’s) description of the book:
“When the U.S. secretary of state’s plane crashes while bringing her to a summit meeting in Libya, the CIA, distrusting the Libyans, hire Juan Cabrillo to search for her, and their misgivings are well founded. The crew locates the plane, but the secretary of state has vanished. It turns out Libya’s new foreign minister has other plans for the conference, plans that Cabrillo cannot let happen. But what does it all have to do with a two- hundred- year-old naval battle and the centuries-old Islamic scrolls that the Libyans seem so determined to find? The answers will lead him full circle into history, and into another pitched battle on the sea, this time against Islamic terrorists, and with the fate of nations resting on its outcome.”
I see I have one more of this series to read (actually listen to as it’s on my iPod). I’m guessing this next one will be the last of them I’ll read, just because of this dissonance between what I want the characters to be and what the author turns them into.
All that said, it’s an adventure story, and it’s written as a good and enjoyable adventure story. As Cussler books go, I prefer the Isaac Bell series, followed by the NUMA series. This one probably ranks pretty low in my ranking of his series.
A Bicycle Adventure Across The West: Day 3 – Lucia to Paso Robles
A Steep and Beautiful Climb Away From The Coast
“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”  - Hermann Buhl
I’ve only got 70-something miles to go today, so I have another leisurely morning, enjoying breakfast. I know there’s a steep climb first thing out, but figure it can’t be that bad, and then the rest of the day should be easy.
Dave Meyers, (the fella I met the night before), is finishing up his early breakfast as I sit down, and he’s headed out for an early start on the day. We’ll both end up at Paso Robles tonight, so I could see him along the way. After a leisurely breakfast, I walk outside, hanging out and enjoying the beautiful morning.
A car pulls up with two young girls in it. They’re visiting from France, and apparently couldn’t afford the prices at the Inn, so decided to just sleep in their car. They look like their night’s sleep was not a good one, and I chat a bit with them before getting on the bike and heading down the road. I’m a couple miles down the road before it dawns on me that I should have offered them the use of my room to shower and rest. Of course, the folks who own the Lucia Lodge wouldn’t have been happy had they found out about it – they missed out on the chance to move a little more silver into their pocket. But the girls would have appreciated it I’m sure, and I could have bragged about the two pretty French girls who spent the morning in my hotel room. I would have left out the part about me not being there… Life’s about creating good stories…
Headed south through Big Sur on the morning of Day 3
The first four miles follow the coastline up to the point where the road is closed, at which time I turn left, cross a cattle grate, and begin climbing on the Nacimiento Road. Those first four miles are really enjoyable, since there’s not a car on the road with the road closure. The morning air is cool and moist, and I savor the coastline, knowing this will be the last bit of riding I’ll get alongside it.
After crossing the cattle grate, I drop into my lowest possible gear, and will rarely leave that gear for the next hour and 20 minutes or so. I’d been told it was a steep climb, but hey, I live in Colorado and climb steep grades all the time. Such arrogance… The climb is a little under 3000 feet in about 7 miles – about 400 feet a mile, an average of 7% to 8%. A couple spots hit 16% and 18%.
Continuing to climb away from Big Sur - on a VERY STEEP road
That’s steep, and the extra weight I’ve packed isn’t helping at all during the climb. I stay lathered in a nice coat of sweat thanks to the hard work of climbing. I stop to take pictures a few times, but the chilly air gets me moving again quickly to stay warm.
The road is really quite beautiful, and the views back down onto the coast from the steep mountainside are stunning. There are spots where you’re climbing through stands of towering Redwood, and other spots where you’re pedaling beneath lichen-covered branches that overhand the road. Mixed in are vistas with views that seem to go forever back down the mountains and across the Pacific.
Looking back north along Big Sur on the steep climb over the coastal range
As I’m climbing, the support van from the touring group I passed yesterday passes me. Turns out they’d sagged the cyclists up to the top of this steep climb, and the cyclists then rode from there to their next destination. I wave at them as they pass. Their route is slightly different from mine over the next few days, and I’ll get ahead of them and not see them again. By the time I get to Colorado, they’ll be about a week behind me.
At the summit of the climb, I put on my jacket and start a cold descent. The road twists and turns as it drops, and after about 10 minutes or so of shivering, I’ve descended into warmer air that’s noticeably more dry than the air on the other side of the mountain.
It’s amazing how quickly the landscape changes from one side of the coastal range to the other. On the wet side of the mountain, there were towering Redwoods and plants that were almost tropical. This dry side of the mountain, though, reminds me a lot of my home in Colorado, heavy with grasslands and pine.
Reaching the base of the descent, the road passes through the gate into Ft Hunter-Liggett. In normal times, the gate is manned, and you’ve got to show your drivers license and proof of insurance if you’re in a car. However, since highway 1 is closed, and traffic is diverted to this road, the gate isn’t manned, and I pass right through.
The base of one of the giant oak trees on the inland side of the coastal range in Ft Hunter-Liggett
Largely deserted, the highway is a beautiful ride through oak savanna. I believe the oak trees that are abundant along this ride are Valley Oaks. They’re giant trees, massive trunks and beautifully shaped crowns. These trees are up to 600 years old, and I stop and enjoy a little rest, leaning my bike and my back against one of these old ents, soaking up that ancient energy again.
Continuing along Nacimiento-Fergusson road to Mission Rd, I make my way through Ft Hunter-Liggett, eventually coming to what they call “the G-14â€. (An unusual language usage in this part of California is that people refer to roads like that – “the G-14â€, or “the 1â€, meaning highway 1.)
I head southeast along the G-14 into a headwind that’s a little frustrating. It’s not a heavy wind, but I’d had my expectations set for that NW wind that is supposed to be blowing this time of year. For much of the ride, the wind is very light, but at times, it gets between my ears and messes with me…
At Lockwood the road turns right. There’s really no town or anything else here, just a tiny store on the corner, and I stop and calorie-up a bit. As I’m sitting in the shade, I eavesdrop on a conversation some locals are having. A gal has gotten a new job with the county, and she’s telling her friends all about it. After they leave, I go over and talk to her, as I’m interested in what she does.
Turns out she catches bugs. I’m in wine country now, (though I haven’t really seen the evidence yet), and they go to great lengths to assure that certain particularly destructive bugs don’t make their way into their region. She goes around all day setting traps, and investigating what she catches. She’s really excited about her job and what she does, and tells me WAY more than I need or want to know about bugs. I politely tell her I’ve got to make my way down the road, and pedal off, leaving her making notes about bugs in her bug log.
Another 20 miles down the road is a little intersection called Bee Rock. I catch up with Dave Meyers here at Bee Rock, and we enjoy a sandwich together. Like Lockwood, there’s nothing here but a store. The store here is much friendlier than the one at Lockwood, with nice tables to sit at. Dave and I enjoy a nice long lunch here, chatting and enjoying the beautiful day. When I’m ready to leave, Dave isn’t quite ready, so I head up the road ahead of him.
And up it is. For the first 2 or 3 miles out of Bee Rock, there’s a steep little climb that’s a bit of a surprise. My legs are toast after the climbing this morning, so they complain quite a bit headed up over this grade. At the top of the grade, though, there are beautiful views in most directions. Lake Nacimiento is off to the right, and Lake San Antonio is behind and off to the left.
The views after climbing south from Bee Rock
From here to Paso Robles, the road gets quite a bit busier, with steady rollers lasting a good bit of the way. The road has little or no shoulder in spots, making for a few nervous moments with cars and trucks squeezing me to the edge of the pavement. By the time I reach Paso Robles, the wind has turned a bit, and sometimes quarters at my back. Still a light wind, but anything not in my face is appreciated.
Paso Robles is a nice little town. I can easily see coming here for a little vacation. It’s quite bicycle-friendly, and smaller than I expected. It’s probably not much more than a mile from the north end of town to the south. It’s a warm “homecoming†sense I get when I see my hotel – a feeling that I’ll come to expect and look forward to at the end of each day. I know there’s a warm shower and a soft bed waiting for me.
Tonight, I’m using Marriott points and staying at The Courtyard in town. It’s a great little hotel, and the folks are quite friendly and helpful. After I get checked-in and showered-up, I spread my stuff out on the bed, and start sorting through to create my second package to send back home. The steep climb this morning, followed by rollers all afternoon, taught me a hard lesson (again) about weight. I send home my iPad, iPod, tiny speaker, Kindle, 700-lumen headlight, all the chargers associated with this electronic stuff, 3 or 4 of my tubes (leaving me still with 3 or 4), and probably a few other items. While I don’t put stuff on the scale, it seems to me that I’ve cut my weight in half with this package.
It’s a nice lesson to me on simplicity and minimalism. When I was packing for the trip, I remember laying everything out, and going through some dry-run packs. I’d thought about trying to bring the iPad with me – I’d even found a pretty strong case with a keyboard built-in – seemed like the perfect solution for somebody like me who likes to write when I have a little spare time. The iPad only weighs a couple pounds or so – not a big deal. And of course the Kindle was pretty small too, and weighed only half a pound or so.
In the end, I had in my mind that I wanted to stay under 20 pounds, and I was able to do this and still carry many of these items that I might find handy. It all fit – why not take it?
Sitting in my room in Paso Robles, after climbing during the day that felt much more brutal than it should have, I have my answer. My culture has taught me that it’s “good†to have everything you might need. Having something is good, being without something is bad. That’s the world-view from which I’ve developed my values and guiding principles.
So of course, the lens through which I’d been looking when I packed was one of “how much can I take, within my constraints?†Tonight, looking down at all my gear spread out on the bed, my lens has changed a bit. Now, I’m looking at my gear, and asking instead, “how little can I survive with?â€
It might seem like a small difference, but it makes a big difference in what gets packed. Frankly, it makes a big difference in how I look at every day of this trip I’m on. Tossing my iPod in the package to ship home, there’s no whisper in my ear asking me to consider, “but you might want to listen to podcasts or tunes…†I’m delighted to put as much into the package home as I can, with no regrets or “what if†second thoughts.
Climbing away from the Big Sur coastline
Getting rid of stuff is a cleansing sensation. Almost like “stuff†weighs down the soul. It happens to me when I clean stuff out of my house too – a liberating sense of “giving†and “lightness†happens after I go through and give away (or toss) large swaths of stuff.
I think it’s a “place in life†thing to some extent. When I was younger, I seemed more focused on “accumulating†than on “distributing and cleansingâ€. At the point I’m now at in life, I find myself constantly re-evaluating just how much “stuff†I want around me. Accumulated stuff is clutter and flotsam that I’ve got to wade through over and over again. It keeps me from moving along the path. It’s as though each “thing†I accumulate attaches a string deep into my heart and soul, connecting me to the thing itself, making continued movement down the path difficult.
Why do we do this? It feels like an addiction we’ve developed – an addiction to accumulation. This little tendency to take a little too much with me on a bike ride is one tiny symptom, but if I look at my culture at a much higher level, it seems we’ve built our entire civilization on the same addiction and sickness. Look at how much of our life’s energy we put into “accumulating wealthâ€. This is seen as a very good thing, this accumulation of wealth. We advertise how much wealth we’ve accumulated with the homes we live in, the cars we drive, and our pride in our continued pursuit of greater wealth.
We’ve accumulated so much wealth that there’s no way most of us would even attempt to climb the tough hills and mountains of the back roads of life. Instead, the vast majority of us stay on the flat and busy interstate highway system, where everyone else is. It’s just the way we live – stay on the well-traveled and flat expanse of “the bypassâ€, and you don’t need to confront the difficult climbs and rollers in life.
Continuing to climb away from Big Sur - on a VERY STEEP road
But that’s where the best life has to offer is – out there along the steep and windy backroads. The questions and issues are hard ones, and require deep and honest introspection, but the rewards are beyond words. I’m pretty sure that’s where we find the doorways to heaven – out there along those difficult backroads of life where the climbs are steep and the roads wind their way through tough questions.
Looking back to the great sages of the last few thousand years, I find that message loud and clear. I grew up in a Christian tradition, and Jesus was pretty clear when admonishing followers to avoid the temptation of accumulation of wealth. He instructed followers to leave all they owned behind if they wanted to become a disciple. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, He said, than for a wealthy man to be able to find heaven.
Morning along the Big Sur coastline
That’s on my mind this evening, as I look with satisfaction at the pile of “stuff†I’m sending back home. I’m grateful to have met Dave Meyers yesterday, as his inspiration gives me a bit more confidence in taking the drastic approach I’m taking. I don’t have any illusions of finding heaven on this trip, but the last thing I want is 7 or 8 extra pounds in my bag that might slow me down if I catch a little glimpse…
Sex at Dawn – The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha Author’s website
This was really a fun book. While it certainly does hold true to it’s billing – talking about how our sexual behavior may have developed as we’ve evolved as a modern creature – it’s really about more than sex.
I suspect that if a reader has really rigid ideas about what human nature is, and how people can, do, and should relate to one another, they will be troubled by the book. The ideas in the book really did cause me to re-think quite a bit about what I thought was “general and accepted wisdom”.
Here’s the author’s (or publicist’s) description of the book:
“In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, SEX AT DAWN unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do. A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society.”
The book uses our adaptations and development of sexual behavior to explore the notions of ownership and control in our modern cultures, and how this may differ dramatically from the deeper “human nature†that developed as we evolved. The book develops a heck of an interesting argument about the “nature of human nature†with regard to how we “own†and “hoard†assets, taking and controlling as much as we can.
We’ve taught ourselves for many generations that this is the nature of the human – to conquer, take, and control assets. Our stated sexual expectations reflect our insistence on making sex reflect these values of selfishness, even when the actual behavior of the vast majority of humans makes it clear that meeting these expectations is not part of the true nature we developed over our evolution prior to recent times.
But is this conquering, taking, and controlling really part of our most basic nature? The authors make a heck of an interesting argument that it’s only since the agricultural age began that we’ve developed these traits of ownership and control – that prior to this the bulk of the evidence suggests that we lived in very cooperative and egalitarian groups. They argue that the group survived and thrived because of this tendency to share openly and to help one-another. Hoarding and selfishness were likely among the worst of “sins†an individual could commit. The very antithesis of our values today.
Of course, the authors spend a great deal of time discussing how sex likely played a role in this sort of culture, and present some pretty convincing evidence to back up their ideas. But to me, the more important ideas were the more broad ideas about how cultures likely operated.
I’m no anthropologist, so maybe these ideas have been out there for a long time, and nobody has brought them into mainstream thinking. If so, what a shame that we continue to reinforce and convince ourselves that the selfish and warlike tendencies that get us into so much trouble are simply part of our “natureâ€, when there’s pretty convincing evidence that this simply isn’t the truth. By nature, we’re more likely to be very cooperative, selfless, and egalitarian. We’ve just done a great job of teaching ourselves to operate against our nature.
I’d really recommend this book. It’s not at all an “academic†book, and it reads quickly and easily. I can only imagine the changes we might be able to make within our culture if we were able to get folks to stop and think a bit about how we got to this selfish and warlike state that defines our “nature†today.
I got an email forwarded to me recently. It talked about the notion of leveling the path of life.
When times are good, it said, we should plan for the bad times ahead. When times are bad, we should rejoice in the good times that are coming.
From a survival perspective, and an economic perspective, this is really good advice. When economic times are good, we shouldn’t be spending all we have, but instead should be paying down any debt we’ve incurred, and putting money aside for the “less good†times that will certainly come our way. As Americans, we can certainly see the wisdom of this approach at this point, after failing to follow this wisdom during all those good economic years, when we spent all our excess in reduced taxes and increased borrowing. Now that the predictable downturn has come, we find that not only do we have nothing in reserve, but we’ve also run up a debt over the last 30 years that is snowballing out of control.
But this email I got wasn’t talking about economics or survival. It was talking about faith and spiritual “investment†of energy. The email seemed to be saying that when things are good, we shouldn’t take too much joy in them, and instead should focus on the less good times we know are coming. By the same token, when times are bad, we should focus on the better times our faith leads us to expect in the future.
I don’t think it’s the same thing. I don’t think we should be treating our spiritual energy in the same way we treat our economic assets. Quite the opposite in fact.
When life drops joy in our lap, we should rejoice in that moment of joy with every molecule of our being. We should savor every little flavor of the joy, and look for ways to multiply it and amplify it and share it with every ounce of our spiritual energy. We should ignore completely the possibility that there may be some moment in the future where we’ll feel spiritually drained and exhausted, utterly dejected, devoid of any joy. We should spend every ounce of ourselves in the joy we’re passing through.
Sometimes life leads us onto dark paths of despair, dejection, and depression. During those times we can try and ignore the pain around us by focusing on the hope of future joy, but I’m not sure this is all that helpful. Certainly I agree with the notion of expecting future joy – hoping for it and praying for it. But that’s quite a different thing than “numbing†the current pain with visions of future joy.
There are times when we need to accept and assimilate the dark path life seems to have led us onto. By accepting it and assimilating it, it works through us and allows us to begin to transform it into the stuff of hope for the future.
It’s darkness that defines light. Shining faint light in the darkness and casting dark shadows on the light makes a morphine-like sameness to life that robs us of both joy and sorrow.
Celebrate every single joyful moment with every single ounce of spiritual energy you’ve got. Doing so will most likely reduce the times of darkness that find entry into your life. But when a moment of darkness and sadness does enter your life, let it work into and through you. Feel all it has to offer. Transform it, don’t numb it.
Viking Warrior – The Strongbow Saga #1
by Judson Roberts Author’s website
First and foremost, I really liked this story. I think the author does a really good job as a writer and storyteller, and it seems to be well-edited. I have already bought book 2 of the series, and downloaded it to my Kindle. For that, I give the book 4 stars – it meets my criteria as a book I really enjoy a lot.
Now for the disclaimers, and I’m going to do a little comparison here. I think this will be helpful to anyone who reads my reviews, and might also assuage those who are real fans of the “Cave Bear†series, which was a series I didn’t really enjoy.
This is clearly a book written for males, both adults and young adult. I unashamedly admit I’m a junkie for those sorts of adventure stories. I’m the guy folks write these sorts of stories for. In addition, I have a huge love of historical fiction. This book falls into both categories, so I’ll enjoy even mediocre writing.
That said, Mr. Roberts has clearly written a story that is well above mediocre. Like I said, it’s well-written, well-told, and well-edited. It’s the story of a young slave in Scandinavian culture of 1000 years ago, who rises to warrior status. It’s not overly graphic in its violence, and certainly not graphic sexually. I felt it did a really great job of painting a picture of Scandinavian culture of that era that Mr Roberts appears to have researched well, often dispelling popular myths about said culture. It’s right up the sweet spot of what I love to read about.
I want to use this as a point of comparison to the Cave Bear series that I struggled with. In my review of those books, I admitted that I was probably not the audience – the author seemed to be aiming at women, and in particular adolescent girls. If someone were addicted to genres that targeted that audience in the same way I’m addicted to adventure stories and historical fiction, they probably overlooked a lot just because the story was written for them.
Mr. Roberts has written these stories for me. If you’re not a fan of either historical fiction or adventure stories, you might find many faults that I never noticed – I can’t predict that. If you like either of these genres, I think you’d really enjoy this story.
Now, for some additional information. If you read my blog you know I’m a writer who publishes independently. This means I write what I want and publish it myself. It also means I don’t have a big publishing house providing lots of marketing muscle to get my book out in the market – I depend on loyal fans who love what I write.
There are pros and cons to traditional publishing (big publishing houses and literary agents) vs the independent route I take. One of the big cons to the traditional route is the control the publishing house has over your life, your career, and what it is you write. I’ve already pointed out one of the pros to the publishing house route – a big gorilla pushing your book in the marketplace…
That fact is relevant here. In reading Mr Roberts’ website, it appears that he had a “deal†with a big publishing house to publish the first 3 books in the series, and an option on the fourth book. After 3 books, they apparently sat on the option – preventing him from publishing it – before finally releasing the option recently. This allows him to now publish the 4th book, and it will be interesting to see whether he publishes it independently or through another contract with a publishing house.
I’d certainly encourage him to go independent. He has a great story and a great brand, and it seems to me he could make a good go of this on his own. Of course, here again, I have a bias toward the independent route, due to the freedom it gives an author from both a business perspective and a creative perspective. As writers, we each must decide whether we want the big sales numbers that a publishing house might bring to the table, or the freedom to give what our core audience wants from us.
The key in this is the core audience – the fan base. As independents, we absolutely survive or perish based on the support we receive from you – our core fan base. If you like what we write, we really depend on you to spread the word, to “like†us on Facebook or Google+, to read and comment on our blog, and to recruit other fans who might buy what we have to offer – or at least read what we write.
I’m a new fan of Mr. Roberts. I’ll buy his books, and assuming they stay as good as the first one, I’ll try and get others to read his stuff as he publishes more in the series (assuming he does so independently).
Day 2 – Carmel to Lucia A Closed Highway is Good News
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. Â -Â Lao Tzu
When I first planned this trip, the first day out of Carmel was 110 miles down the coast to Cambria. I figured I’d have tailwinds, and why not start off with a bang? But spring rains washed the highway out, (as they often do), so the road was closed at about 60 miles or so south of Carmel.
At first this messed with my head – making me change the route and the schedule. But the more I thought about it, the more I kind of liked the change. It let me dawdle a bit in Carmel, and dawdle a lot in Lucia. Why burn down the coastline all day, when I could sit at Lucia and enjoy the Pacific?
I start the day with arm warmers and leg warmers on, as well as my warm rain jacket. That’s how I’ll end the day as well. It’s chilly all day long. And that NW tailwind that always blows this time of year? Not today – a south wind for Neil today. Hmmm, I’m having troubled memories of last year’s ride across Kansas against winds all the way…
The further south I go along the highway, the more the traffic thins out. This makes me realize how lucky I am to have a road closure up ahead, since it reduces traffic. The road is narrow and curvy in places, and I love less traffic! It almost makes me forget the headwind. Almost.
As the day progresses, the wind swirls and shifts, and eventually I’m able to tune it out. Of course, the fact that I’m riding through some of the most beautiful countryside on earth makes it easier to tune it out.
I had assumed that the road followed the coast all the way, but there’s a section that moves through a state park in Big Sur, and you’re away from the coast for 5 or 10 miles. While the coast is beautiful for sure, it would be a tragedy to ride along this highway and not get to experience the deep and lush Redwood forest in Big Sur.
Ancient Wisdom “Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”
- Hermann Hesse, Wandering “Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”
-Â Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
It’s an interesting mindset change that I notice as I’m moving through the forest instead of the coast. I feel more relaxed, more complete. I stop a couple times in places where I can touch particularly large Redwoods, and stand there touching them with my hand. I really do think ancient trees share a wonderful energy that vibrates at a different wavelength than we’re used to. Their time horizon is beyond what we can imagine, and the things that feel significant to us are generally trifling to them I imagine.
I close my eyes, and can imagine Ents talking in deep and slow voices…
I’m reminded of a grandfather and a grandmother of mine – from different sides of the family. He lived to be almost 100, and she lived to be 101. Sitting with them always wrapped me in a different sense of time and significance than sitting with other folks. The world they were part of was much bigger and broader than the world I was part of. I hadn’t lived enough years yet to have such a broad world.
Yet, sitting with them, I could always feel their world. The breadth of it would wrap around me and make me feel a small part of it for the time we sat together. At 57 years old, I can only begin to feel that more broad world inside myself. The things that seemed to urgent and critical to me when my children were young have a different perspective to me now, and aren’t as urgent and critical. I’d be a better parent today, I think, than I was 30 years ago.
That’s why we need extended families. That’s why we need grandparents that help in the raising of children. Our perspective is more broad, and we’ve (hopefully) gained a bit of wisdom and understanding along our journey. While our eyes have often started to dim a bit, we see much more clearly than was possible when our world was so much smaller and our eyes so much more clear.
I miss those grandparents, and I think of them as I lay my hand on the trunk of an ancient Redwood. I feel as-though some of that “big view†energy is flowing within me, and I imagine them quietly and patiently touching me back through that trunk, nodding slowly and smiling, staring from a world too big for me to imagine…
I stop at a little settlement of sorts – really just a place where there’s a restaurant and small grocery. A bit touristy for sure, but a homey feel to it. The gardens are just covered in plants, and I’m reminded again of the steady, moderated coastal climate here.
I’ve been passing other cyclists to this point – folks who appear to be supported based on the lack of gear on their bikes. While I’m at this little stop, several of them ride up and dismount. Listening to them talk to one another and others, I ascertain that they’re part of a group that’s riding from San Francisco, down the coast to a bit north of LA, then heading east, back through Colorado, and eventually all the way to Newfoundland. It’s a 2 or 3 month journey for them, organized by some company who’s done this in other countries as well. I think about going over and talking to one of them, but decide instead to get on the bike and head up the road.
The road climbs and falls a bit while it’s back in the forest. Nothing long or too steep, just nice gentle grades. Of course, with the extra weight on my bike, everything is feeling steep to me on this second day out. I continue to pass cyclists, who I assume are part of this group. By the time I get to the top of a fairly long grade, I’ve probably passed about 10 or 12 of them. I watch in my mirror as one of them seems to hang several hundred yards behind me – sometimes coming closer but then falling back depending on the grade. At one particularly nice place I pull over to take a picture by the side of the road, and wait for him to catch up.
Turns out his name is Jim, and he’s from Canada. He’s part of the group, and he fills me in on more of the details. Turns out they’re following almost exactly the same route I am back to Colorado, although when they get to Colorado they’ll cross the center of the state rather than the southern part of the state as I will. Rather than staying in motels, they stay mostly in campgrounds, occasionally staying in a hostel or motel. Jim seems to like the idea of camping most of the time, though in my mind I’m thinkin’ that’s gonna get mighty old mighty fast. Most of these folks I’ve been passing aren’t 25 year-old studs, but middle-agers like myself (though I’d guess Jim to be only 35 or 40.)
Jim and I talk a bit now and again over the next miles, eventually arriving at the little town of Lucia. It’s starting to rain a bit, and Jim has another several miles to ride to his campground. We say our good-byes and good-lucks, and I watch him ride off into the mist, delighted that I’ll be spending my night in a warm motel room overlooking the coast, eating food prepared by someone else…
While Lucia shows up as a town on some maps, it’s really not a town at all. It may have been an actual town in the past, but now all that’s there is a lodge and restaurant. Seems the property has been in the same family’s hands for several generations. They have a great spot – right on the coast – and they offer lodging and dining in a beautiful setting.
In many ways, it’s a shining example of free enterprise, the declination brought on by nepotism, and the arrogance and sense of entitlement that “ownership†inspires all wrapped into a single stop along the highway.
If you ignore price and attitude, and just look at the place, it’s a quaint little spot with a beautiful view. Of course, you’re in Big Sur, so it’s tough to find a spot along the highway that doesn’t have a beautiful view. The food in the restaurant is OK but certainly not great – about what you’d expect in a cafe along the highway. The rooms are tiny little things cut out of a strip-style building – quaint, quite small, and very old. The room I stay in is very run down with a pretty lousy bed and plumbing that not only doesn’t work right, but is in a state of “half-repairâ€. Whoever takes care of that sort of thing will finish the job when they get around to it.
But hey, that’s OK with me, my standards for motel rooms are extremely low. I’m usually happy to stay in a small-town motel that costs $35/night, knowing full-well that it’s gonna be just like this.
The problem is, this room is a couple hundred dollars a night. Really. And the meals are proportionately overpriced. There’s a sucker in every crowd, and this night I resigned myself to being that sucker. I need a warm place to stay for the night, and they have a warm (well mostly) room for me to rent. I’m able to look at the proprietors in a light that accepts that they’re running a business, and they’ve made choices about how they want to run that business. I don’t like it, but I want what they have to sell, and am willing to pay for it.
Through the evening, I come to see balance in the situation with the Lucia Lodge and the family that runs it. The Lucia family isn’t perfect, and they could use some lessons in customer service for sure. They’re prices are too high by a lot, and they appear to have been blinded by the arrogance of “ownershipâ€. But they’re a family business trying to make a living in a remote area, and I’m OK giving ‘em my business tonight.
After I order, a fella at a nearby table starts up a conversation. Turns out he’s a cyclist too. His name is Dave Meyers, and he lives up in northern California. He’s following the same route I am to Paso Robles tomorrow. We share a bit of good conversation over supper, and I learn quite a bit from him about minimalist touring on a bicycle.
When I started out on this trip, I thought I was carrying a pretty small pack of gear. Something between 15 and 20 pounds. I’d included some “nice to have’sâ€, but felt justified as I kept the total weight down to under 20 pounds (without water of course). Dave carries a tiny little bag that weighs in at about 7 pounds. Less than half my weight.
I’m fascinated by Dave’s approach, and when this trip is over, I’ll continue to correspond with him to learn more about how he travels. For tonight, I’m feeling somewhat cocky – as I was able to pass quite a few cyclists during the day who were far less loaded than me. I’m not yet aware of the attitude change I’ll be experiencing tomorrow, so I simmer in my cocky arrogance while finishing desert…
Blue Gold: A Kurt Austin Adventure from the NUMA series
by Paul Kemprecos and Clive Cussler Author’s website
While this series is published under the banner of the Clive Cussler stable, Mr Kemprecos is an author I’m really coming to appreciate. He has really created some wonderful characters here, and this – the second in the series – continues to evolve and enhance these characters.
In this one, Austin and his sidekicks rescue the world’s water supply from corporate domination and control, meeting a new but short-lived love interest along the way.
I’m a fan after two, and will continue to read this series to fill the “adventure novel junkie†inside me.
I met and interesting fella the other day. A fellow cyclist, I suspect he has several years on me. As is usually the case with cyclists when they first meet each other, we went to great lengths to talk about how slow we ride. This is interesting behavior that seems consistent among road cyclists, and a bit unique to them. In most sports, the bravado takes over, and guys talk about how good they are. With road cyclists, everyone is always talking about how slow they ride, and how weak they are, and how their bike could never go as fast as your bike. All in the hope, I suppose, that they’ll take you by surprise when the riding actually begins.
This summer – on my bicycle journey from Monterey, CA back to Colorado, I had one day that I’d worried about as it was coming up. It was a 120 mile day across the Mojave Desert in June, the first 90 miles of which had no houses, services, or other ways to supply myself with water. I was on my own, and if ever there was a need to stay focused on Point B, that was the day.
On one stretch, the road was a gentle descent for over 10 miles. With the tailwind, I was able to gently coast down the empty highway, rolling by bicycle from side to side, enjoying the hot breeze and the sounds of the desert lizards on the side of the road. Sure I could have grabbed a great big gear and screamed down the descent at 40 MPH, but I would have missed that gentle rhythm of rolling the bike from side to side, and the song of the lizards, not to mention the gorgeous scenery unfolding around me.
