Saturday, Feb 6, 2010

My first morning with traditional Moroccan breakfast.  I woke about 10 local time, which meant 5:00 back home.  I heard that everything is prepared for you here, but was still a little surprised to see the table in our towering lounge room peppered with silver, ornamental domed covers for various breads, jams and cheeses.  There was also the silver tray of ever-present Moroccan mint tea with the cutest silver leaf decorated glass tumblers to drink from. Alas, no coffee.  Covering all this was a delicate clear and gold cloth hinting at the delights underneath.

Mint tea is wonderful, but my American mouth loves the dark bitterness of black american coffee, so the heavily sweetened tea takes some getting used to first thing.  Being an admitted coffee fiend, I’m a little concerned about my head punishing me if it doesn’t get its required shot of black caffeine.   I brought some instant Starbucks just in case.  I don’t want to sabotage my jet-lag day, so I added my instant coffee to their mint tea. It tastes like shit, but I think I’ve adverted a crisis. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the cook prepare some hot water for my coffee, If I can figure out how to ask her…

There are few things in this world that I despise. Cold water is all of them.  Imagine my terror when moments into my first shower the water went immediately cold.  The agony of skin shredding off my body during a bad motorcycle crash feels like bad sex in comparison to getting blasted with firery spikes of cold water. I HATE COLD WATER! I’d rather go a month without showering and have my dick smell like a swamp of used car tires than take a cold shower.  Too late now. Fuck.

After some hurry up and wait, aunti got on the back of my scooter and a suitcase got on the back of Tariq’s and off we went. Tariq was very detailed in his instructions on how to ride.  I don’t think he believed me when I told him I got paid to teach motorcycle classes, raced superbikes, made a syllabus for a high performance riding school and have well over 100,000 miles of motorcycle traveling.  Ok enough tooting my own horn…

I had a hell of a good time zooming through Morocco chaos.  I’d like it more if I didn’t have to worry about petrifying my aunt, but it was fun just the same.  We picked up Tariq’s brother and headed into the new part of the city for food.

This time it was liver, sheep balls, chicken, kidneys, sausage and ground beef.  I don’t really like liver and this was no exception.  The sheep balls looked and tasted like chicken but with a softer texture and sticky aftertaste, the chicken was delicious as was the ground beef, and the kidneys just tasted terrible.  They know how  to make some awesome tea though! Moroccan mint tea is a staple here, but places doctor it up with various spices and such. This place had it doctored up just right.

I could go on and on about how crazy the scooter rides are here, but I just need to post a video for you guys.  You’ll see what I mean.

Friday, Feb 5, 2010

Forgive the punctuation since the os here intreprets differently
My first day in Morocco, but it felt like three.  We landed in Casablanca around 7:00am, which is 2am back home.  I did get to stretch out and sleep on the plane, but thats just a bastard hour any way you slice it. Customs was easy enough, especially with Tariq leading the charge.  Baggage claim, not so much.  See, while we were loading in NYC, there was a guy at the door of the plane who was intensely aggressive about forcing people to check bags if they had too many carry-ons. Aunti (who will not be named here) got tagged, and had two laptops yanked in the process.  She was understandably upset when her bag was empty in Morocco.  Turns out the exact thing had happened on the two previous flights from NYC. Fuckers.
Tariq did a good job of dealing with security and filling out forms, but did a lousy job of consoling Aunti.  What is it with us guys who are so good at solving practical problems, but so lousy at smoothing emotional ones?
First steps out of the airport, and my first lung-full of African air, erased whatever tiredness I was feeling.  Alert, jovial, and excited replaced fatigue. Our taxi-van ride from the Casablanca airport completely missed the city.  That is a shame, because I would definitely liked to have seen that place, and may still yet, but I understood the need and desire to Just. Get. Home.
Three hours of driving past lush green fields and beautiful rolling hills, dotted with homes ranging from nothing but clay walls, to small clay fortresses, brought us into Marrakesh.  Fatigue had returned, and I felt disconnected from the experience, but it was delightful just the same.  EVERYONE rides scooters, bikes, mule carts, etc. Zigging and zagging; zipping and dodging. It’s a choreographed chaos that seems to work.  This modern chaos on the roads unfolded next to the original BC walls that surround the old part of the city.  This is the Morocco I came for.
Ancient is everywhere.  Ancient buildings, ancient dress, ancient markets, ancient transportation, and I was zooming through all of it with my face plastered against the window of my van.
Every mile closer to home, Tariq’s smile got a little larger.  Both of them had had MONTHS of intense preparation to make today possible, so it had to be the largest relief imaginable to finally be done.  Tariq’s brother and a friend where there, along with the cook/housekeeper, Mina.  The are all super nice and I can’t understand a word.  I did understand the delightful delicate pastries and mint tea waiting in the central sun room though. The house keeper worked for years in one of the celebrated bakeries in town.  Nice lady to have on staff.
Our home here is three stories, but not hugely spread out.  It has the feel of a small tower with rooms to the east, north and south of the house, with the stairwell and square hall to the west wall.  The sun room on the second floor is a tower inside of a tower with the ceiling open to the sky.  Sitting at the bottom of this tower on rich blue cushions, you see tall yellow walls leading up to the engraved window for my room on the third story, and a gossamer maroon tapestry to soften the sun a story above that.
My room is wonderfully comfortable with a temperdic mattress on a floor of beautiful carpet, with two oddly shaped sitting chairs and two leather moroccan floor pillows. Beautiful blue cloth in front my large arched doorway provides privacy. My room is open to a large empty space which is open to a large patio overlooking an expansive park and massive mountains in the distance covered in snow. Not a bad little place in the least. I could get used to this.  A nap helped me do just that.
REM sleep and vivid dreams were in full force when I was woken for lunch. God I needed more sleep, but I needed to train myself for the new time-zone more. A massive silver platter was on the table in the sun room. It was mounded with hand made cous-cous. Which was covered in beautiful cooked vegetables, many of them still whole. Whole eggplant, giant pumpkin pieces, carrots and many other vegetables I couldn’t identify were arranged around the seasoned beef in the middle.
Everyone eats from the same platter, starting on the outside and working towards the middle. Luckily, for this meal we had forks, but typically you eat with only your hand here. Only the right hand specifically, since the left is used for, well, other things.
Rejuvenated, I decided to go exploring.  I love getting lost and getting found in new places.  I followed my feet for several hours as they took me past soccer games played by men with robes in the shadow of the old city wall, past women covered completely in black, only eyes visible, and then quickly adverted, past gold, purple, and richly ornamental robes of confident looking women who at least showed their face, past children playing with yo-yos, past mules pulling carts piled 20’ high with everything imaginable, through alleys crowded on all sides by vendors selling everything imaginable.  I followed my feet till they were raw in my sandals, then looked for the sun and headed that direction. I rested for a while in a park and watched the kids play games I’ve never seen while being looked after by groups of women ornamentally dressed. The city sped by on foot, by scooter and bicycle, by mule and taxi. I just sat and watched, feeling invisible even though everyone glanced at me.  I was the only foreigner out, and I was alone in their land today.
I awoke from my second nap with an invitation in Aribic to ride on the scooter into the old city to meet up with Tariq. I put on my jacket, jumped on the back, and we sped into the chaos.  This beats the shit out of walking! We zipped along, pulling in our elbows and knees to keep from loosing them to oncoming cars, or people, or animals. We zoomed through traffic, onto sidewalks and through the opening to the old city.  The roads narrowed to alleys, the cars thinned, the scooters and people multiplied. Zoom zoom we go.
We stopped at the office of Tariq’s catering business.  I asked lots of questions to get a feel for how business here works.  An hour or so of this and it was time to zoom on to the famous central market for some “real” cultural experiences (aka, FOOD!)  I think Marrakech has a million inhabitants and they all come to the market at night. Seas of people crowd every space.  The chaos of spice vendors, leather workers, basket makers, pirate DVD sellers is only overwhelmed by the smells of the thousands of food options. Most foods I don’t recognize, but the lambs brains I did, simply because the lambs head was still there with the cooked brain in it’s rightful place.
Tariq and I walked, talked, laughed and gawked.  The multi-story mazes seem designed to ensure you never find you way out.  We sat and ate a delightful chicken pita accompanied by a bowl of snails and talked about women, sex, marriage, homosexuality and other topics of cultural difference.
Tariq had some ideas on homosexuality I haven’t heard before.  His theory is that homosexuality is so rare here because a man is mandated to always be with his son.  The family and cultural gender distinction is reinforced by the amount of man with boy, and woman with girl interaction. There is not a lot of overlap.  Boys learn to be men because it is men they spend all their time with.  This rigid gender structure doesn’t leave much room to explore, or even question your sexuality. In theory anyway.  I can’t help but wonder if homosexuality is just as common, but hidden much deeper.
This was only one day? WOW. I am excited to see what else this delightful country has in store for me.

Last night began the start of a whole new journey and an end to the life I’ve known for four years.  This is a journey from comfortable to homeless, from home owner to landlord, from enjoying a mountain refuge to having no refuge at all, from lots of money going out to positive income coming in.

This difference between expenses and income does two things. One, it gives me a small residual income stream. Two, it frees me from having to come up with mortgage money each month. This freedom from expense is the key point.

I earn plenty of money, but until today it all went to support the illusions of comfortable living. My gutter service business brings in 90% of my income in two three month blocks. That leaves me struggling to scrape together the mortgage and other bills for six months each year. No more.

Now that I’ve chosen the inconvenience of homelessness over the comfort of ownership, I have freed up SIX MONTHS a year to do whatever I want. I can focus on building the new businesses or help friends profitably turn their ideas into money. I can save a ton of money or buy sushi every night. I can paraglide for six months in Brazil or get lost in the Himalayas. Now I’m limited only by my imagination, not my expenses.

So what’s next for me? I have some ideas, but the point is that I have restructured my life to create possibilities instead of limiting them. This is true on both the macro imagination side if life and the micro daily task side of life. Every day will present new challenges, encounters, delights and frustrations. simple things like where to sleep or shower are no longer simple.

The fear of this daily reality is what keeps so many locked into lives they hate. They imagine six months of travel, or art, or adventure, or just relaxation, but fear keeps them locked in their life.  Eventually their imagination fades, dreams dissipate and change seems impossible.

This daily reality is something to embrace and celebrate, not fear and avoid.  The daily reality is where the magic happens.  Big dreams are great and keep us all striving forward but putting ourselves in the arena every day creates unfathomable possibilities

Welcome to my world of possibilities. I don’t know what will come, but I know I am thankful for everyone who is following along. I pray you find humor, insight, ideas or motivation.  Today is amazing, and tomorrow will be even better.

It’s astounding that I needed bath time meditation to point out the obvious, but the obvious is now clear.  In the last three weeks I have accomplished absolutely nothing.  Zero, Zip, Nada.  It is not an exaggeration to say that my productivity has been zero.  I have made no progress on any goals, have not done shit for any of my businesses, and have somehow pissed away every minute gifted to me.  That time I can’t get back.  To be clear, I have had fun.  I’ve had a couple of friends visit and have had a magical time with them.  I wouldn’t trade that for anything, but that is not a reason to accomplish nothing.

So why?  Why is it that nothing has gotten done?  Is my vision not clear?  Is my action plan missing some key component?  Nope.  My vision, my plan, my desire, my drive are all powerful in their clarity.  I know what to do.  I know how to do it.  I have the resources to do it, but I don’t do it.  My motivation has been completely absent.  It doesn’t matter what the situation, how grim the prospect of doing nothing or how glorious the outcome of action, if I don’t feel like doing something, I won’t.  I don’t know how to change that.

What I do know how to change is where my time goes.  Right now my time disappears into a couple of black holes.  Facebook eats countless hours, random websites consume countless more. Both bring me instant gratification, but both are eroding my true goals and real happiness.

I’m saying goodbye for one week.  No Facebook. No Hulu, No news sites. No exceptions.

Will this make me more productive?  I don’t know.  I hope so, but I might just drink away the hours that I can not sleep away.  At least it will be a different routine.  Shaking up routine has proven pretty damn effective in the past.

So what is the desired outcome?

• To clear all 100+ task list items for my Dr.Downspout business
• Launch my new E-commerce business (bivouac LLC)
• Do Yoga every day
• Get my cabin ready for my new tenants
• To meet and hang out with at least one new person

I have some fun projects in mind that you will get a kick out of.  Maybe I’ll initiate one of them this week.  If I blog, it will show up in my Facebook feed, but you will need to click through and reply here if you want me to see it.  I’ll also post very often on twitter.  Some of those Twitter posts will land on my Facebook page too.  Follow along, harrass me, support me, call or email me, but you won’t find me on facebook for at least one week.

Here’s to getting shit done.

These are words by Mark Twight from his book Kiss or Kill.  These words are what MyImperative is about.  Life, living, being extraordinary;  That is My Imperative and it should be yours.

Read this, get motivated and make action happen.

—————————————————-

What’s your problem? I think I know. You see it in the mirror every morning: temptation and doubt hip to hip inside your head. You know it’s not supposed to be like this. But you drank the Kool-Aid and dressed yourself up in someone else’s life.

You’re haunted because you remember having something more. With each drag of the razor you ask yourself why you piss your blood into another man’s cup. Working at the job he offered, your future is between his thumb and forefinger. And the necessary accessories, the proclamations of success you thought gave you stability provide your boss security. Your debt encourages acquiescence, the heavy mortgage makes you polite.

Aren’t you sick of being tempted by an alternative lifestyle, but bound by chains of your own choosing? Of the gnawing doubt that the college graduate, path of least resistance is the right way for you - for ever? Each weekend you prepare for the two weeks each summer when you wake up each day and really ride, or climb; the only imperative being to go to bed tired. When booming thermals shoot you full of juice and your Vario shrieks 7m/sec, you wonder if the lines will pop. The risk pares away life’s trivia. Up there, sucking down the thin cumulus, the earth looks small, the boss even smaller, and you wish it could go on forever. But a wish is all it will ever be.

Because the ground is hard. Monday morning is harsh. You wear the hangover of your weekend rush under a strict and proper suit and tie. You listen to NPR because it’s inoffensive, PFC: Politically Fucking Correct. Where’s the counter-cultural righteousness that had you flirting with Bad Religion and the vintage Pistols tape over the weekend? On Monday you eat frozen food and live the homogenized city experience. But Sunday you thought about cutting your hair very short. You wanted a little more volume and wondered how out of place you looked in the Sub Pop Music Store. Flipping through the import section, you didn’t recognize any of the bands. KMFDM? It stands for Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode. Didn’t you know? How could you not?

Tuesday you look at the face in the mirror again. It stares back, accusing. How can you get by on that one weekly dose? How can you be satisfied by the artifice of these experiences? Why should your words mean anything? They aren’t learned by heart and written in blood. If you cannot grasp the consciousness-altering experience that real mastery of these disciplines proposes, of what value is your participation? The truth is pointless when it is shallow. Do you have the courage to live with the integrity that stabs deep?

Use the mirror to cut to the heart of things and uncover your true self. Use the razor to cut away what you don’t need. The life you want to live has no recipe. Following the recipe got you here in the first place:

Mix one high school diploma with an undergrad degree and a college sweetheart. With a whisk (or a whip) blend two cars, a poorly built house in a cul de sac, and fifty hours a week working for a board that doesn’t give a shit about you. Reproduce once. Then again. Place all ingredients in a rut, or a grave. One is a bit longer than the other. Bake thoroughly until the resulting life is set. Rigid. With no way out. Serve and enjoy.

“You see your face reflected there in a sweating brow, you hate what you see, but what can be done when there’s no way out, no way out?”
The Chameleons, “Intrigue in Tangiers”

But there is a way out. Live the lifestyle instead of paying lip service to the lifestyle. Live with commitment. With emotional content. Live whatever life you choose honestly. Give up this renaissance man, dilettante bullshit of doing a lot of different things (and none of them very well by real standards). Get to the guts of one thing; accept, without reservation or rationalization, the responsibility of making a choice. When you live honestly, you can not separate your mind from your body, or your thoughts from your actions.

“If you really want to hurt them and their children not yet born tell them the truth always”.
Henry Rollins, from the book See a Grown Man Cry

Tell the truth. First, to yourself. Say it until it hurts. Learn the reality of your own selfishness. Quit living for other people at the expense of your own self, you’re not really alive. You live in the land of denial - and they say the view is pretty a long as you remain asleep.

Well it’s time to WAKE THE FUCK UP!

So do it. Wake up. When you drink the coffee tomorrow, take it black and notice it. Feel the caffeine surge through you. Don’t take it for granted. Use it for something. Burn the Grisham books. Sell the bad CDs. Mariah Carey, Dave Mathews and N Sync aren’t part of the soundtrack where you’re going.

Cut your hair. Don’t worry about the gray. If you’re good at what you do, no one cares what you look like. Go to the weight room. Learn the difference between actually working out and what you’ve been doing. Live for the Iron and the fresh air. Punish your body to perfect your soul. Kick the habit of being nice to everyone you meet. Do they deserve it? Say “no” more often.

Quit posturing at the weekly parties. Your high pulse rate, your 5.12s and quick time on the Slickrock Trail don’t mean shit to anybody else. These numbers are the measuring sticks of your own progress; show, don’t tell. Don’t react to the itch with a scratch. Instead, learn it. Honor the necessity of both the itch and the scratch. But a haircut and a new soundtrack do not a modern man make. As long as you have a safety net you act without commitment. You’ll go back to your old habits once you meet a little resistance. You need the samurai’s desperateness and his insanity.

Burn the bridge. Nuke the foundation. Back yourself up against a wall. Have an opinion one way or the other, get off the fence and rip it up. Cut yourself off so there is no going back. Once you’re committed the truth will come out. You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is confusion; something that forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to drive you harder.

“I never try anything - I just do it. Want to try me?
White Zombie, “Thunder Kiss”

In Dune, Frank Herbert called it “the attitude of the knife,” cut off what’s incomplete and say “now it has finished, for it has ended there.” So finish it, and walk away, forward. Only acts undertaken with commitment have meaning. Only your best effort matters. Life is a Meritocracy, with death as the auditor. Inconsistency, incompetence and lies are all cut short by that final word. Death will change you if you can’t change yourself.

“If I can change one, then I can change two. If I can change two, then I can change four. If I can change four, then I can change eight. If I can change eight, then I can change.”
One Minute Silence, “If I Can Change”

It took some doing, quite a bit of research, and a lot of coffee, but my incompetent self managed to get WordPress Installed on his web server and published to the world.

Many thanks to the other bloggers who came to my rescue with their excellently written advice, in particular:

• @ntbag.com
• gnc-web-creations.com
• discouragedblogger.com

If you’ve been thinking about setting up your own  blog, check out 1and1’s great web hosting service.  Maybe I can even help you get rolling?

Skating, Business, Home

Thank you to each of you that made this trip so wonderful and to each of you that encouraged me and just listened while I told my story. There were countless amazing sights and experiences and some life changing hard times. Six weeks on two wheels. Wow. It’s almost hard to believe I’m home!

I suppose I should finish my story before I forget what happened and before you guys get pissed that I left you hanging.

July 7, 2003 PM

Soloing Cathedral Peak left me intensely appreciative of life. I rode back down to Yosemite Valley to say good bye to my friends there and I headed out of the Valley. It was dark and the road was twisty. It was the first time on this trip that I rode curvy roads at night. One key aspect of riding a motorcycle well is to look well ahead of where you want to go. At night it adds a new dimension to the ride since you’re looking into the darkness around the corner that your headlight has not got to yet. The feeling is hard to explain, but when your bike is leaned into a turn your headlight isn’t illuminating much road in front of you, so your awareness needs to be razor sharp.

After a couple of hours of curves, the last set of which were some really tight 20mph turns (or so the sign suggested) I was getting pretty tired. The climb all morning definitely served to drain me a bit too. I saw a sigh for camping at some state recreation area and hit the dirt.

July 8

I really have a problem paying for camping when I’m traveling like this. If I was in an RV, or putting up my tent for the week, then I wouldn’t mind paying, but when I come in at midnight, sleep for a few hours on the ground and leave soon after the sun comes up, I don’t want to pay.

Well the ranger in the site thought differently and he wanted to charge me $30 for the night. I politely but firmly declined, and after quite a bit of arguing we agreed on me paying the day use fee of $5.50.

I needed to go west out of the camp ground, but looking back east at the turns I came in on was too much to resist. I headed back up the mountain I descended the night before and boy am I glad I did! No traffic, perfect blacktop, great camber, no side roads, crazy fun first and second gear turns (1st is good for about 80mph, 2nd for over 100mph, recommended speed was about 30mph). Great road! By the time I was headed back down the hill the tires had warmed up enough for me to drag my toes from time to time. It turns out that I had nearly 40 more miles of this great road heading west too! Great way to start the morning!

I was tired and hungry by the time I rolled into Oakland. I found a Starbucks and worked for several hours. I also found my friend Mike Fortney over the bridge in San Francisco. Me and Mike grew up in the same neighborhood in North Carolina and have had many super fun times over the years. I hadn’t seen him in probably 6 years so it was awesome seeing him again.

That afternoon we went skating downtown. Just like old times. There was no fog in San Francisco that afternoon so watching the bay turn red and seeing all the lights on the bay bridge and the city was a spectacular sight. All the more so since I saw it from my skateboard as I rolled down the waterfront.

July 9

More skateboarding. A handful of us hit this crazy spot I’ve seen in videos over the years. It’s on the top of some abandoned military installment that used to guard the bay. I spent most of my time taking pictures since it was such a crazy place. Thick concrete jail cells, gunnery bunkers, and cool hips to skate. Fun stuff.

That night I checked into my hotel. OMG. I couldn’t believe it. The Marriott in downtown San Francisco. After sleeping in the dirt in Yosemite, the streets of Riverside, and wherever I could find a place for my head in the preceding five weeks, this was absolute luxury!  It was so nice being able to unpack all my stuff for the first time in over a month and take a shower.

July 10, 11

Wow! Twelve hour days packed with more information that the average human mind could absorb. I feel so fortunate to have been invited to this amazing Business Builders Summit. Take a minute and read these names and topics, it truly is relevant to you.

Speakers I heard included:

• Jack Trout, Best selling author on marketing. He spoke about Branding, Positioning, and Building a Personal Business Strategy.

• Bill Dyszel, Author of Palm Pilot and Outlook for dummies. He spoke about computerizing your business.

• Willie Jolley, Award winning speaker who’s on a short list of amazing speakers including, Colin Powel, Christopher Reeve, Margaret Thatcher. He spoke about Overcoming Barriers to Success.

• Terry Savage, Best selling author on personal finance. She spoke on Money Management for Your Small Business.

• Mechele Flaun, Heads a brain trust that tracks trends. She spoke about Understanding Upcoming Trends in Creating Your Business Strategy.

• Kathy Burlison, she is the program manager for H&R Block. She spoke on the Tax Advantages of Owing a Home-Based Business

• Leigh Stevens, She is a consultant with Franklin Covey. She spoke on Resource Allocation and Time Management

The closing dinner was a fun time with Ian Adamson, three time Eco Challenge winner, giving a presentation on overcoming challenges and building a world class organization.

Scientist, Dr. Ralph Heinicke received a lifetime achievement award for discovering the amazing health benefits of the Noni fruit.

You guys get it yet? I couldn’t believe I was surrounded by so many successful and amazing people! This is exactly the kind of knowledge that I was searching for. Thank you, Thank you!

There is one story I just have to tell. It is simply amazing how small the world truly is. I was in a Taxi going to china town. One of the men in the cab with me was attending the Seminar too. Well, we got to talking and it turns out he was from Hendersonville, NC. I told him I started and sold a carpet cleaning business in that town after I graduated high school. He about choked. Turns out he had recently purchased my company from the gentleman I sold it to! What are the odds?

July 12

On the road again. Not for long though. I rolled up to Sacramento to see my friends John and Deena before the sprint home. I was planning on going to the World Superbike races in Monterey, then to see the grandfolks in Sonora, but 6 weeks on the road had cut into my finances pretty heavily.

July 13

I wanted to visit Garian, the cool girl I met in Yosemite, so I headed down to Davis College to spend the day. It is HOT in central California. We hit the pool and had a delightful time. Her roommate Tanner is a really cool guy too and we had a good time talking smack about Garian and her mom.

July 14

Try this. Go outside where it’s 98 degrees. Get a 2×6 board. Sit on it. Now bend yourself into a sitting fetal position. Point about a dozen blow driers at yourself (they don’t blow at 100mph, the bike does) and maintain this position for the next 12 hours without passing out. Well that was my day. One hard, painful, hot, miserable day trying to get home. The damn highway patrolman had no mercy either. At least he clocked me on a slow portion of the trip (106 in a 75). It was really really nice getting home, but I was just about too tired to care.

Now what? I’m home, my soul is larger, my brain is fuller, my wallet is emptier. I suppose it’s time to buckle down, use what I’ve learned and enjoy my home, my friends, and my family. Maybe next year I can turn it into twelve weeks on two wheels.

Thank you again to everyone that took such good care of me on the road. I can’t imagine the loneliness I would have faced without you. You guys that had encouraging words for me during the rough parts of the trip, you hold a special place in my heart.

Even though this trip is over and daily life resumes, please make an effort to stay in touch. Thank you all for listening to my story.

Your friend,

miah

Obliterating the Safety Net

Ok, you guys will like this one. I certainly did! It has been exactly one week since I sent out the last update, and I feel like I need another week just to detail how much fun I’ve been having and how much I’ve learned about people, life and business!

I’m tempted to start in the middle with me looking out of my 19th story room in the Marriot in downtown San Francisco, but let’s just start in the woods where we left off then graduate to the city.

July 7, 2003 – Monday

After finish up some really good pecan pie and earl grey tea at the Tioga Pass Resort and letting a nice but unprepared guy from Australia borrow my sleeping pad, I strolled to the back towards my friend Abbie’s trailer where I’ve been staying. I had butterflies in my tummy. It wasn’t because of the pie and it wasn’t because me and Abbie are “play pals” (we’re not). It was because I was kinda scared and really excited about our plans for the morning. Seeing the mountains around me bathed in the half moon light, and the sky packed with a multitude of stars, breathing the pure cold mountain air, all served to make me feel so grateful for the gift of life. Knowing that in the morning I may well be tempting that gift definitely made me take special notice of this beautiful night.

I made sure to savor my breakfast of sweet granola and milk and good coffee. We got our little group together. Each of us had filled our chalk bags and camel backs, packed a snack and our climbing shoes. See, today we were leaving the ropes at home. No ropes, no rock climbing gear, no back up plan. Nothing but our skill developed over years of practice and our ability to keep fear from taking over while we move precisely up over a thousand feet of beautiful granite.

The climb is called Cathedral Spire. It is a beautiful white face that dominates the skyline once you hike the uphill hour to get to it. The air up there is pretty thin. I’m guessing the base of the climb is around nine thousand feet, with another vertical thousand to the summit. We got to the base and stretched and joked around a bit. There were a couple of parties hiking up below us with huge packs full of ropes and gear so they could do the rout too. That was our sign to get climbing. Climbing shoes on, chalk bag open, smiles on our faces we made the first moves up onto the face of the rock.

The climbing was relatively straight forward and we covered ground quickly. Occasionally we stopped on a ledge to drink some water, laugh at a joke, take some pictures, and just enjoy the trees and other climbers getting smaller and smaller. There were a couple of sections that required some thought and planning. Mistakes are not an option when your feet are smeared on a little nubbin and your hands are searching for some small anything to keep you on the rock with nothing but 800 feet of air between your legs. This my friends is living. All the other nitpicky things that dominate our daily lives don’t exist when your mind is filled with nothing but the move above you and the consequences of a mistake. Experiences like this really put life in perspective.

After this climb I hugged my friends good bye and hiked next to an impossibly clear river back to my bike. Somehow the river wasn’t quite so beautiful on the way up. Somehow I didn’t realize how gray the granite was until I compared it to the gleaming white of the occasional snow piles. Somehow the smell of the pines escaped my notice before this climb. Why do people do drugs to amplify their senses? Just go solo a big ass rock and live through it, ride that perfect wave, hit that set of turns just right with your back tire stepping out just enough on the exit, or whatever it is that takes you outside of your comfort zone. It’s so easy to live life complacently, but that’s not living. Get the fuck off the couch and do something! Life’s to short and precious to accept mediocrity!

PS. All you Salt Lake pals, I’ll be home in a day or two. How about a big get together?

New Friends, Auspicious Encounters

June 30, 2003 – Monday

So I noticed before I picked this particular shadow to sleep in that the grass in the area was wet. I took that as a sign that the sprinklers came on in the evening not the morning. I’ve made the mistake in the past of not considering the sprinklers and thought I was ok, but I’ve learned that wet grass in the evening doesn’t necessarily mean no sprinklers in the morning. Luckily I heard them come on in an adjacent section and got out of there before being greeted by a spray to the face.

Denies was open so I spent the next couple of hours there drinking coffee and recovering from a fitful night. I usually sleep well past dawn, so it was really cool being on the road as the city came awake and seeing everything in that moist morning light. I was heading north on I-15 looking forward to a crazy fun day on Hwy 2. Hwy 2 runs through the heart of the San Gabriel Mountain range and was the twistiest thing on my map.

I headed that direction and kept seeing “road closed ahead” signs. I was having too much fun to believe a few dumb signs. Great views, great turns, on fun bumpy, kinda dirty roads. Just the way I like it. Well, after about 15 miles or so of fun I came to the closed gate. I explored the trails around the gate trying to find a way to get my bike to the other side. Nope. Hard to hike, and impassible on my motorcycle. I almost took my luggage off and laid my bike on its side on my skateboard so I could roll it under the gate, but I didn’t want to do that to my skateboard.

The only other road that went the general direction I wanted to go looked pretty crummy on the map. It wound up being long and straight, but there were these seven foot humps in the road that kept things entertaining. At 80mph the bike got kinda light and you got that funny feeling in your tummy over each crest. At 110mph the bike was air born and that feeling transferred to my throat. Hell yah!

I stopped for a while in Bakersfield to work, then again in Fresno to find a place to sleep. I think that’s where I was when I sent off that last update. A Highway Patrolman told me about a camp site that was relatively close. Millerton Lake. I headed out there and found a great spot overlooking the lake, crawled in my sleeping bag, looked at the stars, listened to the sounds of the lake and drifted off. The ground feels really nice when you’re tired and sore, and sleep is wonderful knowing you’re in a safe place.

7/1/03 – Tuesday

Most bike guys love those perfectly paved, beautiful, third and fourth gear roads. For some reason I get the most pleasure out of crumbly, dirty, narrow, county roads. It forces me to be really cautious, the bike still slides around a good bit, and it’s still just as fast as the freeway. I had a great time on my way to Yosemite by simply staying off the main drag for as long as possible. Maybe one of these years I’ll do a cross country trip trying to stay on roads that don’t show up on your normal map. That sounds fun! Anybody want to join me?

Traffic coming into Yosemite was relatively light. I had a nice spirited ride into the park, took a detour to Glacier point before going into the valley. For those of you who have never been there it is simply impossible for me to explain the scale of this place. The park is bigger than Rhode Island, and there are cliffs all over the place that are nearly a vertical mile over your head. Waterfalls cascade off the cliffs and a beautiful river runs through the middle of this incredible sight. WOW.

I went searching for some pals that were supposed to be living in Yosemite Valley. I didn’t find them that afternoon, but I did make tons of other pals quickly. Camp 4 in Yosemite is climber central. There are always climbers from all over the world living there at any given moment. I met loads of really awesome people and had a great afternoon and night swapping stories, watching the crazier ones balance on some 4×4 posts and doing this silly head first boulder problem down a squeeze chimney. Those Brits had a game for everything. Most entertaining.

July 2 – Wednesday

I spent most of the day just sitting by the river watching tourists try to put their boats in the river. I can’t tell you how close I came to peeing myself. There were fat women with their video cameras falling into the river, rednecks with floating trampolines with a tag along beer raft, a Korean couple that thought it was the eco challenge and paddled like mad over the top of kids on inner-tubes, husbands that yelled at their wives because he was paddling the raft in circles. I mean it was non stop entertainment!

I ran into my friend Kelly that afternoon and had a joyous reunion. I hadn’t seen her in years so we were both stoked to catch up on all our stories. I also got to take a shower that night. That may have been the highlight of the day, except I didn’t have any soap or shampoo, so I kept having to sprint across the bathroom to get the pink soap from the sink. Glad no one came in. I’m sure they didn’t want to be seeing that!

There was an employee dance that night that I snuck into. True to form I didn’t have much fun. I don’t know, but I have a hard time enjoying myself at dances. I just have so much fun doing so many other things. I got lost walking back to my motorcycle in the dead of night. After much confusion and a couple of backtracks I found my bike and made it back to the camp site.

July 3 – Thursday

There was a 41 year old Harley woman that was traveling by herself and staying in the campground. We decided to go riding up to Glacier Point and take some pictures of the bikes in action around this incredible corner with an unparalleled view. She doesn’t ride nearly as aggressively as me, so I got to play on one wheel a lot. Leme tell you, wheeling through those long tunnels at 80mph gives you one insane sensation of speed. Your headlight is illuminating the jagged ceiling and your peripheral vision is just screaming at you to put your wheel back on the ground.

Anyway, we had a nice ride, got some good pictures (I need a web site to put all these pictures and stories on – anybody want to help?). That afternoon she went rafting and I went looking for more friends. Well the new friends name is Garian. We spent the rest of the afternoon jumping off the bridge, sunning in the sand, riding my motorcycle and talking over dinner. Nice time, great girl.

July 4 – Friday

Out of the valley I go. I decided I’d been lazy long enough and packed up to search for Abbie. I knew she was someplace around Tioga Pass. After a fun ride, and asking a load of people if they knew this girl I learned that she was working at Tioga Pass Resort. As soon as she saw me she jumped up, ran across the restaurant and gave me one humongous hug. I’ve been having a great time meeting new people and having great conversations, but it was so refreshing to spend a lot of time talking about a bunch of things with one of my close friends. Thank you Abbie, you’re awesome!

July 5 – Saturday

Good food, good coffee (been missing that!), and a good nap took up the day till around noon. Itching for movement, I hiked up over the ridge in front of the lodge and realized I could have just followed the road a half mile and gotten to the same lake. I hiked around the lake, found a secluded spot, stripped down, and jumped in for about 30 seconds until I found the breath to crawl out of that crazy cold water and put my clothes back on.

On the way back to the lodge I saw a sign that said “BBQ this way!” I didn’t feel like walking the two miles there and the two miles back, so I got my bike and motored up there. I always wear my safety gear, but since it was only two miles of gravel I chose to ride up there wearing what I had on. Shorts, sandals, sun glasses. Fishtailing sure is fun!

That night me, Abbie, and this cool girl Joey went to visit the hot springs in Mammoth before going to the sushi party at their friends house. These hot springs are at the end of a series of dirt 4 wheel drive roads. I had fun riding my bike on them, but there were a few deep sand sections and some technical rutty, rocky sections. On soft, deep, sand those fat tires on my bike just float. The bike feels like it’s steering from one wheel in the center of the bike. Scary stuff. There were all kinds of people out there so we decided to go eat sushi and dip another day.

There were like 8 or 10 cool girls at this sushi party. While talking to them I realized that we shared the same set of friends, and I had actually met one of them on a previous trip to Yosemite. That sure made hanging out with a bunch of new people really nice. My friend Aaron was pals with these girls, so we called him and he came over.

It’s astounding how small the world really is. I’m out here meeting new people and running into old friends through them. Sometimes it is just so obvious that you are doing exactly what you should be doing. Perhaps it’s the contrast of San Diego situation that is really making me aware of how fate is helping me out.

Ok, its Sunday July 6 and I’ve been caching up on my laptop all day and am looking forward to hanging out with my friends some more tonight. Take care everybody, and I hope life is treating you all well. I enjoy your notes and can’t wait to actually sit down with all you salt lake buddies.

Thanks again everybody.