I'm minding my own business, see......

I'm not all that superstitious, so I'm not sporting one of those little gremlin bells that ward off the evil spirits of mechanical failure for the travelling vehicle like St. Christopher is said to do for the travelling soul.

So the plan is to jump on the bike with the boy and ride through a semi-sunny 77deg morning to Guitar Center and try out the latest goodies, hit some place for a snack or munchie or some such and then ride to the house and yak to Mom about what a great day we had so far.

I swing a leg and go to fire the bike up and it's live at the dash....dead at the starter.

Hmm... I've had this happen before and thought I'd found the culprit with the corrosive blue powder forming a conductive short between posts on the plugged in starter relay. I found that while romping with the righteous at a rally a while back. Was pretty smug about the whole thing, too. Well, let's see what we've got now.

The bike in question is my first foray into rolling lazyboys. I wouldn't have picked it, but it fell in my lap....followed me home.....was really cheap....made sense at the time. It's a 1996 Evo geezer-glide and I've grown attached to it while waiting to find someone to trade me a Shovelhead for it.

Camp Boogie 29APR12

Our gathering of the faithful that we like to call "Camp Boogie" occurred again this past Sunday.

We all rode off to Queef's to ressurect Chuck's '61 Sporty. Dang, that's one fine ride. He tore it down to do tin paint and pretty it up and life kicked him hard in the ass so he had to put it aside to deal with things. We'll help him deal with the bike. Need some parts, though.

Fugly

I have a fiesty grab-bag of electronics and 2 generations of someone's idea of good headlight wiring. Every once in a while the bike dies electrically. Off comes the fairing skin whilst I wiggle this and that and reseat the other and somewhere along the line break the short or make the contact. I'll be redoing the main power and the headlight wiring here shortly......

Proud of my boy

My boy Ed blows me away. Kicks butt at school, jams on the guitar, rises to some pretty big challenges....and a snappy dresser, to boot. He loves to get dressed up and I love that that makes him feel good. His imagination is boundless and his sense of humor is off-the-wall. He's like his dad in that he thinks quicker than he articulates, but he's got the tools in his noodle to do fine in this world. I gots me some good kids.

An idle mind

You know what they say about an idle mind. I've been troubled by my inactivity in some areas and I've been looking at what I'm actually doing, it's yield and the "net productivity" I get from my efforts. A kind of personal process audit to look at what I'm doing with the grains of sand in my personal hourglass. Every grain has value, so every grain should yield, right? ROI on another level.

I don't do some things because I do some other things that have an opportunity cost. You do this at the expense of that. You do that knowing there is an obligation to prep or recover so allocated time goes up. More time spent on A and less time left for B. Opportunity cost.

The tricky part of life is that you train yourself over time to engage or eschew activities relative to thier "fit" with other activities or obligations. I don't get home from work and tinker because it's dinnertime with the family and then it's dark where I'd work....I'll just sit my fat duff at the computer and wait on the weekend. When the weekend comes, I might spend more time at the computer because that's what my pattern has become.

Next thing I know, months have gone by and while I have done many productive things with my time, I have not done the elective things that I set goals for and that give me joy.

Sloth of some sort. I want to think of that so I can change that and have more to show from my time. When something comes up for someone else, I'll rise to the occasion and go help and enjoy my time spent and the accomplishment of the task. Quality meets joy. On the other hand, when I have the time to meet my own recreational goals.....I don't always rise to my own occasion. I fix what's broke and I handle what I'm confronted with, but I don't pursue my own liesure activities anymore like I did "in the good old days".

Like everything else, I think the answer is reprogramming yourself. Shift your personal paradigm.

Call me nutso, but I think the following:

Your self image is personal and unique to you. Meaning you see yourself in ways no one around you automatically shares. You don't know what they think of you. You interact with them as though you are what you think you are and that they agree with this. You can imagine that they really don't. It's not malicious, it's just that they apply different views to common experience. That's why 2 family members will have different "versions" of the family history when they talk about it. Different views because their mental wiring makes 2 different people receive the same data in different ways and then interpret it differently and then store memories of it differently. They see you differently than you see yourself. Who's right? Perception is reality. Perception is based on assumptions you apply to your interpretations of external stimuli based on self image, coping skills, advice, previous perceptions....many things.

If you made it through that last paragraph without calling the loony bin on my behalf then I have enough time to write a few more paragraphs before one of you wises up and does so.

So take this:
If perception is based on assumption....and perception is reality....it may logically follow (and may not) that assumptions form reality, subjectively. Not events, but the chronicalling of events and the forming of concepts from those chronicalled events and the linking of concepts to the assumption of their fit in your experience. Viola; preconception-perspective-mindset. We all develop our own realities and make them fit in each others' patterns of life. We avoid conflicting realities and are attracted to accomodating or complimentary realities.

Mindset. Mindset based on assumption. Assumption of my own creation and my experiences may have tuned my receptors to channels of bias that may not promote my well-being which skews my assumptions and "harshes my reality".

Crap. Is it that easy? Can I just assume things don't mean what they seem? Can I change the evidence (my perception of the external stimuli) to fit the conviction? Can I change how I see things to change how things seem so as to affect what I think they mean?


Billions of dollars per year are generated by motivational speakers telling you this is possible. I'm telling you why I think they're on to something.

If I think of myself in the way I wish to be I will act accordingly and percieve accordingly over time and become what I see myself as already. It will require me to make positive assumptions about things I normally allow to "sully my joy". It will require me to shed counterproductive patterns as one who just doesn't acknowlege the pattern anymore. I just don't do those things. It's not "me" as I see myself and want to truly be. I "am" this way because it's who I am and see things this way and they affect me this way so I know/assume/feel this way.

But how do you do all that with checks and balances to ward off the deep plunge into goofy-noodle land?

I am in conflict with my true nature when I don't follow the patterns of my self image....and I suffer accordingly.

Now to figure out what is next.

No fear, my butt.

OK, I got my shoulder back and my hamstrings aren't so strung out anymore. I'm going to work my way back into P90X by starting around J22P on the intensity scale. No demoralizing before shots or "Bring it" cheerleading, just gonna get up to my age bracket in military PT test levels and then a kind/gentle/fun sidling up to P90X.

Ya gotta make it easy when you're recovering. You gotta keep it fun when you're a mostly sedentary shlub bloated with the chemicals of processed foods and damaged by a life of misplaced thrill issues.

God, I love donuts. Damn their happy sprinkled sweet creaminess! Ice cream. 'Nuff said.

Maybe there's a 12-step program for sloth. Hi, I'm EJ. (Hi, EJ) Hmmmm. Sitting around drinking coffee talking about inactivity. Deliciously ironic, no?  ;)

If you look at the military PT scale (no, don't, OK?) you'll see that my goal to warm into P90X is not lofty. More the establishment of the lifestyle of goals and a thirst for accomplishment, milestone by milestone. Right now, I just don't care. I want to ride. I want to drink. I want to wrench.

But.....I need to care for the guy I'll be 10 years from now like I would have appreciated the guy I was 10 years ago getting off his duff to huff. I'd be better off running around like I do with the kids if I had. I want to be better off running around with the teens.

Anyhow, check out this ingenious dude's solution to the age-old problem of surplus crutches and a need to stretch.

If I work out my mind, perhaps I can develop this level of clarity by the time I bring the body out of its slumber.

Be you.

It's always something....

Tired and frustrated....so it's rant time!  8)

You notice over the years that it just seems like every time you get a whoopee, it's followed up with a bummer that absorbs the whoopee. The half-empty in me gets discouraged at those times, but the half-fuller has turned that around to recognizing how bummers just slide off. It's preparedness and knowing that having what you need is the real battle. Having what you want is nice, but having what you need is life.

So am I talking about lowered expectations? Have I lost my noodle and given up to live on scraps of life? Has the wave rolled past my surfboard?

Nah.

I'm just hitting a point where I recognize some basic things about myself that keep me confident, but not complacent. Kind of a Zen-meets-smelling-the-roses thing. I can suffer nothing these days that'll take away the energy I get from doing something with my hands. There's nothing so bad going on in life that I don't still get thrilled by the light coming on for a Scout learning new life skills with my guidance. Yeah, I get to do fun personal things like romp with the righteous on crazy trips with my biker buds and I like to toss some "Hippy Disc" (frisbee golf) here and there, play guitar and you can't get welding something from nothing out of you once it's in you... but these things are diversionary. They are condiments to the actual meal.

I regard myself as intelligent with value to others. I am morally oriented. I recognize a misspent youth. I acknowledge the limitations placed on me by myself and others. I channel my inner Dylan Thomas as I "rage, rage" against my physical ailments, keeping them at bay. I am the product of a lifetime of decision making and adaptations to environments of my choosing. I have some wild and ferocious memories as a result of questionable direction. As Chris Cornell sings in Sunshower, "All you'll be you are today..."

I gotta believe Chris means that you have native abilities that you bring to every new experience. Your unique perspective born of experience and hope. Your desires based on that hope and your grittiness based on the strength of your convictions. You are as ready as you're ever gonna be to do instead of watch. Waiting for some change in yourself or circumstance? All you'll be you are today and you can't change circumstance without action....so act.

The saddest piece of misinformation I've heard in a while was a John Mayer tune about waiting for the world to change. Crap. Crap set to a catchy tune and piped to a somnambulant populace dulled into inactivity by surrogates like reality TV and social internet chat stuff. OMG.
Life is open on all lanes, no waiting. Gird your loins and join the fray. It's a ballet of interaction set to a symphony of circumstance. Daaaaaaaaaance to the muuuuusic!

If you wait for the world to change, it will not change to your benefit and you give the power in your life over to others. You caring nurturers out there (I'm in that number, too) might act under the premise that a healthy, strong YOU is more of a power for helping others than a you that is emotionally strip-mined for lesser net gain. Don't build your personal house on a foundation of sand. Get right and stay that way through the diversions and bummers. Discover the root you and nurture THAT. You gotta "keep on keepin' on" and "do your thing". Then, go build value out in that world you're better prepared for. There is beauty in personal strength. Let your whoopee ward off bummers and go get you mo' whoopee. Seek quality situations that bring value to yourself and others. Put it out there. Take the chance. Don't fear the bummers. %^&* happens.
Keep getting back up.

</rant>

Eryn and Lane

Here's Eryn with Lane a few days after his arrival. That girl was a trooper from start to finish bringing that boy into this world and she's been doing a fine job ever since. She's still "Little Wonder" to me, though. That's just how it is. We live in different states and I miss her dearly, but you play the hand you're dealt.

Happy Monday, one and all. Sore from hiking with the Scouts along the Natches Trace this weekend. We were hotfootin' through some of the most beautiful greenery I've seen since that morning when I left my home. I like some greenery.

The high spirits and positive attitudes of the Scouts and thier leaders is inspiring and it doesn't take much to get me going once I'm with them.

Once Ed and I got past the reluctance of our body and minds to the thought of the ensuing 20 miles, we kind of hit "the zone" where you disengage from the task and just drive on under autopilot. We talked superficially about this and that and then the conversation would turn to concepts of this and that and then get philosophical. Perspectives on the concepts. Higher order analysis. Miles of plodding. Plenty o' time. Ed's 11 years old and pretty much has his head on straight for his age. These gut-check activities help make him that way. I don't push him all that hard. He wanted to do this and he's leading me down the road. He leads me on other levels. As my father once said to me, my son puts me in positions I don't seek, but that add value to my experience and bring us closer. I lead my father to motorcycling and junkyards which turned into our vehicle for cohesiveness and Ed's doing the same with me using Scouts and guitar. Oh, do we like to jam.... I wasn't jamming on the hike, I'm 47 years old with 2 bad knees and more titanium in my spine than brains in my head, but as Buddah (club brother, not Buddist leader) once told me..."All ya gotta be is willing!" Woody Allen said, "80% of success is showing up." So who am I to sit idly by knowing I'm open to 0% success that way?

So many parents use these times as self-time. They drop the kids off to the Scouts, prepared or not, and pick them up at some predetermined point after all the life and trial and conquering and learning and value and purity and quality has been absorbed. Then it's back to mom or dad. How can you miss out on these times? Maybe there's some hard stuff going on that noone knows about and the Scouts are a sanity-check alone-time that allows them to recover and be more stable parents. It'd have to be a pretty darned good reason before I'd miss a moment of my boy's (and the others) development. At least they drop the kids off where they can be built into good, decent men.

1st post prattle. Get used to it. -Joker