Zen for breakfast

Time stops for me every morning. I feel the biting cold wind against my face, filtering through my beard and chilling my skin. The rhythmic pump of my legs approximates my heart beat. If I listen closely I can hear the swift whisper of wind as the wheels below me slice through the air. The cars that drive past me are only on the periphery of my perception; I’m in the zone. This is my time. It takes 45 minutes to ride from home to work every morning. It’s like clockwork, always the same, heedless of whatever is happening in the world or the rest of my life. Bliss. For this time I do not really exist; my body only a vessel; I am moving meditation. Without thinking, without conscious acknowledgment, I swerve around a pot hole, my body responding to visual input without thought. It’s beautiful; even more so since I don’t even know its happening; I’m as surprised as anyone that I swerve. I feel the blood flowing through my veins, pulsing like the background beat to my life’s soundtrack. This is now, this is the present, this is me.

The crazy lady next door...

"Eileen!"
So. The ogre next door is awake.
"I'm gonna fuck you up!"
And pissed.
"Eileen! Get over here and finish your oatmeal!"
Apparently Eileen wasn't hungry.
"AHHH! You're gonna wish you hadn't done that!"

Eileen is the neighbor's dog. She's one of those small shaggy dogs that looks more like a genetic experiment gone wrong. I can just imagine the mad scientist now, hands clasped evily in front of him (they're always male, female scientists I'm sure have better things to do). "Oohahaha, lets cross this obnoxious stray cat with a neurotic poodle and I WILL be famous!" At least thats what Eileen reminds me of. No matter how you look at her though, wrath, fury, and uncontrollable anger are not emotions that come to mind. Maybe a mix of pity and cuteness...

Some people claim that dogs and their owners usually look like eachother. We've all seen those pictures of the skinny hyper-active poodle next to a curly-haired, caffine-frenzied marathon runner and thought, 'hey, those people are right!' Well, its not true. Eileen and the woman next door do not look anything like eachother. Nancy is the ogre's name. I'm sure that once she was someone's beautiful young daughter. But that was before an evil spirit named Hathwaya took over her mind. I don't really know if that's the reason for her personality, but if you met her, it wouldn't take much imagination to believe it. So anyways, she is a large woman with short hair. Imagine Demi Moore when she played that marine, and then add 200 lbs and a hint of facial hair. Maybe its only 150 lbs more, but you get the point. She wears strange pajamas most of the time and also has several cats she 'takes care of'. They seem to incite her rage less frequently than Eileen.

A couple of weeks ago I got Eileen grounded. Yes, the dog was grounded. I was driving into the driveway and Eileen was about 20 feet away from her front door. That was probably the biggest mistake she made-distance from the ogre. Eileen is kind of an older dog and so she was slow to get out from in front of the car. I'm not Dale Ernhardt so I slowed down and the wheels kind of skidded. Nancy saw the whole ordeal...and she was pissed. Even with my music on pretty loud I didn't have to read her lips.
"Eileeeeen!" Her gutteral scream was unreal.
"You get your ass back her!"
The dog just looked around like your senile grandfather at Disneyland. It had no clue what was about to go down.
"Eileeeen! I'm gonna beat your ass if you do that again!"
Still, the dog was oblivious.
"Fine! You're grounded! I'm grounding you Eileen!"
The volume of anger astounded me. First, the dog was just doing normal dog things and thinking normal dog thoughts. I imagine it went something like, 'oh, hey there. its a car. i wonder if its my friend. i should go sniff it. oh, hey there, its moving towards me. i better get out of its way now. what is that woman screaming about this time? i swear, all i do is try and find my inner soul, and that ogre is always pushing me back down.' I guess the dog reminds me of Brian from The Family Guy...
So Nancy hustled out of her cave in her weird pajamas and picked up Eileen. She brought her the twenty feet back to her cave entrance and put her on a short leash. This, apparently, was being grounded. The dog obviously had no comprehension of what was going on.
"I'm taking away your lunch today!"
Everything Nancy says to the dog is a yell-as if she really is speaking to her senile grandfather. I imagine Eileen holding one of those 1800-era tin horns up to her ears and I laugh out loud. Nancy hears my chuckle. Her head turns and she fixes me with her beady eyes. I feel like she's that character in X-men with the laser beam eyes and she's trying to kill me. Thankfully she's unsuccessful. But I get the gist of it. This is no laughing matter! No sir. This is the most serious and capital even that has happened in recent history and who do I think I am laughing! Her look says it all.

I walk inside and immediately call Emily. I can't wait to tell her today's ridiculous-ness! I'm laughing before she even answers the phone....

Not a day goes by that Eileen isn't yelled at, threatened, or cursed. I've never seen any evidence of actual abuse-I think Nancy is too dependent on that creature. But the second I do, I know who to call....

Life Goals

So today my friend Danielle convinced me that I should write down my life goals. Not the ones that I have already done, but ones that I want to do from here on out. So here it is. In my life I want to:

Learn to fly fish
Redpoint 5.12
Climb in Thailand
Trek and raft in Nepal
Be a river guide
Meet amazing people
Design and build a house
Kayak class V whitewater
Speak a foreign language fluently
Live on the produce of my own garden
Be a proficient potter
Perform flat-water kayak tricks
Learn to surf
See Machu Pichu
Go to Chile
Finish a 100 mile mountain bike race
compete in a 1/2 Ironman triathlon
Learn to sail on the open ocean
Kayak around Baja California
Bike the length of the West coast of US
Through-hike the Pacific Crest Trail
Open a Cafe
Work as an international guide
Start an experiential learning school internationally
Climb in Yosemite
Do at least one big wall climb requiring sleeping on a portaledge (yikes!)
Market one of my inventions
Design a passive-solar eco-minded housing development
Build a giant tree house
Laugh everyday
Love 100%