Let’s go

Here we go!

As I get bombarded from all sides with offers to save money; I can say that nothing saves me more money than just skipping all the sales and going for a walk, run or ride.  Today Hottie and I took the Kona for a walk on the beach. 

Summer, you are just a memory

Leaving summer behind and barreling into fall!

We squeezed all we could out of summer.  Then summer just kept going all though September and we squeezed some more.  

The air has gone from crisp to cold and instead of warm afternoons, there are fleeting moments of sunshine when you don't feel the bite of the colder days. 

Moving on

Whatever. Move on.

The story of my right eye didn't end the way i hoped and expected.  I thought I would share a story about how it took twenty months of patience to get my vision back.  Instead it took twenty months to end up with bad vision in my right eye.  Yeah it sucks; but it is what it is and I'm just not going to whine about it any more. I have one good eye and that is better than none.   HTFU!

Privacy isn't what it used to be

 

Apparently, I'm dead.

As a kid when we would get a new phone book I would open it and find our name and phone number.   As an adult I went to the trouble to get an unlisted phone number.  Today I'm on the FCC do not call list.   

When the internet was fresh, it was interesting to type in your name and see what came up.   Now it is scary.  Name, birthdate, address, phone number, spouse and employers past and present all pop up.  Also showing up are former spouses, their spouses, kids, parents, former addresses.... all connected to me! Too much for my liking. 

It turns out that even when your data is taken from legal sources (tax records, public filings, etc.) it is still YOUR data and you have a say in how it can be shared.  But it takes action.

A tech savvy friend told me what it would take to get my info removed from the websites that collect and offer up our personal data.  I spent about an hour starting the process myself and was overwhelmed. I realized it would take me hours of effort spread out over weeks, no, months, no.... years!  

There were three things that struck me; first it would take a ton of one time effort to remove my personal information, second, I would need to learn how to do it as the rules keep changing and third, as new services pop up, or my data resurfaces I would have to search out my info and repeat the process again and again and again.

Knowledge, expertise and sophisticated tools, that is what makes something a business opportunity.  There must be a company that does this.

My Data Removal does this.  You confirm who you are and what data is yours (they can't remove incorrect data, only real data) and they remove your data from the sites that mine your data.  On an ongoing basis they use software to constantly look for your data to pop up again and if it does, they remove it again.  I'm at a point in my life where I have enough assets that I am someone who can be targeted and also someone who does not mind paying less than my coffee budget to keep my data safe.  No brainer.  I would strongly recommend you consider this.  

Mortality

                   You don't know what you've got 'til you lose it all, again.

                                                                 - Bruce Hornsby 

It is like each day I was issues a hundred points to use as I saw fit.  Work took sixty or seventy points, then a few for a workout, some more for making dinner, etc.  Finally, the last few to balance the books and pay bills.   Now it is like I only get 70 points and work takes more than it used to and I'm pretty much out of points by two or three in the afternoon and my head hurts. 

I have tried to tell myself that it will pass, but the outlook now is that it will be well into 2022 before I have a chance to get back to the old normal. I'm all about positivity, but man, this is a challenge.

I've seen some windows closing, but I never had any idea some could close this FAST.  

I know I need to start from scratch and build some base fitness in anticipation of getting my vision working again. Sadly I'm an all or nothing kind of guy and not being able to mountain bike or put something challenging on the calendar is making my mind hurt. 

I've had to build from zero before, but I'm not even at zero yet. 

Snapshots in a box

 

It happens so fast.  I close my eyes and remember learning to ride my red Royce Union bike and my first day of school. I remember the first day a child of mine went to school.  After decades of reliance on my body as a tool to get me out of tricky situations, I am resigned to accept my age as a real number. 

The doctor cites my age as a risk factor.  My VO2 Max or Garmin Fitness age don't seem to matter to him. I can go on a five hour bike ride and come home and make dinner, but my fitness now has a fragility that it has not had before.  Looking at the ceiling waiting for surgery I recall looking at the ceiling waiting to see the principal in elementary school. I was in trouble then and I'm in trouble now. At my age I don't feel helpless often, but I fear it may be a trend.

I watched my grandson Drew trying so hard and in him I saw my own son who both hated his older brother and wanted more than anything to be his older brother.  Drew's older brother is like his dad and his dad's dad. How could I have been so cruel to my younger brother without giving it a thought?  

After my mother was moved into her new apartment and bags and boxes were dropped at goodwill and the trash place and my daughter took what she could use, there were two large boxes of photographs and keepsakes that summed up my mom's life. Big photos of her parents and others born a hundred or more years ago. The results of a tennis tournament she played in fifty years ago.  Photos of my mother as a young woman ready to take on the world. She asks me a question. Five minutes later she asks again. Two minutes after that she asks a third time. I smile and put my arm around her. She knows she has done something wrong, but doesn't know what it is. My assurance calms her. I am glad I can give her some peace. 

We aren't all astronauts.  I may have finally leaned patience.  Everyone is doing the best they can. Whomever set up the process isn't the person standing in front of you so don't take it out on them.  Smile and say, "Thank you."  People don't hear that enough. It is my secret weapon.  Oops, no longer a secret. 

Hottie loves me.  Ever since I was that kid on my way to school in 1965 I was hoping people would like me. I'm a dick and Hottie still loves me.  I am a lucky man.  I hear the Beach boys songs I heard as a kid. When I heard them I hoped someone would love me, she does. I know she is frustrated beyond words with injuries that we hope will be done soon. I'm feeling helpless again. 

I am lucky.  I get to see (maybe a little blurry right now) people I love and beautiful places.  I get to do fun things.  I find more joy in helping my mom or trying to make Hottie feel special than I ever thought I would.  I find joy in watching Kona play in every way he can.  

That is it for today. 

2020 DONE!

2020 Started with such hope, only to expose our collective pettiness via tragedy. An inconvenience for Hottie and myself, yet a horror for others. I kept working.  We had no major surgeries for the first year in a while. 

We lost Tux. That hit me so hard I realized I actually have a heart. As a tribute to him, we welcomed his nephew, Kona, who has brought so much joy and love to our hearts. That was unexpected. 

Bike races and bike rides were cancelled.  Our Sunday "Coffee and Lies" rides took a five month hiatus. My son Tim and I were able to share the backpack trip of our collective dreams albeit with masks at the ready. 

An ideal remote work assignment allowed me not just to continue working, but to spend a majority of my time in my favorite place. So grateful.  I ironed two shirts in all of 2020.  What the hell?

Such a strange mix of good and bad news.  We were lucky, yet are so aware that many were destroyed by the Pandemic.  It would be offensive to celebrate. We are powerless to change the pandemic and how the powers that be handle it.  We can control how we treat those we see and this event has provided an opportunity to be the best we can be. We could all have done better.

For all the good and bad that we had in 2020, I am ready to move on and welcome 2021. Let's learn our lessons and move forward.

Lack of focus reveals focus

Simple pleasures 

With COVID-19 putting everyone’s season on hold, April was not the typical training month I usually enjoy. Instead of gearing up for Goldendale and subsequent events, I just went riding.  I am normally a periodized training plan kind of guy and lacking any firm objectives I am just riding.  I am also hiking and running and taking walks purely for the pleasure of it.  

Without having to force each run or ride into a spot in my grand training plan I find I am much more in the moment during my rides, runs, hikes and strolls.  I am not a fan of the shut down and I am even less of a fan of the slower than I think it needs to be return to a new normal, yet I am finding some happiness in not being so damn focused.  It has allowed me to focus on what is fun. 

Changing topics

Pancakes if I want them.

This is my blog, so rather than break the rules, I just change them.  I have babbled on, with seemingly endless self-indulgence, about all flavors of biking and so this transition may come as a total surprise.  Oh well.

Buckle up Evo fans.  You're going to be reading about some backpacking in the months to come.

A few years back when mortality slapped me in the face and I was forced to contemplate (and luckily avoid) lifestyle restrictions the activity that I most feared losing was backpacking.  I was shocked.  To put this in perspective, I had not been backpacking in ten years.  I still can't explain it, but I did go on a trip with my son the following summer and our plan is to go again this August.

Only reluctantly have I acknowledged that I am in my "Someday" phase of life and before too long that window will close and be replaced by regrets.  A few years back Hottie and I were riding and we joined a guy who was setting out to ride from Seattle to the east coast.  His wife had told him, "You better go now, you will soon be too old."  Welcome to my motivation.

I will share more details of that trip and why it is important to each of us as well as some background on how I got where I am.  

In the meantime, I will tease you with a few odd comments, think of these as scenes from our next episode(s). 

• It started with a down jacket that didn't quite fit.  
• Eighteen years from beginning to end.
• I was called back.
• Analog hiking
• It all worked 

More N-1

Le Velo Jaune

I am continuing on my N-1 program. I have sold even more bikes. I have found great liberation in quitting the N+1 club. Those guys were snobs anyway. 

There have been as many as seven bikes hanging from the ceiling in my garage with my name on them. Now there are two (although there is one on the way). One of the two in there now is on thin ice. 

Riding is as much fun as it has ever been. 

Turdwidth

A word to the wise: Don't do an image search for "turd"

At times my job description sounds really cool.  We tell people that we take on projects when managers are constrained by bandwidth or skillset.  In practice what we find is that when parsing up a person’s bandwidth the part that gets sliced off and put on our plate is often the ugliest of their projects.

The first clue is how happy the client is to have us on board.  The second is the number of marks on the project from people touching it only with their ten foot poles.  When we start to take ownership of the messy project the leaders in the company rejoice.

It seems that a subset of a person’s bandwidth is their ability to handle projects that are messy, controversial, or just a lot of hard work.  I dubbed this a person’s “Terdwidth.”  They may have the capacity in simple hours, but their tolerance for dealing with challenging people, issues and systems is limited.

This looks like it could be pretty hard......  

Maybe you should take this one.

One could lament this position but in fact I have come to embrace it.  First off, because they were scared the managers usually avoid getting a good understanding of the problem for fear they would then be destined to own it forever. The by-product of this is that when we come to understand the scope we are met with awe and admiration from those who feared it in the first place.

The second is that like most things we are scared of, once you jump in you find it isn’t as bad as you thought.  We don’t share this with the client because doing so would lessen the "mystique." 

By maintaining a positive attitude throughout this process you further promote your legendary status by appearing unfazed by the scary task. 

At the project progresses all you have to do is continue to execute to the cheers and adulation of all.

Terdwidth may not become a widely used management term but perhaps it should.  Then again, I don’t think I want to become known as “The Turdmaster.”  I will also advise against searching for an image to go with "Turdmaster."

Welcome to our neighborhood

This is my wife a.k.a. Hottie. I love her a lot. Even more than I thought I did.
I try to follow the unwritten rules when I blog. Maybe they aren't actually blogging rules, but just good taste, or perhaps an understanding of the boundaries between us humans. I try to share things I've learned about bikes, life, and this world we live in. You can search my archives and you won't come across blogs with titles like, "My Colonoscopy, the inside story," nor will you find pictures with captions like, "Can anyone identify this thing growing between my toes."

On rare occasions I feel compelled to share something personal usually because the emotional impact is so staggering that I can't keep it inside.

Something I did NOT plan to share was that Hottie had surgery on her fibula this past Monday. She has been home elevating and icing. While I had a pretty routine knee surgery in January (I'm not even sure I shared that) Hottie's was pretty serious. They had to take out some crap from a surgery six years ago and there was a potential for nerve damage. Leave it to Evo and my gallows humor to call Hottie "Deadfoot" for the one day she couldn't move her foot. So far it seems the surgery was a success.

As you may recall we have a remodel of our bathroom that is almost complete, with just the "come backs" to take care of. One other bit of trivia is that our neighbors sold their house and since it closed almost two months ago there has been a parade of trucks as the carpet was replaced, appliances upgraded, and other goings on, but nobody moved in until two days ago.

This afternoon Hottie is limping around the house and has a visitor looking at a portion of the remodel. She hears the front door open and assumes she hadn't closed it all the way when she let in her guest. As she approaches the door, standing in the open doorway is a six foot, two hundred pound guy in his early twenties dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. For a moment she thinks it is one of the crew that had been working on our remodel. Then Hottie realizes she has never seen this guy and she tries to push him out of the doorway and close the door. He grabs her arm and his fingernails cut into Hotties forearm and she starts bleeding. (Yes, this is some serious shit at Casa de Evo) She tried to free herself and he didn't want to let go. She finally twisted free and the intruder went into our living room and picked up one of Hottie's crutches.

As Hottie is trying to figure out what to do, there is a knock at the door and Hottie opens it (what the hell else could happen, right?) These is a woman who said she is his caretaker and she is here to get the guy out of our house. The guy lays down on the couch and picks up a pillow and he tries to eat it. Hottie's guest is freaking out and the woman can't get the guy to leave, and Hottie is bleeding. Tux, by the way, is wagging his tail because he thinks it is a party!

By now Hottie has realized something isn't normal with this guy (he is autistic) and she also realized she is bleeding all over the floor and the situation isn't under control (he won't leave). Hottie calls 911. In minutes there are policemen, paramedics (policy when there is blood, not Hottie's call) and the woman, who is the guy's caregiver has managed to get him out of the house.

And thus, Hottie met one of our new neighbors.

As amusing as this story is, I still would not have shared this, but for the emotional adventure I experienced. While any blog is essentially all about the author, my emotions are insignificant compared to the trauma Hottie went though.

Hottie lost some skin and has bandages on her arm (to match her leg) and although her arm was strained I expect no permenent physical damage. Hottie had the option to press charges, but didn't think that was the right path. We have a special needs niece and Hottie showed compassion to this situation. Less than an hour later the guy's dad knocks on the door and falls all over himself apologizing. Thus, Hottie met another of our new neighbors. Hottie expresses essentially, "I'll give you one, but only one and this was it."

I am an absolute "turn the other cheek" kind of guy. I probably put up with more than I should. Yet when Hottie was attacked, I experienced emotions I didn't know I had. I didn't want to hurt or punish the autistic kid in any way, but autistic or not, he overpowered my wife and hurt her. We aren't going anywhere and he just moved in next door. I felt helpless and angry at that helplessness.

I recall when someone broke into my truck and stole my speakers back in 1982. I felt violated. Now that I have some perspective on life, what a dick I was to feel violated that my stupid truck was broken into. Evo is about evolution. Nobody has ever asked what the Evo stands for and I just told the world. I'm a better person now than I was then. Yet the emotions I felt today were totally primal. I have only felt them once before and that was when my youngest son was robbed. That was years ago and I still can't drive by that spot without getting a knot in my stomach.

I'll try and digest this and share some insights when I have figured it out. Clearly that has not happened yet.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Queretaro

Business trip to Queretaro, Mexico. The reason for the specific destination is a long story that isn't all that interesting, so just enjoy the photos and my sarcastic remarks...

Me, the plane, and ground support equipment. For those of us in the industry, we call that stuff "GSE." Yep, engineers are a creative bunch.

Rainier was looking sweet. I wanted to ask the pilot to circle around so the light would be better, but I figured he would decline my request.

The sun went down before I made it to Queretaro

This was the view from my Hotel room looking southwest

This was the view....... well, you can figure it out.

I am glad they Esterilizado'd the throne in anticipation of my arrival.

The view with sunshine

The courtyard where our conference was

An Aquaduct that is way old. The taxi driver spoke more English than I spoke Spanish, but that was all I could get from him about this. Google it if you care..

Just moments after I was lamenting that there wasn't a word of English anywhere I finally saw an English word I recognized, "Corona." I felt right at home...

This was a zoo we passed at seventy miles an hour..

This was my final dinner in Mexico. Hottie asked if it was Mexican food. It was food, and it was in Mexico, so I guess by default it must have been Mexican food. It tasted wonderful.

The red badges of courage

Scott's legs, post-race

I’ve only done one race and I already have scrapes on both legs. Nothing big or gross, but a couple scrapes of unknown origin. On my right calf there are two lines that are about 5.9mm apart. Since a bike chain is exactly 5.9mm wide, I am guessing the source. When it happened; I have no idea. On my left knee there is a red scrape with an equally dubious pedigree.

My right shoulder had a spot that was tender, and as I was wondering, “what the heck…” I realized it was a bruise from my top tube when I was shouldering the bike running through the never ending sand pit of despair at Lake Sammamish last weekend.

They say that if you like suffering, bike racing is the perfect sport for you. I don’t look forward to getting cuts and scrapes, and my feelings about really suffering are mixed at best. Yet the satisfaction of succeeding at something that is hard is very rewarding. The visible mementos that you get for going to battle tell a story that many are proud to share.

The weather forecast is for possible showers on Sunday. The current chance of rain is 60%. I would not mind if it was dry enough for me to employ my file treads and gain a slight advantage over my nemesis. Historically I have not done well on this course, but history is just history. My only win was on a flat grass course. Hmmm. Stay tuned.