OMFH!
Went to Capitol Reef over the weekend and rode my first honest to goodness mountain bike trail. A few observations:
- My ideal bike trail is probably somewhere in Nebraska.
- Forward momentum is essential to a vertical orientation.
- Two inches of powder fine silt is not conducive to the aforementioned forward momentum nor the accompanying vertical orientation.
- @&%#@$! clips! Granted it was my first time out and they are probably too tight. However, if you've never ridden using clips you have no sense of what too tight is until you feel like you are falling over in slow motion desperately trying to get your foot free before you hit the ground. Fortunately I landed in the previously mentioned silt and the only thing injured was my ego.
- Have you ever been driving up a mountain road and passed someone toiling up the mountain on a bike and thought, "Man. That just does not look like fun." You know what? It's not.
- At some point it becomes a competition between you and the ground. "I'll be #@#$ if I'm going to &(%#$ me into the dirt!" I begin to understand the appeal this sport has to some folk.
- There were a couple of points where we contemplated turning around and heading back to the car. If we had we wouldn't have enjoyed the above vista from the top of the cliffs. I have to admit it did help ameliorate some of the frustration generated while getting there.
- Was the reward worth the effort? Yeah. Will I do it again? Most likely. Still...I have three letters for you. A. T. V.
- Here is an elevation profile of the ride. It's not terribly accurate as I didn't have the GPS recording our progress at small enough intervals, but you get the idea.
The Wounded Inner Child
I've been meaning to write about this for a few days now, but I never seem to get around to it. Since I am playing hooky today I figured I might as well sit down and see if I can get it done before I have to go to my other class.
I don't really think of my self as wounded. Angry, yes, but wounded? There is a part of me that is aware that I probably am, but I do my best not to pay attention. In part, I don't know how useful it would be. In part, because isn't that what you're supposed to do? "What happened to the skin below my knee? Oh, wiped out on the bike. No big deal." Still, every once and a while, my inner child shouts, PAY ATTENTION TO ME DAMMIT!
I was chatting with a classmate the other day. She and I are on the student council together. To us falls the task of finding a student to speak at commencement ceremonies. She was telling me about another classmate who was campaigning to be the speaker. She was less than impressed with this individual, who I have though was a pretty good guy. When I asked her why her opinion was less than flattering, she cited a conversation she had with him about GLBT equality. Apparently he feels that the status quo is acceptable. "I have lots of gay friends. They're fine." Really?
I have to wonder how often their state of mind comes up when he's with his gay friends. Gay folk seem particularly attuned to who is open and who is not and not very many are going to talk about things that upset them with someone who is perceived as less than an ally. Do you really talk about the assumption of health insurance that married spouses enjoy? "Oh, I'm a pretty healthy person. I can just get my own. No big deal." Do you really talk about having to make a decision and hold your breath every time you mention your intimate relationship, but straight folk take it for granted that they can casually slip their relationship status into a conversation without giving it a second thought? Do you really talk about how you hate the word 'partner' because partner is not used in an intimate context in our society and it's just an excuse to let the narrow minded feel less threatened by you? Do you really talk about how it feels to have your supposed friends saying, "They're not disadvantaged. They're fine."
D and I went to see Matchbox 20 in concert last week. If you are any kind of fan, do. not. miss. them. They are absolutely amazing in concert. The first opening act was some band from New Orleans who were pretty good. They lost me on the last number with the whole, stomp-around-the-stage-and-throw-instruments thing. The second act, however, was Alanis Morrisette. Twofer! She closed her set with "Ironic." When she got to "...meeting the man of my dreams..." the bass player was wrapping a bright pink bola around the neck of one of the other guitar players. "...and meeting his beautiful husband...". Now Alanis is Canadian and she's not exactly known for mincing words. It wasn't so much that she slipped that in as it was that the crowd ate it up. Do you have any idea how it feels for a guy who spent most of his life scared of what would happen if people "found out" to have a packed arena cheering for her little subversion? To say that it was a moving experience would be something of an understatement.
I may be 40 years old, but that scared little 14 year-old is still in there somewhere and moments like that feel really good.
Illegal drugs. Boo!
I think one of my biggest pet peeves about the field of addiction treatment is this idea that we can scare people away from their addiction. It doesn't work. For one thing, people desperate for their next hit aren't thinking, "Do I take this hit and risk [insert dire prognostication here]?" Research has even demonstrated that scare tactics don't work. That doesn't stop people from trying to go that route. Today I visited a residential treatment center for drug addicts, and it happened again. Someone had found some flier that told about all the bad things smoking pot can do to you. Benefits for smoking pot: none. That's bullshit. Of course there are benefits from smoking pot or people. wouldn't. do it. Get real. Sure there are health risks as well, but there are health risks associated with drinking alcohol, too...and hamburgers and french fries and steak and butter...you get the idea. You can't deter people that way.
A while back I sat through a video shown to some teenagers about the evils of marijuana. It was all about horrific cases of cancer that supposedly resulted from marijuana use. Right in the middle of the video one of the folk being interviewed said, "This isn't about trying to scare you." What the hell? What do you call it then? Why interview some guy who lost his lower jaw, and eventually his life, to cancer? Why the graphic images of surgery to remove diseased bone? You can get oral cancer from any smoking or tobacco habit, not just pot, and for every person who might have such dire consequences there are 100 or even 1000 who don't. Do you think the kids were fooled by that disclaimer? I don't.
Perhaps the one thing that has annoyed me the most was a poster hanging in the same room where we watched the video. I don't remember the exact text now, but it basically said, "My mom drank herself into the grave, but Budweiser and Coors didn't come to her funeral." WTF? Great example of not taking responsibility for your own behavior. This is really what we want to teach teens? How to shift blame? The thing is: someone from the treatment team hung that poster up. I just don't get it.