As if Google doesn't have their hands deep enough in my underwear drawer, I've started a YouTube channel. There's a few videos already out there, but the main impetus for the videos and updates here are that I'm doing a big race in October. So big, I've started training for it now to minimize my suffering.
Please consider liking and subscribing to my channel, as the more likes and subs I get, the more the video gets exposed via YouTube search and video recommendations. Clearly I'm not going to get rich on this stuff (if I make a single cent I'll be impressed), but my hope is that people will get inspired to go try something that might not entirely be in their comfort zone.
My YT channel name is pedalsandsixstrings, which is a play on guitar pedals and bike pedals, plus six string guitars. Maybe it's only a play in my head. I don't know if I will publish any guitar stuff in the near future. Maybe. Probably not as I'm really focused on my training and racing in 2021.
I'll be posting more, probably coinciding with video uploads as a running commentary/word vomit.
Thanks all, and Merry Christmas and happy New Year! ~C
I meant to post Vail pics, but got hit by a moose when I was uploading them. I just woke up after a 9 month coma, then promptly went snowboarding.
I'm thinking about starting a youtube channel, but that seems like a lot of work plus investment in camera gear. It's probably easier and cheaper to do a blog, but with everyone's ADHD, videos seem to have more impact. We'll see.
Anyway, here's my "first' youtube video. Definitely not my first, but my first one that I've tried to edit. Feel free to give a thumbs up/like.
For what it's worth, I used a GoPro Hero4 and a GoPro tripod. I could really use either a GoPro7 with image stabilization built in, or a gimbal. Like I said, this ain't cheap.
Jeesh. Life has been full of busy, yet unremarkable things, so the blogging impetus just hasn't been there. I just migrated this blog back from AWS to Google, mainly because I didn't see a benefit in paying for hosting. So there's that.
I'm studying for another cert (AWS Developer), and it's a real brain bender. In a good way. I grew up in the infrastructure (firewalls/routers/switches) side of the house, which has been really insulated from the people who make the apps. It's been an excellent learning opportunity and I'm enjoying it, but its a constant reminder of the fact the more I learn, the less I know.
The basement project got kicked off in March, and is still dragging on but at least they are working fast and furiously towards the end. I'm thinking there's still a few weeks to go, but maybe they'll surprise me.
We went to Vail for a week around the 4th of July, and it was incredible. We went rafting, down the Arkansas river, downhilling at Vail (that was just me), hiking at Shriner's Pass, kayaking in Lake Dillon, and just generally had a great time. The weather and scenery was so beautiful, it was hard to come back to flat and hot Kansas.
I just recently started turning the pedals again, and have been enjoying it as much as I can whilst realizing how slow and out of shape I am. I started riding flats instead of clipping in, and that's been a revelation. I enjoy it a ton, and don't see why I'd clip in again unless I'm racing or riding flow.
That's it for now. I'll try and get some Vail pics up before too long.
I'm fighting off some crud that my family has delivered unto me for my birthday weekend. It's not too bad, but still. Poor timing. Boohoo. I was thinking about the fact that if I worked a blue collar job I'd have to just fight through it, driving through rush hour, busting my arse for a solid 8 hours, then rush hour back home. I'm glad I grew up the way I did and had to work some less than good jobs over the years to be able to appreciate that perspective.
Of course I worry about my kids growing up with entitlementitis or affluenza or whatever. I'm not sure how you even work around that. They are pretty good kids at their core, but I'm trying to give them experiences that will lessen the blow of "real life" once they graduate college or whatever they do after high school.
All the things that I, and probably the previous 100 generations, consider things essential to being a grown-up, haven't been transferred to the extent I would like.
For instance, I was changing the brakes on my Audi awhile back and was trying to explain to AB how disc brakes work and how to change them and all that. It took me way longer to change them out than it should have, and he was quick to question why I bothered if I probably could have just paid a mechanic to do it. While that is true, sometimes there is pleasure to be found in manual labor. It's the feeling that knowing you aren't a completely worthless sack whose usefulness is limited by the reach of his checkbook.
These are the things we probably all have to worry about raising kids in this immediate-fulfillment-generation. I'm not sure where we're headed with all this, but it certainly will widen the gap between the have's and have-not's. Eventually the damn thing will snap as I'm not sure how much more society can take. But that's a different blog for a different time. Probably one of those angry posts I'll have.
This turned into a bit of a ramble, but that's how this codgy old brain works these days. Hope you enjoyed the ride. Speaking of ride, I'm dying for the next dirt church. I gotta get this stuff outta my lungs first, especially with these freezing air temperatures.
I kept thinking I needed to drop in another update, but like usual, I procrastinated. Then all of the sudden, we're at the end of November?
At least the weather has been nice.
I started riding my mountain bike again, and it feels great although I'm pretty slow and my legs definitely have little to no stamina. I guess that's to be expected, and that means things will only get faster from here on out.
So my last post was all about goals and being deliberate about what I spend time doing. One of my goals for next year is to ride 50 times. I'd say anything over 5 miles is a ride, and it'd be great if they were 50 rides on dirt, but sometimes the weather and/or timing doesn't line up for that.
I'm hoping to snag a new bike towards the end of next year or thereabouts, and I feel that it doesn't make sense to get a new whip if it just is going to hang on the wall. Especially in light of how freaking expensive bikes have gotten. I was thinking that way back when I worked at bike shops, $3k would get you a Trail Ferrari. Like dang near anything you could possibly want. That's a lot of money, but it's within reach for most people if it's important to them.
Fast forward 15 er 20 years, and now they are cresting $10k. $10k can get you a well-maintained Honda Accord. Or 1 bitcoin.
Obviously I don't need a Trail Ferrari (does anyone really?) but to get a nice bike that I can ride for 5-7 years it's going to cost a fair bit. My current bike is over 10 years old now, and I still like riding it but I question its long term durability and the fact that there have been so many advancements in bikes make me at least want to demo some bikes and see what all the hype is about.
I've been mulling over my life's purpose. Ok, maybe not that. Maybe I've just had mortality on my mind a lot. Not like a morbid fascination with death, but just a growing appreciation for how short life is.
Part of me realizes I have all these ideas or constructs in my head about how I want to be in x years. And it's more than how I want to be, it's what I want to be good at. I have a lot of things I've dabbled in over the years, and that's made me happy how many varied things I've done rather than what I consider a typical lifestyle. I realize there are 1000's of people who've done more than I have. 1000's of lives lived harder than mine. But still, I want to die with scars and stories and as few regrets as possible.
But with this wide variety of things I've done, my personality counters that variety with competitiveness. I'm not really the type that wants to beat the world into a bloody pulp, but I want to do something, and then improve and beat that old personal record or whatever into a bloody pulp.
I assume I'm not alone in this, but getting people to talk about that seems difficult. People seem to me to be guarded. Maybe I'm just not good at eeking the gooey centers out of people.
One of the things I've always wanted to be good at, and which is antithetical to my quiet introverted self, is to be a great story teller. My Grandpa K is a great story teller. I always love hearing his stories, no matter the subject. One of the tenets of that talent is to be able to convey something that the listener may or may not be interested in, and to get them hooked and want to hear the end of it. The end of a great story is like a joke. Sometimes it's completely out of nowhere, but it ties everything before it together and is ultimately satisfying.
To circle back, I've been thinking about the things I want to be good at. Mostly it's things I want to be good at, rather than things I want to get, which is in juxtaposition to how most of us (guilty here) spend our time. Maybe it's because I've achieved at least in my mind, an overabundance of material success that I'm able to move up Maslow's hierarchy and think about self-actualization. I'm careful to place too much happiness into the thinginess of the world. Contentment perhaps, but never hanging my hat on that slippery coat hanger of one-upmanship that seems so prevalent in today's society.
Things I want to be good at (and future blog topics):
Mountain biking
Playing guitar
Woodworking
That's a short list. But to be good at both of those consumes an inordinate amount of time and the occasional cash outlay, so I have to be real about how much stuff I want to be really good at. I figure I could probably mountain bike another 20 years, and play guitar and woodwork another 40+ if I'm lucky.
There's a lot of stuff I still want to dabble in across the way too. More like shorter-term goals. Maybe that'll be yet another post. This one is getting too long and heavy and Duke is going bonkers and crying at me. I guess he wants to play, which is all any of us wants, right?
As we (I) wind our way through the conclusion of this epic spectacle of oddities known as "Tough Mudder", a few thoughts had crossed my mind up to this point.
Miles 0-2: Good lord, I should have ran more. This is hard. It's going to be a long race.
Miles 3-7: This is pretty fun. I wish I would have ran more but now it's more about either 1) hoping the migraine doesn't come on strong, 2) keeping the water down, or 3) praying my heart doesn't end up on the wrong side of my rib cage.
Miles 8+: I can't believe I've done this. It's been hard, but either I have more grit than even I thought or something has lined up to make this a bit easier than it should be.
Now that we know what's going through my mind, we're back to the play-by-play of the obstacles. Mile 8.5 yields another split obstacle, with the newbs getting Reach Around and the Legionnaires getting Stage 5 Clinger. Reach Around looked insanely hard, but I managed it pretty well. You pretty much scale a 2x4 ladder that is tilted back toward you, and then reach up and over this platform and pull yourself up. S5C is even tougher, as you can see in the video below. The obstacles are side by side, and RA is on the far side of S5C.
Hold Your Wood was nothing more than running around carrying a big piece of wood. I probably could have carried a bit more, but I wasn't sure how much more gas I had in me and I had some fairly intense obstacles coming up.
Just after mile 10, the obstacle I was more interested in seeing how I did loomed on the horizon, Funky Munky: The Revolution. It looks like something straight out of American Ninja Warrior, and I did way better than I would have thought on it. I almost had that last ring, but needed about another inch of finger around it to maintain my grip. Don't ask me what's in that water. I'm not sure I really want to know.
We were nearly to the end of the race, and nearly fully exhausted when Arctic Enema was approaching. A couple of the guys were clearly not looking forward to this, and knew it wasn't going to be like anything else. I've never done a polar plunge before, and I'm surprised anyone could do that after enduring the AE. That just knocked everything out of you, and your body had no idea what was going on other than screaming get the hell out of this water. On the side of the dumpster is an ice truck which is constantly throwing ice in the water to make sure it stays around 34 degrees. I'm not sure if it'd feel any better or worse if it were 50 degrees and raining out or a scorching 100 degree day. I think AE sucks regardless, but at least it's quick. All I could do was holler when I got out and start walking.
While the race was drawing to an end, the last obstacle (s) were still to come. Another duo of trickery, Electroshock Therapy for the newbs, and Kong for the Legionnaires. The newbs certainly got the short end of the stick. I'm pretty sure everyone on my team hated ET, and it sure was my least favorite. It didn't hurt when you got shocked, but you could hear it, feel the snap, lose your legs, and get pissed off all in 1/10th of a second. Kong is in the background of ET, and it's pretty much swinging between gymnast rings 20 feet over a big stunt balloon. LAME.
So there you go. That was Tough Mudder 2017 and these guys are already trying to get me to sign up for 2018. Anything is possible at this point, except me doing ET again. Maybe next time I'll train a little more!
