Full Blog

This is my new blog layout! On the left there are "at-a-glance" links to the most recent entries from each of my main four categories. Below this is the normal blog text, all the entries sorted by date, newest-first. I even added a bio, finally, over there on the right. What next, a photo on the front page? Who knows!

April 16, 2007

My Knees are so Frustrating

I've been gearing up for the MS150 this weekend. I went out with Mark to ride the Real Ale Ride this Saturday, 80 miles with some tough hills. They called it due to weather after we arrived, so we rode the 25 mile route in spite of the cancellation. The winds were pretty intense, but 25 miles isn't a terrible amount, so we finished, had a few beers, ate some BBQ, and left.

During that ride, my knee was acting up a little, but not as much as it has in the past. Furthermore, I thought I really noticed some alignment issues -- I wasn't tracking my knee properly over my foot as I rode, so I worked to diligently keep my form perfect and it seemed to help.

On Sunday it was much nicer out, and I still needed more miles, so I went out for a 60-mile ride with the Flyers. We took it easier, nothing like the pace we did last time. This time I think we did 16mph average, whereas last time was like 18.6 (and about 16 miles longer) so this wasn't extremely strenuous.

That said, I noticed more knee pain during that ride. I realized even though I was trying to hold the knee above the foot, I was collapsing down into the arch on the downstroke, so it was not really spreading the weight out properly, and torquing the knee in a way that wasn't great, so about 20 miles in I realized the problem and started more diligently pushing forward and out through the kneecap to keep the foot balanced. I thought that dealt with it.

My knee was sore after the ride, but felt fine as I did some gardening work and whatnot.

Today, my knee is more sore than it was yesterday. Not so sore I can't walk, or that I'm limping, or anything, but sore. I called Austin Sports Med and made an appointment for tomorrow, and will try to get a referral from him for Sports Center Austin and get in there as soon as I can.

A half hour ago I was in line at Chipotle getting a burrito, and doing some stretching -- simple standing stretch with the knee flexed, holding the top of the foot and pulling it back towards the hip, then attempting to straighten the hips and draw the knee back any amount... and suddenly my knee hurt more, and when I set the leg down I felt that it had swollen, which up to now it has not visibly done.

I'm so frustrated. I'm sitting at my desk right now and my knee is so tender that it aches just to flex and extend.

I'm going to go to the doctors and physical therapists and talk to them and see what they say, but I have a really strong suspicion I'd have to be an idiot to bike the MS150 this weekend, at this point. Even if I suddenly knew the absolute perfect riding form that wouldn't injure me further, it seems like my knee can't recover from its current state in 5 days.

Given that all my riding up to now has been in training for the MS150, and a lot of generous, wonderful people have donated to my ride, it really upsets me to think I might have to cancel it.

It also upsets me to have such pathetically flimsy knees. I have friends who do all sorts of exercises and sports and never have any joint issues, and I've been studying Iyengar yoga for 5 years with the explicit goal of building this piercing body awareness and strong postural muscles so I can avoid injuring myself, and even then, being as mindful as I know how, I bike for a couple hours and suddenly my knees are swollen and sore.

I know things could be worse; I know I could be wheelchair-bound, for example. But that doesn't really make me feel a whole lot better. I just want a durable pair of knees, like most everyone else.

Grrr.

Addendum: Even more frustrating to me is that cycling was one of the few sports I had that didn't bother my knees. I could never go running with Erik, I can't jump on trampolines or do anything else that puts impact forces on my knees; of the sports I enjoy it's basically down to cycling, climbing, and yoga. And now cycling's bothering my pathetic, wimpy, fragile knees? This is just not okay. I rode maybe a thousand miles during my time living in San Francisco and never had the slightest knee issue, and that was biking up gigantic mountains!! Now I live in Texas where it's, by comparison, very flat, and suddenly my knees crap out on me? I swear to God I just want to rip them out of my legs.

Posted by bsharp at 11:13 AM | Comments (1)

April 02, 2007

Random Day of Good Fortune

Yesterday was just a series of great events. First, I woke up at 7:30am in order to get to the Bicycle Sport Shop parking lot at 8:30 for the Austin Flyers' morning ride. A ton of people showed up; I think there were 20 in the parking lot. A third of those went on the 20-mile beginner's ride and the rest of us left for Buda. I was told it was a 30-mile round trip. Shorter than I'd hoped for, but still decent.

We got to Buda and two girls on the ride said they were continuing on to San Marcos, which made it more like a 4-hour ride. Four other guys said they'd go with them, so I tagged along. It was a pretty challenging 70 miles, all told. They were strong riders, a bit stronger than me, and so I really had to work to keep up, especially on the longer (albeit all gentle) uphills. I dropped at the very end, with two of the other guys, so we finished the last 8 or so miles at a much more gentle pace.

Before the ride I'd been unable to find my good sunglasses, and realized I probably left them at the Alamo Drafthouse the night before, where I was watching the hilarious Blades of Glory with my friend Steph. After my ride I swung by the Drafthouse just to check their lost and found, expecting they were gone, of course. To my delight, they had them sitting right on top.

I got home to find an ICQ from Kent: "Are you coming to the Salt Lick tonight?"

The Salt Lick, for those that don't know, is a BBQ place outside Austin in Driftwood, TX. It's in a dry county, but they let you bring your own alcohol, and the place is huge and has a ton of character. It's a real experience, going there. Rows of wooden tables in an old stone building, a big dirt patio outside for waiting, and just a ton of people, most with coolers full of beer, enjoying the awesome weather. We got seated and opted for Family Style, which means someone starts bringing out plate after plate of brisket, sausage, and ribs, and bowl after bowl of beans, slaw, and pickles, and as much bread as you can eat.

After my ride, I didn't eat much, just a quick smoothie and a protein shake, so I was ready for it. I think I ate a pound and a half of meat, and I don't think that's an exaggeration.

We left the Salt Lick and went straight to the Alamo Drafthouse, for my second (consecutive) viewing of Blades of Glory; Kent and Kristine and Kent's dad had yet to watch it. It held up the second time, although admittedly I was nearly comatose from dinner. I slept through the trailers before the movie, in fact. I think I laughed more the night before, but mostly because I was wider awake.

Overall, a very pleasant day.

Posted by bsharp at 07:24 AM | Comments (1)

March 26, 2007

SXSW07

I've been meaning to post about SXSW this year, but have been putting it off because it is a formidable challenge. Thing is, this year was the best SXSW I've ever been to, by a long shot. A friend scored me a free badge (I love my friends) and it came in handy on a number of occasions when a mere wristband wouldn't have gotten me into a particularly crowded club.

Usually, SXSW is like any other conference: I go with measured expectations, hoping for 1 or 2 particularly great acts, expecting maybe half of them to be at least decent, and resigned to a solid contingent of duds that I bail on early.

Every year our preparation becomes more intense. This year, we had a little crew of 5 people listening to all the downloadable mp3s and building a calendar for the month leading up to the festival. I cooked up some perl to pull them off the SXSW website and tag them appropriately. Also, due to Kristine and Randy's shrewd sense of project management, this year we harnessed the power of Google Spreadsheets to collaborate on the commenting. I hacked up my perl to dump a CSV file from the SXSW website, imported it (somewhat painstakingly; Google Spreadsheet is currently a pretty rough beta, I discovered), and then listened away.

This year, though, I was astonished by how good the shows were. Almost every show I went to was good, and frankly most were great. Here's the rundown, starting with the "highlights," if you can really call them that. They comprised easily half my show, maybe more. I'm stealing Kent's layout, here. Oh yeah, you should read his SXSW roundup and Kristine's and Randy's, too, in addition to mine; between the four of us you should have a decent picture of what the show looked like from our Google Spreadsheets corner of the world.

The Great

Tunng - I saw Tunng for the first time last year, and their live show is fantastic. Randy observed this year that it's a very consistent combination of nearly-hypnotic repetition, cheerful energy, and the edgy electronic elements backing up solid folk music. The band members are really into the music, and the music is very good. I love these guys, and have already bought their second album. I got their first last year, and was happy to see I don't have to mail order their stuff from the UK directly any more. Hopefully that means they're becoming successful.

Telephone Jim Jesus - This guy's sample mp3 was good enough to get me to go hear him, and then it turned out to be his worst song by far. Super aggressive beats and bass behind experimental electronica, and to back it up, this dude had the longest dreads I saw at SXSW, and he was a white guy from Oakland. I talked to him later and he was super-friendly, too, took a picture hugging a fan (at the fan's request.) Sadly a lot of what he played he says is unreleased, but coming out later this year.

Iamx - Chris Corner of the Sneaker Pimps is the main guy in this band, backed up by his girlfriend on keyboards and a couple guys on percussion and guitar. It's basically Sneaker Pimps but more goth and more 80s. It's super-intense music, and Chris has a great voice. Plus, he did the whole show shirtless, with suspenders, a too-tight thrifted tuxedo jacket, and a top hat encrusted with mirror tiles. Tons of energy, lots of fun, and the crowd, while not huge, was very into it. He let a guy from the crowd sing for a bit, and the guy had a good voice -- weird!

Errors - Four cute Scottish boys were victims of last-minute rescheduling, and so their 9pm show really started at 8:35, and I got there at 8:50, in time to see their last two songs. They were excellent songs, though, very remniscent of Octopus Project, dancy and lo-fi in a good way.

Buck 65 - This guy is all showmanship. Except that he's also all talent. He's got a grin so wide you can't help but laugh when he does it, like he's a cartoon character, but he's also got awesome flow and great beats. He brought a DJ friend, Paul, this year, who did a great job. Apparently they've collaborated on an album, and then there's another album Buck made with "a European", is all he'd say, and songs they played from both were excellent. He threw in some favorites, and some crazy remixes (of Centaur, especially, with a totally different backing for the same vocals) and, except for the lack of glitter / confetti, surpassed last year's fantastic show in every way.

Chromeo - These guys are Jewish nerds who play funk with vocoder vocals over the top. It's awesome. Super high-energy, really personable, and with stage presence, they turned in an excellent 1am show. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted by then that it was all I could do to sit in the back and try to stay awake, but that wasn't their fault. If they ever come back through Austin I'm going to go see them, get hammered, and dance my ass off to make up for it.

Walter Meego - I showed up late for this one, and apparently missed some lame opening songs, but by the time I got there, Randy, Mary, and Liz were dancing like crazy, and the music was good, dark and spooky but still energetic and beat-driven like their mp3 download. I'll be getting this album for sure.

Dandi Wind - A crazy, tiny, screaming girl from Montreal fronts this band, and it was super-high-energy, distorted screaming rock, and simultaneously really good and a blast to dance to. She had some pinatas, and at one point just started hurling one of them directly into the crowd, nailing people in the face. It looked like it hurt, but it didn't seem to make anyone leave, nor did she stop.

Todosantos - A noisy party rock band, half New York, half Venezuela, these guys had excellent video art to go with the show, with live controllers so they were driving the video as they played, and the music was great. Super high-energy, great crowd, and I was getting pretty drunk after Walter Meego and Dandi Wind back-to-back right beforehand, so I was dancing like crazy. This was an excellent show. At some point I noticed one of the singers wearing the torn-off white horse pinata head from the Dandi Wind show, which introduced a surreal Twilight-Zone quality to the show, since Dandi Wind had played about 10 city blocks away. I'm not sure how the pinata head made the trek.

Girl Talk - Jesus, just click on his name and look at his main myspace picture. I saw this guy twice, once at the Emo's day show and then at 1am at Elysium on Saturday, the last show of all of SXSW. In both cases the place was so packed it was hard to breathe, and the second time, I knew to prepare to dance my ass off. This, the final show at Elysium, is the one time I danced shirtless in all of SXSW, and I was still soaked in sweat. Randy and Mary and I, shirtless all, tore the place down along with a packed-way-beyond-fire-code crowd at Elysium, probably 40 people up on the stage itself, as this 20-something scrawny white guy played a set composed of constantly changing samples from basically anything and everything with a beat. He didn't care; he'd layer 80s music over gangsta rap and then segue right to contemporary indie rock, he'd mashup samples that were in totally different keys. Somehow it all worked, and I think it had a lot to do with his insane energy.

At Emo's he got started and, as soon as he had some samples queued up and playing, he threw himself into a handstand on the table, fell head-first onto his laptop, rolled off the table, jumped to his feet and instantly dove into the crowd. He continued throughout the show, just shaking like a seizure victim, staring into the crowd with crazy eyes, and grinning like a demon while he danced around the stage. At Elysium he was slightly more constrained only because he let the crowd flood the stage, and so only had about 5 square feet in which to stand and work. Even then, he had more intensity than any other performer I saw at all of SXSW. I don't think I'd listen to his stuff, say, while, driving, but as a live show, it was fantastic.

The Good

Nick Butcher - Mellow, atmospheric electronica, it was nonetheless really pleasing, and was the first show I went to. Kent and Kristine and I sat in the comfy chairs near the stage and chatted over beers with him playing in the background. It was nice.

The Deaths - I followed Randy to these guys, having never heard of them before. They were surprisingly good, just a solid indie rock band in the basement of Habana Calle 6. I'll probably get this album. Lots of energy, good melody / harmony, and not cocky at all, these guys were a lot of fun.

Kid Beyond - I didn't actually like most of his songs, but he performed them entirely with his mouth. This guy is an incredible beatboxer, and had a recording station set up run by foot pedals to sample and loop, so he'd start a song by making the beat, sample it, loop it, layer vocals on top, layer other weird sounds he'd make with his mouth, etc. Mostly, the show was good because he was just amazing to watch. If I'd liked the songs more, he'd easily be up in Great.

Cloud Cult - Randy recommended these guys highly, and they were certainly interesting, with a cello, violin, and two blank canvses that painters painted as the band played, but the show wasn't quite remarkable enough to make it up to Great. Good album, though.

Dengue Fever - A crazy bunch of bearded dudes and a female vocalist sing a mix of Cambodian Pop and rock, with enough brass to make it all sound vaguely like a theme song to an old Bond movie. I loved their mp3 download, but their live performance wasn't quite tight enough to be Great. Still quite enjoyable.

Fujiya & Miyagi - Their show was as slick and produced as their album, which is certainly better than those bands who use the studio to make up for lack of live talent and then put on a show that falls apart. That said, an even better band would have improvised, brought some more volume with a little distortion, and really turned up the energy. Still, totally enjoyable.

Menomena - I feel bad giving these guys merely a "good" because I was standing to the side of the Emo's main stage, where the acoustics fall off pretty badly, so it's probably not their fault I didn't like them more. The place was so damned full I couldn't get back under, though, unless I'd really wanted to anger some people in the crowd. I have since purchased their latest album and it's extremely novel rock, very weird, but very good.

The Not-so-Good

Bedroom Walls - I really wanted to like these guys, but they were basically a bunch of pretentious grad students who whined a lot while they were supposed to be playing, complained about the sound check, and kept sounding bad no matter how much they adjusted it. "Turn up the keyboards in the monitors," one of them said, "I can't hear them at all, and, I'm sorry, but I think it's a pretty important instrument for us!" and then they'd switch instruments and for the next two songs the new keyboardist wouldn't stop complaining about how the keyboards were overwhelming everything else in the monitors, and could they please turn them down. Ugh. The music wasn't half as good as the mp3 download, either, and their attitude led me to leave halfway through.

RJD2 - I love his DJ sets, but when he plays a live show with real instruments instead of spinning, it's missing so much production value that it ruins the experience for me. The guitars sounded rough, the sound mix was spotty, and the vocals were ragged and not quite on-key, and RJ's music really sounds much better when it's slick, well-mixed, and hi-fi. I saw him at the Emo's day show and stuck it out for a few songs, but man, I wish he'd just stick to spinning.

Peter Adams & The Nocturnal Collective - His mp3 download sounded super-dark and awesome, with music boxes, violins, and all manner of good dark edginess. Then I went to see him at BD Riley's, a lame Irish bar, no kind of venue for a high-energy dance show, and watched as they played music that didn't really sound anything like the mp3 to a crowd of people mostly sitting down drinking beer. I'd wonder if maybe I just went to the wrong show, except that it was obviously the guy pictured on the SXSW band webpage.

Ed: I went to his myspace, as I was getting the links for this entry, and listened to his other tracks, and actually I don't think his download mp3 was very representative after all; it's much darker and rather unlike his other songs. That kind of explains it -- that happens sometimes at SXSW, the most notable I can remember being Straylight Run, whose download last year was screamy and awesome, and it turned out they were a poppy Christian band. That was much more dramatic than Peter Adams' download, but it's the same gist.

Amon Tobin - I really worked to get into this show at the Parish (thank you, badge!) and then fought my way to the front where Kent, Steve, Kristine, and Liz were, because I wanted to hear songs from Foley Room, his awesome latest album. When I got in line outside, Randy said,

"You're going to see Amon Tobin? Oh, here's what his live show is like," and then cupped his hands over his mouth and made a really loud noise, somewhere between a fart and subwoofer distortion. I guessed he meant the latter.

"Nah, he's got a ton of cool samples on his latest album, and it's not even that beat-driven in most places, so I'm hoping he'll play more of that."

"Oh, that's cool," Randy said, "In that case it'll probably be more like this," and then he cupped his hands over his mouth again and made the same noise. "Maybe there'll be some of this, too," and then he made the same noise again.

Randy was right. I serendipitously ended up in literally the best spot in the Parish, up between two bass speakers leaning against the stage on the side he happened to stand. I could have easily reached up and turned off his Numark turntables. In retrospect, I probably should have, because the whole show was exactly what Randy predicted, except that instead of the noise of one mouth making a fart sound, it was like the noise of a million mouths all making fart sounds in unison. I'm pretty sure that, to this day, my insides look like cream of tomato soup, because standing between those speakers was like being in a giant blender. And he barely played even the shortest clips of sounds I recognized from Foley Room. Oh well.

Posted by bsharp at 11:57 AM | Comments (4)

March 23, 2007

Mindfulness

Warning: Crazy therapy/Buddhist diatribe ahead!

This is one of those times I use my blog half to communicate with others and half as a journal to myself that I don't particularly mind other people reading.

I had a bit of an epiphany just now. I've been working for years with the concept of mindfulness, of having that awareness of what I'm doing at all times, and trying to use it to address my negative habits, to unravel cases where I habitually become angry or depressed or stagnant, or any other of a host of things I do.

My problem has always been that I'm great at repressing emotion, learned through years and years of it while growing up. It's a good skill to have when I really do need to be calm under fire, but as a habit it's a bad one. You don't get rid of emotion by repressing it, you just feel numb, and numbness is a signal to me now that something is wrong.

I've been struggling recently with practice; I have a decent idea of where I am, and a decent idea of where I aspire to get to, but the missing piece for me has always been the practice: What do I actually do, moment to moment, to get there? By repressing, implicitly my practice is "Behave as though something is true externally, and it will become true internally."

It turns out that doesn't work for me. Upon realizing that, I've been struggling to figure out a practice that does work. It baffled me that all the Buddhist texts and talks I've read and listened to seem to omit this crucial bit of information.

On the way to therapy yesterday, I ran into a bunch of traffic thanks to some accident on Mopac. It was raining, and I found myself instantly flaring up. "What's wrong with Austinites?" I thought, angrily, "Why can't these fucking idiots drive in the rain? It's not that hard." My friend Randy always joked that in Austin, if you were inside and it started raining, you could tell within a minute -- just listen for the sirens. Somehow in Austin, once it starts raining, accidents just... happen. More than in any other city I know.

I caught myself doing that, that flare-up of anger, and immediately began breathing deeply to calm myself, thinking of rationalizations: The roads aren't designed for rain, here; the oil comes up and it gets slippery; people don't have great tires for rain, here.

And then I caught myself doing all those things and realized they're just different techniques to subdue and repress my anger. So what if there's a perfectly reasonable justification for what happened? I'm still mad, and need to deal with being mad.

After some more psychological noodling around I realized a bunch of other stuff, the purpose my anger is serving, the ways I react to situations where I am frustrated and helpless (therapy's not cheap, and I was running late, but at the same time there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.) More significantly, though, I let myself stay viscerally angry through the whole experience, and it felt a lot healthier, I felt a lot better by the time I showed up for therapy -- and then, of course, talked about it for another hour. Hah. In that sense, I guess the timing was pretty good.

It finally dawned on me that all the Buddhist texts I've read have actually given me the exact practice for solving all of these problems, and it's been quite plain and right in front of me. They all just say, "Meditate every day; mindfulness solves every problem." It seemed kind of trite so I guess I kept looking for a deeper, active practice. What should I be doing?

The answer, as it turns out, is "Just being aware." I don't have to do anything, in an active way. In fact, trying to alter my behavior at all in this case is only going to cause me problems.

It's very challenging, sometimes, being mindful of delusional behaviors I have, ways I escape reality to indulge in daydreams to find release from stress or tension or insecurity, because of course being mindful while I'm doing that saps my ability to really find that release. I compared it to someone quitting smoking who asks a friend, "Please don't let me smoke, even if I say I want a cigarette," and then gets drunk at a party and goes outside for a smoke, only to have that friend tag along and harass him. "You said not to let you!" It really saps the pleasure from that cigarette!

I realized today that there's a very direct analog to this with the practice of mindfulness of the breath in yoga. When practicing, unless it's pranayama where we're deliberately manipulating the breath in some weird way, by default we are simply mindful of the breath, the depth, tone, and length of the inhalations and exhalations, but don't attempt to actually change them.

It's hard, at first, because it's hard to monitor the breath, by default a subconscious activity, without also changing it. Eventually that becomes easier, but it still requires a novel kind of "non-action", a deliberate and active refraining from taking action. It's like un-clenching the jaw: we often clench the jaw subconsciously, and so un-clenching it is doing an active thing, but it's "non-action" because it is actively not tightening a muscle.

With the mindfulness of the breath this is more obvious. It's very clear to me when I am modifying my own breath, and it feels very recognizably different to be aware of the breath but let it go at its own pace.

With emotion and experience it is much trickier and more subtle for me. Given all my experience repressing and manipulating emotion, I am often convinced that I am just being mindful, just watching my experience go by, when really I am using all these techniques to suppress and change my experience. It feels wrong to me to be mindful while I sit, viscerally angry, teeth clenched, blood pressure rising while late for an appointment in unexpected traffic. But, at the same time, I have to recognize that it's actually healthier to do that than it is to try to wish it all away. Sure, I know the right breathing exercises and whatnot to get my blood pressure and heart rate back down. But that doesn't mean I'm not still angry. It just means I'm repressing it.

Even if I believe I can learn to stop manipulating my experience and just watch it as an un-attached observer, let it play out, there's one final key, which is believing that this practice really fixes things. It's easy to try this, to sit there and watch myself be furious, and assume it's not doing any good. Great, I can watch myself be furious for the rest of my life.

There's a bit of a leap of faith there, believing that I don't have to aggressively stuff my anger somewhere, try to reason it away, or otherwise actively push at it in any way. If I just watch it, day after day, rise and fall, then as time goes on, it will diminish.

That's the tough part about non-action: I have to make that leap of faith, just choose to believe it will work, and accept that the psychological & spiritual route from point A to point B does not always involve the psychological & spiritual equivalent of fierce, proactive bushwhacking. Sometimes that just gets me even more stuck. Sometimes the only way to get there is to just let those muscles go slack and watch as I magically float there.

You know, when I write it that way, it sounds really very pleasant, actually. Who wants to swing a machete in the hot sun for hours when we can just lie back and let everything happen for us instead? It's funny to me that my mind always feels like it needs always to be doing so much.

Posted by bsharp at 12:24 PM | Comments (1)

March 15, 2007

Charades: Out Magazine performs "Irony"

I subscribed to Out Magazine, because it's really cheap and trashy in a way I like. I immediately forgot about subscribing, so today in my mail I got my first issue.

It comes discreetly wrapped in an opaque white magazine mailer envelope, with a vague return address. I almost threw it in the recycling out of hand, assuming it was a catalog.

That's right: "Out" Magazine is discreetly packaged. So, you know, you can stay in the closet. Huh?

Posted by bsharp at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2007

Please donate for my MS150 ride!

I'm riding the MS150 ride on April 21 & 22 this year, in just over two months. It starts in Houston; it ends in Austin. That's a bit more than 150 miles in two days, which will be the longest ride -- and the first multi-day ride -- I've ever done.

It is a charity fundraiser ride, the largest single fund-raising event for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Last year they raised 11.4 million dollars, beating the previous record of 9.4 million. All that money is going to a great cause, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

I am now training in earnest for it, so that it doesn't kill me, but in addition to rippling quadriceps, hamstrings like steel cable, and calves chiseled from marble, I need something else to actually succeed... I need your help!

At the bare minimum I need to raise $400 in pledges, but naturally I'd love to exceed that by as much as I can, it being a charity ride and all. After all, if I'm going to bike about 20% of the way across this gigantic state, I might as well make it worthwhile! Know that your donations go to helping those living with Multiple Sclerosis as well as funding research for treatment, hopefully one day leading to a cure.

There's my pitch. If you are so inclined, and have a few bucks to spare, please donate on my behalf. I appreciate any amount at all; every little bit helps, seriously. Just like by the end of the second day, every pedal stroke will count. Or, I'll be counting them. Or something. In any case, your support is my motivation to actually get out there and do this.

To everyone who supports me, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

I plan to take photos and notes and blog the trip when I get back, so you can relive the cross-Texas tour with me.

Oh yeah, and if you're particularly interested, you can track my training progress as I log it here, on WeEndure. Right now I'm getting things together with some interval-style rides, and starting this weekend I expect to go for longer rides, probably 30+ miles this weekend, working up to 60 mile rides both weekend days before the event.

Posted by bsharp at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2007

Painting

Since I moved in I've had random ideas for sprucing up the bedroom a bit, and now that I'm living on a rather tight budget for the time being, options that don't cost much are becoming more appealing.

Erik had painted two of the bedroom walls a deep red color, one that I initially objected to but now must admit I really like (I'm sorry for arguing so much about the paint -- you were right, I was wrong.)

I initially decided to paint a tree silhouette in that same red on one of the remaining off-white walls, but that looked so goofy I gave up on it. Instead, I found this photo taken by the talented Laura Kicey on flickr (flickr tag searches are a wonderful thing!) and she was nice enough to give me permission to use it as the source art for a new wall painting.

To compensate for my lack of actual artistic ability, I used a bunch of random tricks and techniques, like projecting the image on the wall so I could "trace" it with vinyl electrical tape, trim the detail into it with an X-Acto knife, and then sponge it into that. I also posterized the image down to fewer solid colors so I didn't have to try to paint lots of smooth gradients over the leaves' surfaces.

It worked out really well! It took me a very long time, since every step was very involved, but it paid off. I'm really liking my bedroom more and more.

Here's a flickr set of the whole painting process.

Posted by bsharp at 02:08 AM | Comments (2)

February 06, 2007

Winter Showers

There are a number of boxes on the outside of my house that I usually expect to be on the inside of my house. My circuit breaker box, for example, is on the outside near the meter, and it took two of us searching for a good twenty minutes to figure that out back in September.

Also on the outside is my sprinkler control box. It has a lock, but the previous owner neglected to leave me the key, so it has sat, unlocked, for months. I never thought much of it, until this morning. I woke up at 8:30 to the sound of the recycling truck honking and making all sorts of noise. Annoyed, I woke up and stumbled out into the kitchen, had some breakfast, and only then looked outside to see my sprinklers running full-blast.

Apparently some neighborhood kid or something noticed that he could turn my sprinklers on at any time, for kicks. My backyard was like a swamp, and my front lawn was soaked, including the recycling container. Whoever turned the system on happened to pick the time right before the recycling pickup.

That explains all the honking and noise -- they had to brave full-blast sprinklers to get my recycling bin.

Thanks, you little jerk. The recycling pickup guys probably hate me now.

Posted by bsharp at 08:54 AM | Comments (2)

January 29, 2007

The Bridge

A while ago, I wrote about iconoclasm, about looking down on others, seeing the vast sea of humanity as a steady stream of pointless, empty gray.

Tonight I walked to the Alamo to see The Bridge, a documentary of sorts about the Golden Gate Bridge and its ongoing history as a suicide locale. Reviews have been sharply divided, the negative calling the movie a "snuff film" and reacting with repulsion to the idea that it was made at all.

I found The Bridge a beautiful, deeply moving film. I went to see it alone because I expected to weep through parts of it, and I did exactly that. The film crew held cameras on the bridge for an entire year, and then found friends and family of those who took their lives, and so chronicles through live footage and interviews the journeys of a number of the 24 that jumped last year.

Moreover, the movie was a poignant antidote to my feelings of self-importance, of condescension, of other-ness, and my desire to look upon people around me as clones, replicas of one another acting out the same motions day after day.

Over the years, hundreds and hundreds have taken their lives by jumping off the bridge. Countless more use other methods. It's easy for me to look at that sea of suffering as a statistic. What else can I do? I can't save them all, that's for sure.

The Bridge's interviews only illuminate a few lives in that endless expanse, but they do so with incredible emotion. Friends and family of the dead struggle to relate their stories, and the worst are parents explaining that they knew their child was not long for the world, and all their attempts to help had failed. Friends had grown tired of another "crying wolf," so often, that when the final call came, they hung up in frustration and disgust at what they believed another joke.

As I watched it dawned on me that what I sometimes see as that gray expanse of sameness in humanity is not gray at all. White noise sounds to our ears like the same steady stream of static, but that's only because it is too overwhelming, too dense with sound, for us to hear it as anything but.

Similarly, while it is undeniably easy to take a cold, statistical view of humanity, that ease makes it wrong. It always seems like a warning when something is easy, what worthwhile is ever very easy? No, the real challenge is seeing that incredibly dense stream of pain and joy, agony and elation, and not letting my eyes glaze until it all looks the same.

I listened to Mogwai on the way home, a song I love and played hundreds of times as I walked around the streets of San Francisco, where the movie was made, and just as it reached its crescendo tonight two ambulances sped by me on South Lamar, sirens blaring, and I couldn't help but weep as I walked along. Someone out there was headed to the emergency room, maybe dying. Connecting with that is hard enough, but connecting with it millions and millions of times over is another thing entirely.

In one of the interviews in the movie, the interviewee said that she spoke to her friend about his thoughts of suicide, and the incessancy of some pain. As the ambulances passed me I thought about ceaselessness and remembered a friend who'd once had shingles. He described it as exactly that: a pain so unspeakably intense that it demanded your full attention, that the worst part was not just that it hurt, but that it actually hurt so much that it felt imperative. It felt overwhelming, but paralyzing, too, because what could he do but endure?

Similarly, I realized that it may just be that my condescension and my easy choice to see myself as apart from others, and to look upon their experiences with a distant, cold dismissal is just a defense mechanism. The only other option is to try to expand the mind to actually empathize with all other beings, and even a glimpse of that makes me feel like my head would explode. I remember being in San Francisco and interacting with the homeless in the Mission and sometimes coming home and crying just because witnessing them in such pain was so hard to take, even as an otherwise-comfortable onlooker. Just like my friend's shingles, the worst part of that was always my impotence. I couldn't help them end their suffering, but I had to endure it nonetheless.

I once read that the Dalai Lama was giving a lecture to a large crowd when Mao Zedong died, and someone rushed in and whispered the news to him, at which point he began to weep. Mao was, of course, responsible for quite a bit of the pain the Tibetans had endured, but the Dalai Lama's reaction was out of empathy for Mao, mourning his death and the results of all the karma he accrued during his life.

That kind of magnanimity is far, far beyond my reach, but it seems like a good aspiration.

In the meantime, I'd recommend The Bridge wholeheartedly to everyone. Far from the reviewers who call it morbid or worse, I found it incredibly inspiring, an amazing exercise in empathy. I've seen movies I think better-made recently, of course -- Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Notes on a Scandal, all were very good -- but The Bridge stands out as a rare opportunity in this regard.

As when a flash of lightning rends the night,
And in its glare shows all the dark black clouds had hid,
Likewise rarely, through the buddhas' power,
Virtuous thoughts rise, brief and transient in the world.

- Shantideva, The Way of the Boddhisattva

Posted by bsharp at 09:40 PM | Comments (1)

Bathroom Remodel

I did a light remodel of my bathroom this week. It was plain white, with the crummy accessories you can see on the left here. A tiny mirror that I think came out of a funhouse, a number of people commented that it made them look fat. The vanity light was an ugly chromed Hollywood-strip of bare bulbs sticking out. Plus, the walls were all just beige, the tiles are white; other than the floors it had that sanitarium color scheme all over.

I repainted, which turned out to be really hard because I wanted these random, quirky stripes on the walls, and all Texas walls for some reason come textured by default (which drives me nuts.) I used painter's tape, but it worked against me, as the capillary action of the tape against the wall sucked the paint into the low bits of the texture. I ended up painting all the edges of the stripes by hand with a brush, which was not as bad nor time-consuming as I'd feared, but still took another few hours.

I built the new wall mirror out of Ikea mirror tiles, the ones that are about 1.5' x 2'; I caulked them to a piece of that compressed MDF-like stuff that you use as pegboard to hang tools off of, and I mounted the pegboard onto a wooden frame made out of 1' x 3' pine strips. I even put diagonals in the frame to help prevent flex.

I glued the pegboard to the frame but then added a bunch of nails for added strength. In my bedroom, I made a mirror the same way, but used screws to hold the backboard to the frame, and that pegboard material is very dense and mushrooms up a bit when you screw into it, so the surface wasn't totally flat and the mirrors, as a result, are not all totally flush. For the bathroom, the nails laid flush and the mirror is perfectly aligned.

I had to cut two of the mirror tiles to fit, and I've never cut glass before. I smashed 5 mirrors before getting 2 to cut correctly. Oops. At least it worked out, in the end, and good thing I'm not superstitious.

Posted by bsharp at 06:34 PM | Comments (2)