more normal than not

This guy is great.

Carless.

It’s funny when you hear these guys talk about bikes….and what they mean….and could mean….and what they mean now…..it really hits me that the world would be a different kind of place without cars.

Now, I love to road trip.

I love to get in the car, gas it up, and just go.

I like to work on my car….and it feels like a real victory when I can fix it and GET IT TO GO again.

I can cover so much ground so quickly in a car that I almost don’t have to pay attention to where I am.

All I ever have to do is remember where I was and keep my mind on where I’m going.

The “middle part” I can ignore….it’s just the “filling” that’s keeping me from where I might be going.

Nah….I better pay attention to all of it.

It’s easy to zone out in a car, though.

( It should be noted here that, as a “professional driver” and a member of the postal craft, that I am ever hyper-vigilant when it comes to paying attention on the road. I don’t zone out….no matter whatever.)

It’s too routine to just turn on the ignition.

Getting rid of all the cars is a crazy notion, anyway.

Who in their right mind would want to get rid of the cars?

Not me.

But….wouldn’t it be great if getting crushed by a hunk of motorized steel was never a concern when you were out riding your bicycle?

I’d ride even more if I didn’t have to worry about the cars crushing me or crushing a member of my family.

That’s a utopia, for sure….to imagine a world where getting on a bicycle was as normal as anything else….where safety wasn’t a concern…where the cars weren’t a consideration when I was picking a place to ride with my family.

There’s no money in all these bicycles, anyway.

They can’t tax the air.

They can’t tax our muscles.

They can’t tax the oil on our chains.

How you gonna make money off a bunch of happy people riding bicycles?

You can’t even make them pay any carbon offsets.

Bicycles.

What a dream……

It’s going to be hotter today than it was yesterday.

That’s normal.

It gets hot this time of year.

The trouble with changes in the weather now, for me at least, is that I’m watchful of everything that happens to a degree that I maybe wasn’t before….what with the veneer of “global warming” hanging over the whole proceedings….and all.

Global warming.

And to top it all off, if you talk to the right people, you’ll discover that it’s all some kind of politcal hoax….some weird leverage that somebody put a name on to swing the political power over to the “side of right”….and that doesn’t even exist except in the minds of the crazy.

The “crazy Democrats” to be precise.

Bunch of evil kooks.

What a shame that the environment gets politicized.

Personally, I think that something’s going on.

Something is changing in the air.

Deniers gonna deny, though….that’s what they do.

I was thinking about it…..laying in the dark and “only warm” of the very early morning.

I thought, “This is kind of like having something wrong with your car….or, maybe, something that sounds a little bit different than before….some new knock or squealing pulley….some tic or wobble that you can’t really identify or change….something that you don’t know how to fix….and hope will just go away on its own….”

This is like that new noise that you hope to ignore by turning up the radio.

This is like that noise that was just irritating at first….that’s sounding more and more terminal as the days go by.

Or, maybe, that you’d know was sounding worse if you didn’t have the radio turned up so loud.

It’s good you started cranking the tunes when it was only an irritating noise, though….it’d be a shame to hear what was becoming really disarming.

You want to ignore the things you cannot fix.

I love music.

I’ll crank up the jams….especially if the only company that I have in the car is a bunch of letters and catalogs.

If there’s nobody whose ears are hurting riding with me, I’ll crank up the jams.

But if I was cranking the tunes, louder and louder, just so that I could ignore the knocks that were getting…. louder and louder, I hope that at some point I’d figure out that it might not have been such a good idea to “crank the jams” to ignore the problem.

I might figure out when the big bang comes and the metal flaps against itself one last time….when the “car sound” turns into some weird “industrial sound”….and my ride comes to one more stop….one more explosive stop….and my “going” is halted….then I might figure out that I missed something that was important to listen to.

I might pay attention when things get really weird and I can’t “go no mo’ “.

We philosophize and conjecture ourselves into a corner.

I think there’s some truth to what people say about climate change….probably a lot of truth.

I’m such a kook.

Crank up the jams.

“turn up the radio” Madonna

I heard someone say that when one of us passes….when one of us isn’t physically here on Earth anymore….that we “lose a library”.

I guess that what they mean is that all the knowledge goes away.

I don’t know about that, really.

Maybe it’s true….but in a lot of ways, I kind of doubt it.

The doors may be closed….but the knowledge sticks around….at least a little.

My friend’s father passed away over the weekend after a pretty long illness.

That’s a hard thing to lose a parent.

I don’t think there’s much that’s harder.

It’s hard to watch a parent experience pain or discomfort…..but the relief of the end to the discomfort never covers the sadness at the loss.

I guess that I can only speak for myself….but I can’t think of anything harder that I’ve been through than losing my own parents.

This man who “went away” over the weekend…..he was a main branch.

He was a main branch of the libraries.

When I talk to his son, I realize that the “library” isn’t gone, though….just like the “library” that was my own father isn’t really gone, either.

They live through us, I guess.

This man who isn’t physically here with us anymore….he was a smart man.

He was a smart man….and kind of a smarty pants, too.

My wife said, yesterday on the way home from Greenville, when we couldn’t figure out how to return Joel’s voicemail on her cell phone, that (talking about a nice visit we had with my friend’s parents when they stopped by our little house on one of their trips) she was really glad they stopped by…

It meant a lot to us that my friend’s parents came to see us.

“That was so nice of them to stop. I could see where Joel came from talking to his Dad….” she said.

Joel is a smarty pants, too.

That’s the beauty and strength of our long friendship….it’s a yin yang kind of relationship….Joel’s smarty-pantsedness and my steadfast clarity….my rootedness….

(Who am I kidding? We’re both smartypants…)

Losing my parents tore something inside of me.

I guess that’s what love does, maybe.

But loving them made everything that’s good inside of me, too.

No one is really ever gone.

We carry them.

I don’t know what to say to someone who’s lost a parent.

What do you say?

I don’t know.

Maybe just that you love them….and are thinking of them.

Maybe that’s all….and enough.

These guys are here….here in Iceland….because they are “better” somehow.

They “know” what to do….and aren’t afraid to do it.

They are a different breed….and I can never hope to be able to do any of the things that they do.

I will never do anything exciting.

I’m one of “those people”….and I restrain the people around me from doing anything interesting or fun….just by being present and by being me.

Nah!!!! I’m only keeeeeding!!! I don’t believe that.

I don’t believe that.

When I start thinking about people doing interesting things, I do sometimes wonder how it is that they are able to accomplish these adventures.

Then I remember the times I’ve just sat down in the driver’s seat and turned a key….or laced up my running shoes or hiking boots….or got on the plane.

It was just that easy.

I’m not always a good planner.

I’m a really good worrier…but I’m not a very good planner.

And I’ve managed to have some adventures in spite of my sub-standard planning abilities.

Maybe a lack of planning forces you into adventures?

Maybe an “adventure” is JUST a trip that’s falling apart that you somehow turn into something memorably bearable.

That’s a philosophy that my wife and children probably appreciate?

Probably not….comfort and ease are good things….especially with a couple of really young children in tow.

Comfort and ease….

Maybe what I’m thinking is that there is always going to be something that you can be afraid of.

Maybe you don’t want to go to “paradise” because you think that you might get some kind of weird parasite.

Maybe the exchange rate is bad right now.

Maybe the people don’t speak the same language as you.

Maybe you heard that the trucks all fly rebel flags….and they target people who don’t wear John Deere hats….and THEN THEY KILL THEM.

Maybe your head is full of fears.

Your head.

I’m not talking about me.

I’m brave.

There is no reason to not start to pursue what you feel is important in your life.

Maybe the “quiet desperation” is never realizing that there is always a chance of choice.

Nothing is static….nothing stays the same….nothing can’t be changed….even if it’s only in small increments.

I WANT TO SEE!!

I WANT MY CHILDREN TO SEE….AND HAVE A CHANCE TO BE IN…SO MUCH OF THE WORLD.

I want to wake up excited about the possibilities that this world holds.

I want to wake up….completely.

WIDE AWAKE.

Jenny took the kids down to the river to play yesterday afternoon….but we’d had some hard rain the night before, and the water was too strong.

It was rushing to the sea too hard for playing.

The rain was a big topic of conversation when I got to work.

Apparently, we had about 2 to 4 inches (of rain) in a matter of either hours or minutes, depending on who was talking about the weather.

I hear different things depending on who’s doing the talking.

You never know what people are going to say.

I know that the drive into work was a little different yesterday.

There were a lot of driveways that used to be up on the hill that were now down in the road.

It makes for a bumpy ride when the smooth asphalt is covered with red dirt and gravel.

Water is strong stuff…stronger than me, even.

It can move a mountain.

Of course, given enough time and a good shovel and a wheelbarrow with a pumped up tire, I could move a mountain, too.

I have no doubt that, like most of the “pointless in the end” activities that I engage in, I could move a mountain given a little bit of lifelong dedication and a couple of good tools.

I don’t want that to be my life’s work, though.

I have bigger fish to fry than worrying about moving a mountain somewhere.

But….again….I digress.

The water was moving too fast under and around the bridge for little people to play.

This is a picture of the bridge in calmer currents.

I suppose that the water was up to the smooth concrete….or maybe a little beyond after all the rain yesterday.

Sometimes, the whole bridge gets covered with water and the road floods.

We have to find a different way out when that happens.

Compared to what I see in other places, though, we’ve always been pretty lucky.

Some places in our country are bone dry…..empty lakes and new water restrictions.

Some places, cars get washed away.

Our driveways move to a different part of the road.

That’s not so bad.

It rained so hard the satellite tv stopped working.

How much worse can it get?

” i think it’s going to rain today” Norah Jones