Bone clicking cold

Wait, wait.....can you hear it? That Styrofoam squeak that sets your teeth on edge and make your ears tingle. In a second, the legs move the protesting skis over the cold snow, ripping the new wax from their bases.

Skiing fast is almost intolerable. The cold sears small bits of exposed facial skin and creates a ringing ice cream headache.

The rows of moguls are diligently lined up with whipped curly cue tops. Delectable to look at but wind packed into dense ski ripping snow. I gazed at them from the chairlift and decided to take my guy to a spot where I knew I wouldn't end up arguing with an insurance company over an emergency room visit.

As we skied over to a more sheltered chairlift, I wondered if it was possible to frostbite my thighs. They were numb but have the most significant amount of my body fat sheltering them.

Even after adding full size body warmers inside my mittens, my fingers ached with pain. That's good because fingers don't hurt when they are frostbitten.

The visual is interesting. I stayed on my feet during this lesson. (Not always a guarantee.) My client went down a few times, snowing puffing up into his face and down his collar. My core quivered with the cold just watching him.

It was a good day for top to bottom bump runs. We stayed warm...er......ish. The conditions hammered in the need for solid skills. My job was easy.

I figured it was a great lesson.....except for the chilled core until late afternoon. With that said, I wouldn't make a good desk jockey.

................................................

.... sometimes words are hard to form.

They drip off my chin in the form of sweat when I'm in the middle of a bike race.

Crying and screaming, "I want to quit!"

They rear end each other in moments of anger or joy, tripping and stumbling over the tongue.

They swim downstream with the gentlest of flow, sparkling with the sunshine.

But that time before the storm.....the quiet before the swirl of wind and the tilting of leaves....is a clue. One patchwork square prepped to join the multitude of others, becoming a new, yet hand worried quilt.

In the end, the rainbow arches across the sky, no first or last, but one beautiful moment.

Today, I saw a rainbow, and remembered, I have seen many.

(Where's the bloody leprechaun anyway?!)

I had a dream...

My dream woke me up this morning.

I hate waking up. I dislike the point where I know I have to pull the two blankets and the down comforter off me to face the chill of my bedroom.

Today, despite two dancing dogs, I took a minute to prod at the wisps of dream memory. I could see me leaving home, and, Mum. Only home was Heber City and Mum was in my house but I couldn't find her.

I felt myself run to Sandisfield. Well, it was more like float on the wings of angels. Sounds strange but the feeling was righteous and holy. I was going home to finish something, close some doors so others could open.

Only, Mum wasn't there. I could see her though. I saw her in Heber driving her car and living her life like she was whole and healthy again. I panicked and tried to run back to her. A lady walking on the street, holding her little girls hand tried to ask me questions. I ignored her. Couldn't she see I had somewhere important to go. I ran faster.

Only, she kept up with me.

I arrived in Heber knowing in my heart that Mum was there and healthy. In the dream, I never saw her but I knew, I just knew she was in my home in Heber.

I woke up.

As I drove to work, I thought of all the signals my body has given me to stop rushing through life. The soupy, quicksand feeling of unclear emotions and thought. I think about my immersion in my past, my fascination with my future, my lack of attention to my present.

None have been as effective as presenting Mum to me in Utah.

Of course, maybe I'm just crazy. I hate running and the center of the U.S. is frightfully boring.

Whaddaya think?

Abstract vs Concrete

I was a math whiz in middle school. What I call simple math, add, subtract, multiply and divide. My brain would see the number before I could articulate the words. Somehow I got tested into some advanced classes for high school.

I must have projected an aura of intelligence that I didn't really own.

Logic and reason irritated me. I didn't, and still don't, care how fast the train was traveling between Seattle and Chicago with 50 passengers compared to 150 passengers between Chicago and Massachusetts.

2x is woman, not higher math. Two x chromosomes is concrete to me. It is the craziness of being awarded the dubious prize of hormones gone rampant and a thinking style that challenges Buddha.

What brought all of this on? I went to a lecture at the Center of Excellence for http://ussa.org/magnoliaPublic/ussa/en/formembers/coaches/news/USSASportEducationPresents0.html ....Phew!

I went because I wanted to get my brain clicking for ski season and I value the input Ron has had in our teaching industry.

I didn't expect I would fully absorb the information. A combination of fluorescent lights, educational format and printed material puts me in a state of hypnotic confusion related to too many years trying to be learned. It makes me itch like poison ivy.

I'm going to veer off the road for a minute. I am about to start my fourth year racing cyclocross. The first year, I was going to be damned if I did the traditional dismount off the bike. Get your visualization skills going now.

At supposed speeds approaching a set of three barriers, about mid tib/fib height or higher,(for me, not Lurch), I was told to take my right hand off the bars, grab the top tube at approximately the same time I un-click my right foot from the pedal, swing my leg over the saddle and pass said leg between my left foot and bike frame to step on to the ground. Apparently, my left foot would magically un-click so momentum, and me, could swing my bike out to my right side at a 45 degreeish angle with the ground while I leap like a gazelle over the barriers.

It didn't always end up that way. I never got seriously hurt but I did bounce off barriers a few times with my bike still attached to my left foot.

I practice. And practiced. And practiced. With familiarity, came contempt. So, of course, I now wait until I'm closer to the barriers before I dismount. I laugh at fear of speed. I still hit the barriers but the practise ones are soft so they just fall over. Not so much with the real ones.

I also learned different ways to dismount. Depending on speed, angle and how much wine I drank the night before, depends on how I place my right foot. I have a few schema's in my back cycling jersey.

If I got the lecture right, this means I have a some reflexive memory about how to dismount from the bike. What that means, is the information doesn't have to travel all the way to my brain(most of the time) for my body to react. That means I'm saving this random number of .120 seconds over my less competent competition.

That means one thing. My competition gets pissed and beats my ass in pure demonstration of strength when they pass me on the flat grass. Alas, there are multiple elements to being a great athlete.

Yes, I know the lecture was about skiing. But, remember, I am a concrete learner. I like information to be applicable. It's cyclocross season now.

Back off, ski season. I'm not there yet.

The Wompus

"Like most upheavals, damage is only permanent when we let it be so powerful we can't get out of bed before peaking underneath to convince ourselves there is no boogeyman.

You will meet versions of your nightmares with your loved ones, your competitors and yourself. It's what we call living, laughing and loving.

Just be Jen and keep your hands steady on your bars, two fingers lightly touching your brakes and be ready to dismount before your wheel touches the barrier...people who love you will be on the sides cheering. "

I have had a few months sabbatical from my blog. I don't like drivel. I'm not a fan of social talk. I want to know the point of where I'm going. I have had to learn to be patient and wait for some clarity rather than make it happen. I had nothing to write because I had nothing to say.

The quote above is something I wrote in reply to a young friend's frustration with loved ones. She had the luxury of being life flighted off the side of a road in Otis after a crash on her bike. I say luxury because it could have been a last ride in an ambulance with a sheet over her face.

Her recovery has been a few months and now she wants to race 'cross this fall. I guess some people want her safe and racing a bike doesn't fall under that title. I understand.

But, what I really understand, is the fight. The littered battleground of disregarded choices, open bottles of guaranteed elixirs for happiness, amongst scattered plastic containers of different sizes and shapes filled with the substance of the battle that is factual and real.

We fight because we can. I look under the bed at the boogeyman and give him the finger. I know he is there. Sometimes the glow of his flourescency tumbles out and fills my bedroom with color. But I have learned to wait him out. He'll leave and bother someone else.

So my words to Jen are about living and understanding with living, comes upheaval. It's better than having that sheet over your face.

TOFU

starvation

starvation

otis

Maslow's Hierarchy

Maslow surmised that we have a hierarchy of needs. Lower ones are physiological, topped by safety, social, esteem and finally at the tippity top, self actualization.

You can google his descriptions of each level. That isn't my point.

It's easy to look ahead, look around and reach out when we feel healthy and safe. Not so much when when every card is flipped over to expose a grinning, black hearted joker.

My hand shows four aces now. Admittedly, a little tattered, but aces.

Lesson

I sat on the dry, cracked earth and pondered calling Willie, the lawn guy for all my work houses. Just get the phone and hit speed dial 'cause we talk a lot in the summer. "What's up Willie? It's your favorite garden girl. Are we watering P------'s lawn yet?" Sounded easy but my phone was slightly out of my arm's reach, lying on the ground next to my recently discarded hoody.

I looked at my phone, sighed and chose to lie my body down in the scratchy grass. The sun baked the second hoody that still cloaked me. My head felt heavy with the blood sluggishly moving towards my skull. The sounds of the dogs panting, the roofers swearing in Spanish and the wind rustling the leaves dimmed as I listened to my body's cry for sleep.

Wearily, I sat up and shuffled my butt cheeks closer to my phone. Call done, I put the stupid thing back on the ground and contemplated the garden in front of me.

I am not me, the woman I know. I move easily and rapidly through my work houses. I relish maintaining my own yard and house. Nightly..,mostly...I hop on one of my bikes for a jaunt about town or through the woods. I laugh out loud at the dogs antics on our walks.

This woman, who is she? So tired, she lets her buddy mow her front lawn without a murmur of protest. She sits in her lounge chair at 3pm, falling asleep until it's time to rise, grumbling, to feed the pups. Casting her eyes away from her bikes because she feels exhausted thinking about riding.

The dogs are more patient than I with the process. They sit at my feet, only asking for pets and love. The lack of movement creates angst for me.

There is a lesson here. I know. But, I get it. It's time to move on.

I am not crazy.

Back in my youth, (a pinhole vision down a long corridor of life), the river bordering our family property was typically a gentle body of water. I could hear the sounds of the small waterfalls dipping into the swimming hole. What still sounds like a singsong whistle of robins regaled the air. And, the zzzzzzzzzz's of the mosquito before it became suspiciously quiet as it nestled on some unreachable spot of my body. We still own that land. Someday, I will go back there but expect it won't sound the same.

In the spring, the water crashed with white water as the snow melted and I suppose the dam's were opened, diminishing the other sounds of nature.

This winter, changes in my body spoke to me like a class six rapid. I had no clue where the dangers lay, but it was clear something was occurring and I had better put on a life vest and grab a good sturdy corner of the raft.

My mantra was "be patient". I said that from December to last week. I finally found out that my constant draining fatigue and halted metabolism was due to an underachieving thyroid gland, among a few other wacky changes women endure as they age.

This is not an admittance of aging, however.

What it does mean is while I am still chanting, "be patient", I know there is an end in sight. My monastic eating habits will eventually become more elastic, allowing me to a small cup of gelat0 or indulge in a hamburger sitting in a dark, dense bun.

Until then, I will sit on the diving rock above the whitewater and relish that I am in control of my own destination, for a spell.

Staying off the hooch

Being a self admitted sugar addict who has been off the hooch for five weeks means I have to look extremely carefully at all ingredients when I buy "health" food.

I'm not real bad, you know. It's not like I chug Aunt Jemima maple syrup while I hide behind my kitchen cupboard. (No self respecting east coaster would eat syrup made with corn syrup.) I don't pack white sugar in between my gums and lips. (Mostly because it gives me shivers down my back when I mistakenly chew on it.) And, I certainly don't eat flat Hershey candy bars. However, kisses, especially with almonds, are a different creature all together!

My gal pal, Dayna, and I have talked about this. Sugar is like cocaine. One small square of 75% plus of dark chocolate is not bad for the average person. Unless you are an addict. Nibbling on one square turns into popping the whole chunk in your mouth because you want it to "melt" on your tongue. Yeah, right.

Before I know it, a second square is magically in my hands and since it's broken off from the family, it has to be eaten. Somehow, in a matter of less than a day, that 4$ bar of chocolate has one square left that has to be eaten because the paper is messing up the cupboard.

The whole progression is ugly. It leaves me feeling like ants are crawling around on my head and my pores are clogged with sugar crystals. That's why it totally pisses me off to find sugar, in whatever disguise it is wearing, in my healthy purchases. And, it really pisses me off that I have recently discovered that reading the ingredients on most packages requires me to squint and, or, hold the packages away from body in order to focus on the words. WTF!

But, it is worth it. Every bloody expensive cent is worth taking the time to look for the foods that make my body sing with happiness and free my mind of the scourge of sugar guilt.

.......I am still annoyed about the tiny print on the packages.........

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

"Life is not a dress rehearsal."


I have heard this statement several times without really listening to the words. It rapidly swam through my conscious and settled in the Red Foxx junk room of my mind.

Seriously. We all know we get one chance. Unless, of course, you get bitten by a vampire who decides he won't take all your blood and let you live a miserable existence not eating chocolate or drinking wine or devouring big loaves of yummy smelling bread slathered in salty butter and cinnamon sugar. Heyyyy, that's me for the past five weeks. Okay, let me just get back on track.

I think most of us try to do it right, life that is. It's just that overwhelming curiosity that overcomes me when I see a rock strewn, tree shaded, dirt path perfectly set up to roll some big fat tires over right when the day seems to be at the calmest point. I never hear the impending roar of Niagra falls around the right hand corner. Nor, do I see the people lined up standing in their barrels ready to jump into the white water.

Sooo, while I think I am on a shortcut to the main road, I am usually on some crazy ride through moonshine country dodging bullets and bothersome black flies. Don't get me wrong. It's fun to take the side roads....until it isn't anymore.

So, at this point in time, I do solemnly swear on this computer, to hesitate at least five minutes, er, a few minutes, ah, wait a minute. Back up. I will promise to cup my hand around my ear to listen for the sound of the crashing falls in the distance. Hopefully, I remember to cup my left one because my hearing in my right one is faltering some. Anyway, my eyesight is pretty good as long as I have my contacts in...without them, I am hopelessly blind. So, I will open my eyes wide and peer into the shadows of the trees to see the barrel wearing people. I really hope they were pink because that is sooo much easier to see in dark shadows.

You get what I'm saying. Good.

Patience

I am sitting by a pool with the undeniable need to practice the art of waiting. 1 week it takes to slow down my Western feet to move through the soggy tropical heat of Bali.

Waiting for the first cup of ambrosia/coffee takes infinite patience. The native Balian moves with measured steps and calmness. Getting a food bill takes forever.

Things we take for granted, towels and toilet paper in a hotel room, are the exception and not the rule. We multi use our sarong for a towel, a sheet and a cover for our bike shorts cladden body,(to not offend Muslims).

And, the bartering...always the bartering. Nothing is as it seems. A room price..a book..clothing..food in the markets..a taxi, all negotiable. It would be exhausting for me but Dayna loves to cross wits with the seller.

Tomorrow we head out on our bikes to Balian, a stunning surfers paradise.I can't wait!

Bali

Bali. Tomorrow. For a month.

In Kuta, back to the noisy sounds of the traffic horns. Natives calling out, "Hey, Lady" while we walk by the busy markets. Music pumping out of the primarily Australian filled bars and restaurants near Kuta beach.

To the quiet of Balian, where surfers reign. The roar of the water rolling up to the beach lull us to sleep. The tops of young coconuts lopped off to sip the water.

To the mountainous villages where I still dream about the colorful food markets and smell the Indonesian coffee and spices.

To a new adventure on Lomboc, a smaller, less touristy island.

And, always, the film of perspiration from pedaling in the tropical heat and the soothing coolness of the water at the end of a long day ride.

I look at this as my "me" time. A time to renew, regather and rethink. Last year, I didn't come back with any material belongings except the purchase of a necessary sarong to use at the hotels with no towels. I suspect this year will be the same.

Time off

Time off means spending three days getting my Heber yard into shape. Three days getting the SLC yard up to the poof poof standards of our neighbors. Saying ta ta to all the foreigners, or, at least the ones who can fly around the volcano plumes.

Most importantly, it means getting back on my bike, er....pedaling my ass back in shape for Bali, for racing, for riding with the g-narly gals pals, for health, for life.

It hurts. Really. Riding with Melissa on Sunday made me question my instructor life in the winter. Don't get me wrong. I don't plan on changing it, or, the way that I run through the winter helter skelter with all the days blending in to one.

I think it made me realize I need to take a drastic step. A cleansing one, so to speak.

A colon cleansing.

Surely if I went for a vacuuming of my insides, I wouldn't re-experience my Stein's lunch from the beginning of March on a mt bike ride in April. I wouldn't feel like heaving, or taste the copper taste of blood, or, see little white dots floating around in my vision.

It's just a thought. I'm open to other ideas.

A picture says a thousand and one words.

So much to see on one dog walk. So few fences that succeed on enclosing.

A glimmer of something beneath the surface.

Beauty of monolithic proportions.

Companions for life, however long that is.

Secrets on the surface of the water.

An enduring hidden soul.

Un-orderly, yet commonsensical chaos.

Simple pleasures.

Cotton candy on a stick. The greatest compliment to nature is how humans copy it's simplicity.

Focus on the future.

Synchronicity and family.

There is something about wandering, dogs in tow and camera in hand while silence rules....silence of civilization. Frogs croaking, birds singing and tall cattails rustling with hidden animals slows the pattern of my thoughts. The river slumbering by with tiny eruptions of discontent when rocks disrupt the ambling sings to my heart. I gather and hold the vision of Rocky charging after the ball floating down the river and Bella bounding from one clump of grass to another to finally dig furiously for some ground animal.

Spring is here and I am glad.

One small shade tree.

Once upon a time, April was the month of endings, rather than a month of fresh and new.

I was reminded of that last night when a friend was in turmoil about our winter ending. I remember three years ago grasping the whoosh of air left by my foreign friends hoping it would leave me with some semblance of sanity.

Now, I realize April is similiar to the crescent moon, part of it's glory hidden in a shadow. It waits behind a curtain of time for the right moment to appear before us.

Sometimes we only see the small thin shadow we throw as we pass through our life. We forget that the size morphs into different shapes. We envelop other people within it's shade. We provide relief for our friends, or, a place of love and entertainment.

So, while I struggle a little during April, I realize it's momentary and I hope she realizes it will change for her as well.

An exceptional day.

I am 47 going on 5 when i see the icicles hanging from the giant snow laden pine trees. It distracts me long enough to sense the narrowing of the sounds of the boots clicking into bindings and children impatiently calling out to their parents while I wait for my guest. By chance I looked up at a gigantic aspen cloaked in all it's silvery glory dipped in snow to see the hazy sun attempting to blast it's rays through the branches. Beauty quietly sang in a soft out of focus manner.

I have turned over many rocks on my intrepid journey over softly trodden paths, wide sweeping roads and vine draped jungles. With each step, I have come full circle from where I began. A childlike acceptance of what is and not what will be.

Life is uncomplicated with the realization that much of my experiences are not determined by how other's see the world. Interactions are based on individual expectations with a nominal amount being how we have learned to socialize with other beings. We try to follow rules of engagement, of proper behavior, of acceptable response, but they are part of our surface. The rivers beneath, whether raging or calm, are what really dictate our moves.

With that, I have realized I have more than just the option of standing on the river banks watching the otters play in the frigid water, or, jumping in and freezing my ever living ass off because I am ill prepared for the adventure. I am allowed to decide about my actions and prepare for the inevitable reaction.

That's when it comes to my work.

My personal life is another matter. I like to shut the barn door after the horse gets out and mates with the donkey. Ah, life is never perfect.