What bad luck!

     So, it's a rainy day.  You're late for whatever it is you happen to be in a hurry to get to, you're stuck in traffic, and now on top of everything, you've spilled your coffee on yourself.  How unlucky are you?  No, really, how unlucky are you?  Surely you've said it before, but have you ever taken the time to really consider it?  Well, lets see.  You've managed to spill coffee on yourself so, presumably, you had money to buy coffee.  You're stuck in traffic, but to be stuck in traffic implies that you're fortunate enough to have a car to use.  In order to be in a hurry to get somewhere, you must have woken up this morning; in order to wake up this morning you must have been born; in order to be born, you're parent's must have met and conceived you; in order for your parents to have met, they must each have family roots that extend back as far as you can trace; in order to have a family roots, life must have come into existence on the earth; in order for life to start on earth, the solar system must have formed just as it did; in order for the solar system to form just as it did, all the particles of milky way must have come together just as they did to form the galaxy; and in order for the milky way to come together, the universe had to start exactly how, and when it did.  Now, how unlucky were you to be able to spill your coffee?

Have an unlucky day.

A poem.

Always be drunk.  That's it!  The great imperative!  Not to feel the horrible burdon of time weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite.  

Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.  But get Drunk.

And if sometimes you should happen to awake, on the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room, and find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has vanished, 

ask the wind and the wave, ask the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will all reply:

"It is time to get drunk!  If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.

     That was Charles Baudelaire's poem, 'Get Drunk'.  He's right, you know.  We should be drunk all the time... maybe not on alcohol, but on something!  Drunks forget their worries, their weaknesses and limitations.  Drunks throw caution to the wind and aim high.  They may never make it, but as long as they stay drunk they'll never stop trying.  It gets hard to stay drunk on adventures sometimes, especially in the Pittsburgh winter, but I try, and spring will be here soon.  In the mean time, I'll stay drunk on other things.


Have a drunk day.

Better late than never

     Well, I'm right on time again--about a week late. . . I think bi-weekly is a reasonable timeframe for blog posts though.  Maybe I'll adopt that for now, and hopefully there will be some bonus blogs for you along the way too.

     The world didn't end (damn mayans), so I guess I owe you another post now.  In these past  snowy weeks, I've been putting my east coast BMX adventure to words in what I hope one day will be an entertaining book.  I've also started noting--each day--my accomplishments in a journal.  I haven't yet devised a penalty/award system for myself, but it is rewarding regardless.  Today's list included selling my old computer and (finally) putting together a (joke) slideshow using my pictures from Europe. Productive. Once I remove some faces that prefer to not be shown, I'll probably post it up here.  I've taken some pictures recently too, but haven't had time to do the editing on the majority of them, but here's what I have for you now.

  

Have a snowy, productive day.

It's all over.

Here we are... at the end of days... but what better time to be alive.  How few people will get to be alive  when the world comes to an end? Wow, we're lucky!  It's almost five hours into this apocalypse, and so far, so good... but it doesn't really matter, does it?  If it's ending, it's ending, and if it's not, it's not.  What really matters is what you've done.  What matters is if you're happy with what you've accomplished in your time.  It may be the end of the world... or... it may not... but either way, it's a time for reflection.  Are you happy where you are?  Are you happy where you've been?   If so, then good!  Keep it up!   If the world ends, then you'll die happy.  If not, then let's hope the world doesn't end, but let's call it the end of the world anyways.  Let's wake up tomorrow in a new world.  A world where we're totally new people, and where we are what we really want to be.  There's no better time to start a new life than the end of days!  Good Luck!

Have an apocalyptic day... and maybe a new beginning.

Let's do something BIG!

     It usually happens near the end of the bottle.  You're out with some friends and everyone's had a bit more than their limit when someone comes up with a great idea!  Ya! Let's do something big!  We could run that company... or invent that product... or open that store... or....  Who's buying this round?  No I bought the last one!  No I did!  And then all of a sudden you're back in your bed. The sun's up,  your head's pounding, and you're too sick to eat 'til it's dark out again.  You probably won't recall all those great ideas, or at least won't talk about them until the next time you're too drunk to remember.  It's a shame.  There's no reason you couldn't really do any of these things, but they're just too big to start.  That's why you only think them up after a bunch of booze, when you're ten feet tall and bulletproof.  Nobody wants to start small, but that's what you have to do.  And you have to keep doing it!  Think about it another way:  You could try to build a tree, but it wouldn't turn out right, and it would be a lot easier to just plant a seed.  So, hey! Lets do something small!  Eventually it'll be something big.  

Have a small day.   

A story.

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”

The American then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then?”

The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?” asked the fisherman, “Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evening, sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos!”

I came across this story in a jimmy johns sandwich shop of all places. It really makes you think about what your dreams and goals are, cause you might already have them and just not realize it.

Have an enterprising day.

Wait... Maybe don't.

A flash in the pan.

I wrote this a while ago as a preface to an essay that was never finished.  It was about living your life backwards by pondering what you would do if you knew you had one second to live.  Who would you be with? Where? Doing what?  Then doing the same for a minute, an hour, a day, a week... all the way up to a century.  By doing this you discover what's really important to you and what you want to accomplish with your life.  So, since I never finished the essay, I thought I'd share this portion of it with all of you.  
       It's been said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die.  The sum of all of your experiences in this world drifts through your consciousness to be reflected upon one last time before your passing into whatever lies beyond this life. I personally have never had a near death experience, but this idea seems plausible.  Everyone hopes they amount to something in this lifetime and it seems only logical that ones last thoughts would be on what impact they've made on the world and the people around them.  The part of this phrase that really provoked my thoughts however is not the idea of this stream of events pouring through your mind before you die, but the timing involved in the process, because who's to say how long a 'flash' is?  Is it a second? A minute? Five?  Maybe it's about seventy eight and a half years for the average person in the United States.  That's right, the entirety of your life is the flash.  It's interesting to look at life in this way, because then this 'flash' becomes not only your own reflection on your life, but a series of chances to change its course toward better reflections in the future.  This only works, however, if we have the foresight to look forward to looking back. 
If everyone was given an expiration date, a definite time and date when they knew they were going to die, most people would be more prudent with their time, using it productively to work towards an ultimate objective.  Unfortunately, we are not afforded this blessing (or curse) in our lifetime, and we consequently go on idly through our lives usually forgetting, and sometimes distracting ourselves from our eventual fate.  This is not to say that we should spend our entire lives fretting over the conclusion, but to ignore it is equally illogical and unproductive.  In any endeavor there is a goal towards which all other actions contribute, and life, being the ultimate endeavor, should be no different.  

George Carlin had the same idea a while ago, but he presented it a bit more comically:

I want to live my next life backwards:
You start out dead and get that out of the way.
Then you wake up in a nursing home
feeling better every day.
Then you get kicked out for being too healthy.
Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension.
Then when you start work,
you get a gold watch on your first day.

You work 40 years
until you're too young to work.
You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous.

Then you go to primary school,
you become a kid,
you play,
and you have no responsibilities.
Then you become a baby, and then...

You spend your last 9 months
floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions
- central heating, room service on tap,
and then...
You finish off as an orgasm.

Have a backwards day.

The sky is falling!

   
     Run for the hills!  Natural disasters are rampant, terrorists are running loose, the economy's collapsing and the end of the world is just around the corner.  Even if those darn Maya were wrong in their apocalyptic calendar predictions, we'll all be living in a third world police state within a years time.  It seems there's nothing but bad news everywhere you look anymore.  At least that's the world presented to us on television, radio, and the other media outlets we're surrounded by today.  But what about in your world?  Open up the front door... no terrorists here.  Look out the window... I don't see any volcanos in my back yard.  The truth is, some of these things may be happening in the world, but for the most part it's not nearly as bad as the media makes it out to be.  It used to be that there were about 30-60 minutes each evening dedicated to the news of the day and that was sufficient to keep us all relatively informed, but now with multiple 24 hour news networks competing for our advertising dollars there's just too much time to fill up with 'news', and if a story on one station isn't as sensational as the one on the next, then the audience will simply change the channel and take those dollars with them.  In today's world police look like soldiers, their cars like tanks.  They used to be our friends, remember?  "To serve and protect", I believe it was.  Even the weather doesn't tell us how beautiful it's gonna be outside anymore, it tells us how likely a severe storm or natural disaster is.  Fear is a terrible way to live, but only when you let it take over.  So, next time someone calls for doom in the forecast, take a moment and look outside.

     The sky isn't falling at all!  And even if it was, worrying about it isn't gonna help.  If you're really that worried then get off your butt and do something about it.

Have a fearless day.

So... I guess you've noticed...

     I missed last week's post.  No... the blog isn't dead... I was on vacation with my family and for that I apologize.  What I don't apologize for, however, is the all the spectacular video footage I got while I was away.  It was a huge success, even though I probably did more work filming and photographing the whole endeavor than I would have done if I had stayed home at my job.  No matter.  If I wanted to rest I could have stayed in bed.  So, anyways, blog posts will now continue as normal, and I'll have the footage (about 300 video clips to be exact) put together to show you all within the next few weeks.  Until then you can look to these great videos which I'll be viewing for inspiration in making mine.

Have a successful day.

Kids know what's up. ~or~ You learn all the B.S.

       
       Weather canceled my rafting trip again, but I visited my little cousins (and their dog) last weekend at their house out in the Alleghenny National Forest and had a great time with them. Kids are smart.  They know how the world works.  They might not understand it all, but deep down they know it.

   
      And I don't mean how adults run the world, I mean how we humans are connected to the animals, the plants, and all of nature...  The truths that are obvious to us until we have other ideas shoehorned into our brains.  It's easy to see it in children's motivations and their activities.  When kids have some free time what do they do? Waste their time watching other people compete in sports, or listening to people talk (gossip mostly) about what others are doing in the world?  No.  They go out to a field, or to the woods, or somewhere else in nature and explore their world and experience things for themselves... until they're taught not to.  How many times were you told as a young child to stay out of the woods? or not to play in the dirt? or not to eat the dirt!?  And you didn't see the tiniest thing wrong with it until it was beaten into your brain not to do it!
     Kids know whats up, but as they grow up they learn to be disgusted by the natural world that we're a part of and learn all the other B.S. that becomes the troubles of the world we live in.  That's why I've always tried to remember to stay a kid as much as possible.  At least as far as keeping the mindset of exploration and of our connection to the natural world.  It might not help me fit in with other 'adults' (I prefer being a 'grown up' personally), but at least I'm not selling my soul for a dollar or forgetting where I came from... and where I'm going.    

 

Have a childish day.

A pale blue dot.

   
       I came across this video long ago, but just recently rediscovered it.  Carl Sagan had an always eloquent way of presenting our world to us, and his programs shaped a lot of my philosophy on life.  Watching this video puts everything in perspective for me, and if you're any kind of thinking being it should do something similar for you too.  It's hard to get worried about the little troubles of life when you think of where we actually are, and how lucky each of us is to even be given a chance to experience this place for the short time we have.  Get out and explore it!


       If you liked that short monologue, you should consider watching 'Cosmos', a TV series featuring Carl Sagan that was produced in the late seventies (it's available on netflix, hulu, and at least partially on youtube).  If you can watch the entirety of that series and still can come up with reasons to hate things in this world, then you're doing something wrong.


Have a day (it doesn't matter what kind, but just appreciate it).

Death. The great motivator.

        I found this video of the late Steve Jobs giving a speech at a graduation ceremony.  He touches on on all the points I've tried to make recently, although maybe a little more charismatically and a bit more concisely (and I thought I was doing a good job!).  Living for yourself, not worrying about making mistakes, having nothing to lose in the end.  If I'm not convincing enough for you, then maybe he will be, cause statistically you're probably reading this on something he made. 

The video is done!

So, my entry into Alastair Humphrey's micro adventure film festival is finally ready for your viewing pleasure and critique.  Let me know what you think of it on here, or on youtube.  You'll probably find it a little cheesy, but hopefully in an uplifting, motivational speaker kind of way, not a hacky bad comedian way.  I'm happy with how it turned out for the most part, and I think it embodies the feel Alastair is going for with this contest, and with his micro adventures.

Here it is:

My next video will be about rain...  inside...  hopefully...   Stay tuned in june to check it out.


Have an uplifting, motivated day.

Looking forward to looking back.

      I was at dinner with some work friends a few weeks ago to celebrate an employee's departure from the company to go to South America.  Of course, given the circumstances of the get together, the conversation soon turned to travel.  They all talked of their cruises and Disney vacations, and I of my months in tents and my minimally equipped, underfunded adventures, and though we spoke of opposite ends of the travel spectrum, it soon became apparent that we were all talking about the same aspects of our trips... The 'bad' experiences.  Their 'bad' experiences consisted of inadequate closet and bathroom space, queen beds instead of kings, and other annoyances, while mine consisted of riding bikes through barren marshland with no water for hours on end and pitching tents in cactus patches.  Each person has their own idea of bad, I suppose, but the point is clear: problems encountered while traveling make for the best stories.  It makes sense.  If everything goes to plan then there's no story to tell.  Would you rather hear the story about the time we spent the night in the woods and then drove home in our car the next day, or the time we had to spend the night in the woods because our car broke down and then we walked out the next day?  In my mind one story stands out as the obvious winner here.

     So, problems make for better stories than plans that work out. So what?  Well that's not such a big deal until you take it a step farther.  I realized this long ago, and because of it, I tend to deal with problems much better and more calmly than most.  If you have ever been around me when things start going wrong, then you'll know that as soon as they do, I crack a smile.  Everyone else might be miserable, we might be lost, or out of money, but I know it's gonna be a good story.
      I can't begin to count the number of times I've been sitting around with friends recounting a 'bad' experience I've had and laughing out loud with the very same people who were hating the world when we went through it, but every time I do I remind them that this is why I wasn't miserable myself.  That this funny story was what I was thinking about when everything was going wrong, and that I knew we'd all be here laughing about it together in the future.  So why would you ever be angry, or sad, or upset about problems that come up when you can just look forward to looking back and laugh at the situation you're facing?  It'll be funny later, so just think about later now.


        Micro-adventure video is almost done.  Hopefully I'll have it up later on in the week.  Until then enjoy this picture of Kenny psyched about our hot tub.

Have a 'bad' day.

Good use of the 5-9

So, this past week was spent cooking up half baked plans to travel, to live without a traditional 9-5, and myriad other pipe dreams.  For now they are just that, but I am making progress (at least in my mind) on the blog, photo, and video front.  Just yesterday I finished filming for my entry into Alistair Humphreys's micro-adventure film festival.  The adventure was quite micro, and mostly a mental one I suppose, but a fun one none-the-less.  You'll have to wait until it's fully edited next week or so to find out exactly what it is, though.  Make sure to vote for me on his website when the time comes (I'll remind you).

Until then, have a splendid day.

More potential than you think.

        Life is so busy!  The video of Eva with her bees is mostly done, but I won't have it up until tomorrow or sunday.  It's not my best work but it certainly isn't my worst.  I have to use whatever music I can find that's free to license, so I'm not always happy with the audio track, but I do with it what I can.  I'm just glad to be behind a camera again.  I let myself fall through the cracks on that and some other things in the recent past, but I think I'm on the right track again.  It would have been nicer if I hadn't fallen off them in the first place though.  Have you ever imagined what it would be like if you never stopped pursuing what you wanted in life?  As a child, maybe you played a sport, maybe played an instrument, maybe you wrote stories; you had dreams that you put a lot of time in to is the point.  But adulthood reared its ugly head and those dreams were probably pushed to a back burner, or off the stove entirely.  I had these thoughts while looking at my young cousin a little while back.  He was about four at the time and I thought to myself for the first time "Wow! He has all the opportunity in the world.  No commitments to hold him down. He can go any direction he chooses  and he has all the time in the world to perfect whatever his pursuit might be."  Then I thought of how I had let life get in the way of some of the things I used to pursue and realized that he too probably wouldn't understand his potential until it was too late -- but wait -- then I took a step back for a minute.  If I, a twenty-something wanna-be-adventurer, could see this in my little cousin, what did the forty-somethings lamenting their own direction in life think of me, and the sixty-somethings of them.  Its never too late to make a change and to choose the life you want for yourself.  I guess if you're a fifty-eight year old trying to break into the professional stunt unicycling circuit you might get some laughs from the younger participants, but what else are you gonna do? Not go after what you want?  So, I fell off the rails for a while.  Oh well.  Time to play catch up i guess.  Unless you're a total pessimist, or a total procrastinator, or a hundred years old (and that one's debatable), there is always potential, and I hope I can always keep that idea with me.

P.S. If any hundred year olds (or even ninety year olds),  are for some reason reading this, get in touch with me, cause I bet you have some awesome stories to tell.  And if anyone reading has any music tracks they would like to allow me to use in future videos, please get in touch with me as well, and I'll see what I can do with them.   THANKS!

Have an optimistic day.

   

We're learning how to unicycle.

I don't watch whole lot of TV, but if you do, you may have noticed that people on TV don't watch a whole lot of TV.  That's because the writers of the show make their character's (fake) lives sufficiently interesting and fulfilling to eliminate the need to live vicariously through others.  If they didn't, you probably (hopefully) wouldn't watch.  If you saw people on TV watching TV, you'd probably hit the channel + or -  button in quick fashion, but perhaps a better option would be the larger red button at the top of the remote.  Then you could go out and star in your own personal TV series with a cast, crew and story lines of your choosing and the whole world as your audience.  Get away from the routine! Do something! Start something! Make something!  This may not seem to be a profound undertaking, but it becomes more so when you realize that the only thing most of the people around you have made recently is money... whatever that is.

If this guy doesn't get you motivated to set out and chase all your dreams, then nothing will.  I'll be participating in his film festival this summer.  I encourage everyone to do the same.

Now that I've gotten the first and most irrelevant post out of the way, I'll venture a more meaningful passage, namely defining the range and scope of this blog. 

A few definitions should speed up the process. 

[from Merriam-Webster.com]

Venture

transitive verb

1

: to expose to hazard : risk, gamble <ventured a buck or two on the race>

2

: to undertake the risks and dangers of : brave <ventured the stormy sea>

3

: to offer at the risk of rebuff, rejection, or censure<venture an opinion>

intransitive verb

: to proceed especially in the face of danger

OK, what about...

Adventure

noun

1

a : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risksb : the encountering of risks adventure>

2

: an exciting or remarkable experience adventure in exotic dining>

3

: an enterprise involving financial risk

Perfect.

So, basically this blog will be an amalgam of all things risky, exciting, or remarkable in my life presented to you--at the risk of occasionally looking like a fool.

Heres another picture.