You Are Viewing Other

Almost exactly a year ago I was behind the wheel of an 8 ton box truck driving on ice headed to Boulder, Colorado to officially wrap up 6 months of what was certainly one of the high points of my life to date.  I still can’t quite wrap my mind around just how amazing that trip was.

Time has flown since then, and these days I’m looking at slightly different roads from on top of a bike.  Not a bad trade.

I look back at what I learned during the tour last year (primarily having to do with my world view and people) and compare it with what I’ve learned this past year, and it’s definitely been a year of self-reflection and personal growth. I’ve somehow managed to be one of the lucky ones who has come out of this economic mess with a job, but that’s just an added bonus to finding myself in a wonderful city surrounded by great people and abundant cycling.  The transition from full-time traveler to unemployment to working the 8-5 daily grind hasn’t always been an easy one, but it helps a bit when the view out the office window looks like this:

So what else…?

If you can’t tell from the lack of blog updates, I’ve been busy.  Living life takes a lot of time.

Cycling is going great.  My December fitness has never been even close to what it is now.  If I can build into next race season from the point I’m at now, *unnecessary self-centered smack-talk deleted*.  Uh, It’ll be good.  I’ll let the legs do the talking in March.

This is the time of year where the weather begins to test your dedication to riding, but so far so good.  Recent rides have included freezing temperatures, wind and rain.  Luckily, there hasn’t been a ride yet that included the spirit-killing combination of all three of those elements.  This is also not the time of year you want to be stopping for flats.

It took 4-5 miles of near-threshold after that one to get my core warm again, and I’m not sure my toes ever fully recovered during the ride.  Other than the flat, we had a great ride to Multnomah Falls in the Gorge a week ago.  Strong winds made for a slow trip out and a very fast trip back.  It’s a great ride, and I look forward to doing it again (particularly when the weather is warmer).

It’s currently trying to snow and failing, resulting in some sort of misty/slush combination.  Right now the roads are wet, but tomorrow morning everything will be ice.  The new Minoura Rollers
are already coming in handy for training, and I found the perfect storage space for them.

I realize that picture doesn’t really give any context or anything and is for the most part pointless.  I just wanted to post a picture of my new rollers.

My cross bike also remains very broken. Not that this one would magically repair itself or anything, but it also doesn’t look like it’ll be getting replaced.  Anyone have a need for some lightweight aluminum tubing?

Thanksgiving was great, December is flying by, and before I know it I’ll find myself in St. George for the holidays to visit my parents.  2009 in general has disappeared quickly, but I’ve packed plenty of fun in: racing bikes, spending time with new and old friends, exploring a new city, job hunting (not quite so much fun), working (far better than job hunting)… and all the other little things that make day-to-day life interesting.

And there’s a girl.  Girlfriend, actually.  If you follow my life enough to have made it this far into this blog post without being completely bored I’d say there’s probably a decent chance you knew this already, but if not, now you do.  It’s all still very new, but pretty much every day I’m amazed by how awesome she is.  Her name is Jess.  She’s smart, pretty, has a great personality, and races bikes.  What more could I ask for?

So yeah – life is good, and as Justin would say, ILOT.

I’ve been commuting by bike approximately 14 miles each way to and from work 2-3 times per week in the last month.

My morning commute is perfect.  I head out the door into crisp, if not cold morning weather, catch the sunrise over a calm Columbia River with Mt. Hood as a backdrop, and avoid much of the heavier traffic that starts about the time I’m getting to work.  Combine that with the hot showers with plenty of water pressure at work, and it’s a great way to show up at your desk in the morning refreshed and ready for the day.

That said, my commute home in the evening is terrible.  The end of daylight savings time this last weekend means that I’m now riding home in the dark, and I’ve quickly determined that 2 lights in back and one in front (standard-power LEDs) plus some reflective gear still isn’t enough.  Throw Vancouver drivers, who can’t hold a candle to their Portland counterparts as far as bike awareness goes, into the mix, and you’d basically have to ride like you were invisible even if you mounted a set of car headlights on your handlebars.

Then there’s the route itself.  During the daylight hours it’s fairly unassuming, but at night it turns into a different beast altogether.  The trip home goes something like this:

• Play Frogger from the get-go heading out of the parking lot while trying to avoid your coworkers pulling out.
• Next up, take a series of left and right corners that cars like to apex by cutting into the bike lane – more often than not while they’re passing you going 30 in a 20.
• Take a left onto Andresen Rd, a heavy traffic four lane road where the bike lane appears and disappears on a whim, and cars will stop at nothing to make sure they get ahead of you to cut across the bike lane into the right-turn only lanes.  I’d take another route, except there are none that get me in the direction I need to be going.
• Continue along Andresen through a section I’ve dubbed “right hook Hell” – a stretch where by default all cars will cut you off while making right turns into parking lots.
• Then comes a brief respite up a half-mile long climb where cars generally don’t have any reason to be in the bike lane, but occasionally still manage to be there anyway.
• Next up comes a fun little stretch after taking a right onto Mill Plain Rd. where generally there is a nice tailwind in the evening and I feel safe simply because I’m cruising along at 30-35MPH along with the rest of the traffic.
• After cutting across a mall parking lot to avoid two different massive intersections without any sort of bike-friendliness, you head into the woods and the city disappears on Blandford Dr.  The descent down Blandford consists of a narrow two lane road that winds its way down several hundred feet in almost complete darkness.  Thankfully traffic is minimal, and it’s actually a fun descent as long as you avoid the large pothole on the right side that you saw going the other direction that morning.
• Next up you hit the flats on Columbia House Blvd.  Here it’s back to alternating sections of shoulder and no shoulder, and usually where there is a shoulder there is glass.  At least that’s what it sounds like under my tires – I can’t actually see it in the dark.
• You come to a set of two stop lights.  No big deal.  Except that these stop lights can’t be triggered by bikes.  And they are uni-directional; only one direction at a time gets a green.  And there is rarely any traffic coming the direction you are.  The kicker: there aren’t even crosswalks or buttons to press to trigger the light.  So you wait until you see an opportunity where you think there’s less than a 20% chance of being run over and run the red.  And the other red.
• Next comes a tricky lane crossing where you have to split two lanes – the one to your right being an onramp where cars accelerate onto a freeway and the lane doesn’t split off until the last minute.
• Oh look, another traffic light you can’t trigger – at least this one usually has traffic.  More glass.  Gravel.  A tire.
• Next up comes a section of road right along the Columbia resulting in more tailwinds.  It’s dark without streetlights, so make sure to avoid the crack that runs down much of the ride side of the road.
• Hello, I-5 bridge interchange.  The process of getting onto the bridge begins with an uphill blind corner onto the pedestrian part of the bridge – a perfect setup for someone to come flying down the other direction straight into you.  You could almost see up the bridge a ways, were it not that a bunch of car headlights are directly in your line of sight blinding you.
• Here’s the really fun part.  You get to ride across a narrow (sidewalk width or less) pedestrian area for about a half mile, including a nice little uphill and downhill.  Meanwhile, you’re avoiding a railing and plunge into the Columbia on one side and girders and support beams for the bridge on the other.  Throw in being blinded by headlights, some slight pollution from the cars on the bridge, oh – and at times a 20-25MPH sidewind threatening to blow you off course into a painful situation between a bridge support beam and a hard place.
• You’ve successfully made it across the bridge.  Great! Now watch out for that sudden shifting to the right of the path that you can barely see coming due to the blinding of the car headlights.  Miss the turn and it’s into a concrete wall for you!
• Drop down a dirt section rather than taking the path that loops needlessly far around.  The path is pretty cracked and broken anyway.
• Hello Jantzen Beach.  So where do I go now?  The bike sign says cross the road and up onto the sidewalk the wrong way on the other side of the road?  Uh, okay.
• Now I get to cross at a crosswalk and hope the car speeding down the offramp sees me coming around a blind corner.
• Glass.
• Next you get to do some weird sort of looping figure eight to cross under one onramp and over another.  Finally, you’re dumped out at the North end of Delta Park East.
• Proceed through the park on a quiet backroad in complete darkness.  Ambient light doesn’t even do much good with the heavy tree cover.  The road turns slightly several times and you have to watch very closely to not wind up in a ditch.  Note to self: eat more carrots.  Did I mention the potholes? Don’t even bother to try to avoid the potholes in the dark.  Just have a very steady grip on the bars and be ready for the front wheel to jerk around wildly.
• Once you make it out of the dark, you wind up making a right turn onto a road that inevitably backs up due to the traffic on I-5 North and the nearby onramp that’s overloaded with cars.  Cut through some stopped traffic to find yourself in the left lane, or you’ll never move.
• Pass Portland International Raceway, think of warmer, sunnier days of summer bike racing, and keep on going.

From there, you arrive in what can reasonably considered Portland, and there’s really not much else to report.  It’s still another 3-4 miles to home, but it’s boring (in the good sort of way).  It’s like Portland is laid out for bike use or something.  You even see other bike commuters.  Cars happily give you the right of way.  Weird.

We’ll see how it goes.  Once my morning commute is plunged into darkness as well, riding to work may completely fall out of favor.  The ride home is not quite as dangerous as I’ve made it out to seem, but it’s certainly somewhat hectic at times.  I just hope the slight boost in fitness is greater than the negative effects of the amount of car exhaust I get to breathe on the way there and back.

It’s 3:56PM on a Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting in my apartment without any pants on.  This is primarily due to the fact that if I did happen to be wearing pants, they would be rubbing against my still raw road rash from a nice little spill I took yesterday.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks, but I’m not much worse for wear.  I started off by coming down with a nasty cold/the flu/sinus infection that took me mostly out of commission for more than a week.  Somehow or another I didn’t miss any work, but four days in a row during the week prior to this last one, I came home and was in bed asleep prior to 6-7PM, and wouldn’t wake up until 7 the next morning to go to work and repeat the process.

That didn’t stop me from going to hear ex-pro Joe Parkin talk on Friday night last week.  Nor did it keep me from seeing Mucheazy while he was in town last weekend up from San Francisco – an evening which turned into going to bed at 5AM after being the “sicko” and therefore default designated driver.

I tried to get back to workouts early this last week, but my energy level still wasn’t back.  On Monday, I jogged a mile (I’d been running 5-6 on a weekly basis) and my body decided it was done.  By Thursday, I was starting to come around and managed to feel pretty good during a plyometrics workout.

This weekend was mostly back to business as usual.  Friday night was a blast – carving pumpkins with Chris, Karey, Derek, Leeann, Kennett, Quinn, Gavin, and more – followed by going out to the bars, dancing, and generally creating chaos.

Yesterday I woke up after crashing on Derek and Leeann’s couch to a delightful pancake breakfast.  The weather was too good to not go for a ride, so Derek and I set out on our cross bikes into Forest Park.  Leif Erickson drive was a great mix of mud, leaves, and puddles that made for a slippery fun time.  I tore through corners and stayed upright the entire time – until I got to the only stretch of the road that is paved (and is less than a quarter mile long).  I was riding squinting into the sun and was headed around a corner at probably about 20MPH but had to avoid a couple of runners.  The next thing I knew, my back wheel had completely come out from under me and I slid a good 20-30 feet on my left side on the wet pavement.  I should have seen that one coming, wet leaves on pavement and all.

The damage to my shorts and knee warmers was minimal, but as is usually the case, pavement did more damage than the lycra would suggest.  I’ve got nice road rash on my hip, knee, shin, and a bit on my elbow, but nothing beyond some surface damage.  As you’d know if you’ve had road rash before, the shower following the ride is… you could say… “fun”.

I made a quick turnaround to head right back to Derek and Leeann’s place where I met up with Leeann for a photoshoot.  She wanted some flute-related photos for a website, and I wanted to get more experience with portrait photography, so we walked (I hobbled) to some interesting spots near their place.  I’m pretty happy with how things came out.

A few more on Flickr – all in all I came up with about 30 photos I really liked.

Following that, we met up with everyone (Chris, Karey, Derek, and Leeann all live in the same building as of last month) for sushi before heading over to JLV’s place for his belated 30th birthday party.  Not surprisingly, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, oversized belt buckles, and Guitar Hero
all made appearances.

Today – a three hour ride in the morning to keep the leg loose, editing photos, drinking hot chocolate, reading a book, writing this post, and more!  I had originally planned on heading out to the cyclocross race, but fresh road rash and cyclocross just doesn’t seem like the greatest combination.  I’ll make it out for a race here sometime in the near future – perhaps next weekend for Halloween ‘cross.  I just need to figure out my costume.

Yesterday marked my long ride ever, coming in at approximately 139 miles as a part of the Rapha Gentlemen’s Race.
We headed out to the beach (Lincoln City) on Friday evening and stayed in a suite at the Inn at Spanish Head thanks to team president Jim who served as sugar daddy for the evening.  We also dined on an expensive dinner with wine, and room service for breakfast, all for an unreasonably low cost.  After all that pampering, leaving the comfort of the hotel for 140 miles of suffering loomed even larger.

The view out on the ocean from our suite

About the Race

This was the 2nd annual Rapha Gentlemen’s Race, which is technically not a race, but it is anyway.  The ride pits teams of 6 riders against each other in a test of endurance, mental strength, bike flat-resistance, and teamwork.  The course covered 140 miles starting way out on the coast near Lincoln city and ending in Downtown Portland just across the east side of the river.  Teams are seeded based upon racing category in order to (in theory) give everyone a chance at winning.  The winner is simply the first team to reach the finish, and the first team was given over an hour head start on the last team.  Two checkpoints along the way ensured racers were taking (approximately) the course that everyone else was.  There is no support for the race, and teams observe the rules of the road as in any other non-race ride.  But other than that, you go as hard and fast as you possibly can while trying to survive 140 miles.

About our Race

As one of the faster teams, we started at 10:03AM (the first team off was at 8:45AM) – we were the 20th of 23 teams to start, so we had a lot of catching to do.  We rolled out and immediately started on a climb where we passed our first team of the day that was off to a slower start.

The trusty race steed, outfitted with a brand new set of Gatorskins to minimize flatting potential.

We rode hard for the first several hours and had a good pace going averaging over 23MPH including several small climbs.  We stopped for a 60 second water-refill break and saw that the Nike team was right on our heels before we headed into the hardest part of the course – up and over the coast range on back-roads.  This included the longest climb of the day, which probably lasted the better part of ten miles.  Going up the climb, we caught a team that proceeded to latch onto the back of our paceline and sit there.  We got a little concerned and ramped the pace up on the climb to try to drop one of their riders off the back knowing that if one of them dropped off all of them would have to.  Unfortunately we ended up dropping one of our riders instead and had to slow up.  We couldn’t shake the other team, and even though we got to the first checkpoint first and got to leave first, they caught us again and ended up passing us and heading up the road a bit.  They finally got what was coming to them though.  We passed them following the first long gravel section when they had to pull over to fix a flat tire.

We got over the top of the big climb, but we’d burned several of our riders probably harder than we should have.  The entire pace of the ride so far had been fairly frantic, and there were definitely tensions running high within the team, myself included.  We were eating and drinking constantly, knowing that if one of us blew up we would all drop off the pace.  We hit the second gravel section at about mile 80, which consisted of a steep descent on gravel.  Chris broke a spoke on the descent, which delayed us several minutes.  Coming into Carlton, we made another quick stop for water and Snickers bars.

At about mile 100, I got the cramping, sick feeling in my stomach that I seem to get around the 4.5 to 5 hour mark in a long ride, but I fought through it.  I should also mention that I lost a contact lens overnight and had to ride with my glasses with a slightly weaker prescription than would be ideal.  This resulted in fighting a headache throughout parts of the ride from the sunlight and minor blurriness.

About mile 100, Rob really started to hurt and we had to slow our pace to make sure he didn’t blow up completely.  We made an emergency stop at Ace hardware at mile 115 to get Rob more water and some soda for a sugar/caffeine boost.  The carbonation in the soda also did wonders for my upset stomach.  However, this stop allowed the Nike team to finally pass us, as well as several others we had recently passed.  At this point we had no idea how many teams were in front of us or behind us.

Jim searching frantically for emergency refueling liquids at Ace Hardware

We hit the final checkpoint at mile 120 and were able to do some serious passing by not stopping at the checkpoint where a number of other teams were stopped to rest or refuel.

About mile 125, Jim went from feeling okay to very not okay in a hurry.  We slowed our pace further and tried to keep him in the group.  About this time, the frustration that had been present at points throughout the ride gave way to all working towards getting to the finish.  We got to the base of the final 3+ mile climb up into the west hills of Portland and had someone pushing Jim up the climb nearly the entire way, and much of the time someone pushing the pusher for the extra horsepower.  I was feeling amazing given the distance we’d traveled and actually had the juice left in my legs to be doing some of the pushing.  Jim was a trooper and made it over the top of the climb with much grunting and grimacing.

From there we descended into Portland and rolled down Burnside to the finish where we were met by a small cheering crowd, friends, and the welcome surprise of an open bar for the riders.

We finished in 7 hours 10 minutes, with 6:50 of that being riding time for an average speed of about 20.5MPH.  We were the 5th team in and had the 2nd or 3rd fastest start to finish time on the day.  Not to shabby considering how often it felt like things were going wrong along the way. Avoiding flats was definitely a key (some other teams reportedly had 3-4 flats or more).  It was surely an experience to remember, and at the end of the day we all had a great time.

Rob and Brian making some use of the open bar

An obscenely large $ value of bikes parked at the bar

The team, from left to right:

Swan – Solid start to finish.  140 miles?  Piece of cake.

Marcroft – He was perhaps the first of us to start suffering, but he pushed through amazingly well.

Me – Laughing at Rob. Rode strong, took some good pulls, felt better at 140 than at 80.

Rob – Being Rob.  After suffering at 100, he found a second wind in the last 15 miles.

Kennettron – After pounding 2 beers on an empty stomach immediately following the ride, here he’s seen demonstrating his “sexy face” that he was trying on women at the bar, with little effect.  Kennett gets the team anchor award for the day.  Long pulls, hard work, and made it look easy.

Sparky (AKA Jimbo (AKA Jim)) – Demonstrating the face he was sporting while suffering up the final climb.  He dug deep in the pain cave.

I’ve finally got my cyclocross bike together.  For those who aren’t familiar, at first glance it looks like a road bike, but there are several important differences.

The frame geometry is slightly different to provide more clearance between the wheels and the frame.

The bike uses mountain bike pedals
(in this case a variation on mountain pedals with a bigger surface area to push against while you’re not clipped in)

And also mountain shoes rather than road shoes

Complete with tread and spikes for running in the dirt and mud.

Probably the two biggest differences – cantilever brakes to provide extra stopping power and clearance around the wheels for mud, and knobby tires wider than a standard road tire.

That’s the cleanest you’ll ever see the bike again, more than likely.  I took it out yesterday to Mt. Tabor with some teammates, where I proceeded to learn the basics of the cross dismount, shouldering the bike, and remounting the bike.  Once you get good at it,  you can dismount into a full-on run while shouldering the bike, and take a flying leap still at running pace to get back on the bike.  I’m not that fast yet, but I got a pretty good rhythm going towards the end of the day.  Now I just need to do it more so it becomes habit and my form doesn’t fly out the window in my first cross race (whenever that may be).

Today I started out on a road ride with several friends and managed to have two flats within the first several miles of the ride.  I called it a day and hopped the MAX back home.  I still wanted to get out for a ride though (in a moderate downpour at times – I’m crazy), so I pulled out the cross bike and rode up into Forest Park for several hours, and ended up riding probably 25 miles in the dirt/mud.  I got a great feel for the cross bike today and how it handles at higher speeds after I got comfortable on it.  The bike feels like you’re riding a road bike, but it has the cornering and maneuverability of a mountain bike in the dirt.

I had a blast, and I’m guessing I will be riding in that area a bunch this winter.  With all the rain and mud, it was perfect conditions to get downright filthy.

On my way home I rode back through the Pearl District in downtown Portland, where I proceeded to get all sorts of interesting looks (from being covered in mud and all).  I could tell most of them were envious that I’d been out playing in the mud.  I also got a cat-call from someone who told me I had a “great ass”.  Speaking of great asses…

“Oh wait, let me put down my uzi so I can throw better”

Gotta love the celebratory fist pump at the end.

This weekend was Eugene Celebration Stage race, a 3-day, 4-stage race including a hill climb prologue, road race, individual time trial, and criterium.

The 3 mile mile prologue climb up MacBeth was my old stomping grounds, and I set a new personal best of 12:00 flat up the climb (old record was 12:41) to finish 6th in the cat 3s.  In the road race, the finish came down to a bunch sprint and I got pretty decently positioned to make some passes and took 4th.  This morning in the time trial I proved to myself that it’s really the discipline I need to improve in for next year, as I didn’t do particularly well and finished mid-pack again with a time of 36:21 for 15th.  This stage race is almost entirely decided based upon the time trial, and that 15th place dropped me from 6th overall to 13th overall.  The criterium was fairly non-eventful other than an early breakaway I got in for 4-5 laps, and I probably finished in the 15th-20th range as I never found a good wheel to hop on in the sprint.

It’s a little bittersweet to have the road racing season come to a close, but at the same time I’m tired and could definitely stand a break.  I’ve been racing regularly since March, and there was a three-month period where I raced nearly every weekend.  This has certainly been my best season ever.  By the numbers:

31 starts, 30 finishes (1 DNF due to a flat tire)

2 flat tires (DNF as mentioned above, and the other cost me dearly as I waited 5 minutes for a wheel change and watched my chances at Elkhorn GC disappear on the first day.

0 crashes, 1 should have crashed but somehow didn’t, 3-4 other close calls.

11 top ten placings:

2nd x 2 – Rehearsal Road Race and Portland Twilight Criterium

3rd X 1 – Overall GC at Cherry Blossom Stage Race

4th X 4 – Eugene Celebration Road Race, OBRA TTT Championships, Mt. Tabor week 6, and Cherry Blossom SR Columbia Gorge Road Race

5th X 1 – Kings Valley Road Race

6th X 2 – Eugene Celebration Macbeth Prologue and Silverton Road Race

7th X 1 – Cherry Blossom SR Time Trial

I also finally got the upgrade from cat 4 to cat 3 (cat 2 next year?).

All this, and a great team to share it all with.  I enjoyed having great company, and it was a huge plus to constantly have a good number of teammates in races.

Now just a secret 130 mile race-ride coming up shortly, and then it’s cross season.  More to come on that.  Then it’s winter training to get ready for next road season.  So really, I don’t know what I’m feeling bittersweet about – next season will be here before I know it.

This last weekend I found myself out of cell phone range for the entire weekend, and it was great!

It was Hanson family camp weekend, the big annual camping get-together of my mom’s side of the family. There are a lot of us.

My aunt and uncle own a large plot on the Umpqua river, so we spent much of the weekend in or on the water swimming, rock hopping, kayaking, and so on.  I didn’t take many pictures since for the most part I didn’t dare bring my phone near the water for fear of a cousin pushing me in or some such.  But I did take a few:

The yard and house

The river, as viewed from the yard

Sleeping under the stars - mostly bug-free!

Relaxing by the river in the morning

Evening campfire - s'mores followed shortly thereafter

It was great to catch up with family, see my parents, unplug and unwind for a while, and get a mild-to-moderate sunburn in the process.

Also of note is the cross bike – slowly but surely coming together after the addition of some new components from Joel this evening.

Coming up in a week and a half is Eugene Celebration Stage Race, the final road racing I’ll be doing this year to cap off what has undoubtedly been my best racing season ever.  Then in early September comes the Rapha Gentlemen’s Race, which I’d tell you more more about if I knew more to tell.  It’s not technically a race – more just an epic test of end-of-season fitness in the form of a 130 mile 6 person team time trial from the Oregon Coast West of Salem all the way into Portland.

A few more pictures:

From John Rudoff

From Thumbprint Racing

From Ironclad

From Pat Malach

And some Videos – including some clips of me off the front in the first move I made off the front earlier in the race:

2009 Portland Twilight Criterium from Robert Holler on Vimeo.

Portland Twilight Criterium #1, 8.7.09 from Salt::Wood::Earth on Vimeo.

I went with an impulse decision and signed up for the Portland Twilight Criterium taking place next Friday evening.

45 minutes of tight corners, narrow roads, fast racing, big crowds downtown (the Pearl) Portland, and a huge purse to encourage people to ride harder.

I’ll be racing with Derek and Robin from Team O, and between the three of us I think we’ve got a chance at doing something.  This will likely be the most intense criterium I’ve ever done.  I’m already getting nervous, but I’m also really excited.

Insanity.  Stay tuned.

My blog is a leading indicator of my overall emotional state.

That’s something I’ve noticed about myself – I write much better when I’m feeling passionate, accompanied by positive or negative emotions.  I also feel inspired to write more under those circumstances – in that way the name of the blog is very fitting.  I suppose the take-away there is that when I’m very even-keel, the blog is boring.  Like lately.

Six months of traveling, working, seeing the country, meeting people, learning constantly – both about myself and others.  Lots of emotion.  Lots of introspection.  Lots of writing.

A four month job hunt filled with plenty of ups and downs.  Combine that with excessive free time, and lots of interesting writing results.

Now?  Now I’m just plain content.  Perhaps too content.  A job, a place to call my own, financial independence.  Lots of riding my bike.  I need to stir up a bit more emotion in my life, because all too often it’s just not interesting without.  I do plenty of interesting things, but I’m not necessarily passionate enough about any of them.  Except cycling.  Definitely plenty of passion there.

So regardless, the blog will probably continue to be boring in the immediate future.  If that suddenly changes, it’s probably a good indicator that some larger shift in my life is taking place.