This famous, world record setting, multi-city bicycle parade “Tour de Fat” emphasizes turning off the car and turning on your body (and drinking beer, but not while you are riding your bike of course).

New Belgium Brewing company owners Kim and Jeff have for more than a decade promoted clean energy use and re-use. This is not just hype, but a showcase of real, sustainable systems that set an example for us all. The New Belgium Brewery located in Fort Collins, Colorado is Northern Colorado’s largest consumer of wind energy; the methane gas captured through their own internal water treatment is used to generate electricity; the heat generated by the boilers is recycled to heat the building in the winter; all employees are given a bicycle in reward for two years employment—and much, much more.

The Tour de Fat (Fat Tire label beer, that is) started at 9 am Saturday morning. With an estimated 7,500 people (and at least as many bikes), the parade meandered through Fort Collins for more than an hour. It was visually overwhelming, the creativity in costume and unique bikes astounding. People sat to the front of their homes along the parade route cheering the slow-going riders along. There were 4 bikes pulling an old car, bikes tricked-out as airplanes, bikes over ten feet tall, and in my cousin’s case (who broke both his feet mountain biking six weeks prior), well, he was just along for the ride.

Old Dog, New Tricks
For the past ten years I have been an avid boulderer, a technical and powerful form of climbing without ropes. I have climbed with fairly religious zeal, two to three times each week since the summer of 1998. This has been my means of maintaining my center, of building friendships, and enjoying the outdoors, from southern Idaho to Bend Oregon, from Bishop to Joshua Tree, Queen Creek to Hueco Tanks, The Box to Moab, Chaos to the 420s. I have climbed in the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Japan, and India.

And everywhere I have climbed, nearly without exception, I have been met with joyful, playful, fun-loving, supportive, good-natured people. The sport itself is an internal competition far more than one between climbers. Climbing promotes personal health, strength, and focus.

Last year I was introduced to mountain biking, which I find an incredible balance to climbing.

Climbing is slow, methodical, planned, and graceful. With bouldering in particular, one finds his or her ass firmly planted on the ground while contemplating a series of moves, visualizing over and over and over again only to strain, scream, and fall in a matter of seconds. Each move is carefully executed, each contraction of every muscle planned, tweaked, and tuned to adjust the center of gravity for the perfect balance, reach, and position. Twenty seconds is a considered a long burn in most instances. Then back to the seated position, nursing fingers and toes.

Mountain biking is quite perfectly the opposite, the human brain making split-second decisions so fast that most muscle contractions and balance reactions are happening in nearly complete autonomy. I remember the first time I came down a trail, on the Northern base of the peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona. In my attempt to keep up with Christa, I laughed aloud for the realization that my brain had not been asked to respond that quickly to that many stimuli for a long time. It reminded me of sprinting across a boulder field, bounding from one house sized rock to another, each a leap of faith with mid-air correction to safely attain the landing zone only presented at the peak of the arc.

But with mountain biking the stakes are higher, for the speed is greater and the potential for broken bones (as demonstrated last summer by both my cousin Brandon and friend Amy) vastly increased. By no means do I claim expertise in this sport, for I am but a novice. However, what I have experienced in Colorado, Arizona, and Utah I have enjoyed.

Ironically, I do not actually like mountain biking while I am doing it. In fact, I rather hate it. It is frustrating. It is painful. I shed more blood in the first month of mountain biking than in the prior nine years of bouldering. And I have determined that more expensive bikes do in fact hold up to abuse better than those of lesser quality, in particular, when deliberately hurled after the tenth failed attempt at riding a particular stretch of technical trail. Mountain bikes equate to pain. Clipping-in is a nearly certain correlation to tearing skin from bone, usually at a complete stand-still, which only adds to the humiliation of the event and utter, long-term damage to the ego.

And so this past summer, in an attempt to further expand my horizons (and potential for bodily harm), I took up another biking activity, BMX and skate parks.

Never Too Late to Learn
Quite honestly, I am fifteen, maybe twenty years late. I was suppose to have learned this stuff a long, long time ago. Most everyone at the parks are between six and sixteen years old, the noted “old timers” in their twenties. They complain of pain and slow healing. I laugh and remind them that I am 38.

My good friend Sean is an exceptional and patient teacher, giving me lines of progressing difficulty. In the first day (riding my full suspension FXR mountain bike, mind you) I was able to dive into and pop out of the 6-8 foot bowls. On the second day, I learned to jump up steps and control the pitch of my bike mid-air. But on the third day I was met with a challenge quite unexpected.

While the Lory State Park dirt track hosts a variety of riders, from BMX to dirt jumpers to downhillers, the skate park is, true so many movies, a place were rough kids ride tough. But what I witnessed remains confusing for me, and difficult to let go.

Five kids sat along a concrete bench, a steel curbed platform for skateboarders to hit and slide (quite confident my vocabulary is completely wrong). A heavier kid sat in the middle of the other four, three to his left, one to his right. He had his head down, a little pink in the cheeks. The kid to his immediate left was half his weight and a bit shorter, but his mouth was unusually potent. Most of these kids, ages 7 to 17 are at the park alone, their use of profanity not so concerning to me as the smoking and outward, aggressive violence toward one another.

Laughing for the Wrong Reasons
The thin kid slapped the heavier kid upside the head. The other kids laughed. Then he did it again. The bully of the group encouraged him, saying, “Hit him again! Harder!” He did. A sixth kid, taller and older, maybe mid-teens literally explained to the kid on the right how to hit him with a right hook. He did. The kid in the middle tried to defend himself, but he now had two and three kids hitting him at one time, from all sides. In the face, across the back of his head, and arms.

Everyone was laughing but me and the kid who was the center of this attention. My blood was boiling. He was crying, which of course only increased the beating and laughter, “Oh! Are you crying? What’s the matter? Can’t take it?”

I rolled over on my bike, “Hey guys. Not cool. Not cool at all. Knock it off, ok?”

The bully immediately responded, completely unabated, “What’s your problem? This has nothing to do with you.”

I have to admit I did not expect a ten or twelve year old to stand-up to me with such determination. “You keep hitting him, you have to deal with me.”

“Yeah?! You can deal with my dad.”

Now that caused two reactions in me. At first I nearly laughed for he had perfectly played the part of the Disney bully, ready to beat the timid, but equally eager to call his dad when things turned against him. But then my brain built an image of a stocky man with a handlebar mustache, ripped jeans, wife-beater, and baseball bat (or worse) saying, “My kid here tells me you been caus’n trouble?”

I changed my approach. “Nice kid. You can dish it out but you can’t take it. Go ahead, call your dad. Love to talk to him and tell him about how you treat your friends here. What’s his number? I’ve got my cell.”

“What’s it to you? This doesn’t fuck’n matter to you?”

“Yeah, actually, it fucking does. I came here to have fun. To learn how to ride. But when you and your buddies are beating this other kid, it ruins my day.”

He was relentless, his animosity growing. The profanity outweighing any real words. Another rider popped out of the bowl, having witnessed the growing tension.

He handled it better than I did, saying simply, “Weak guys. Real weak.” He was a good rider, and well respected. I was a newbie, my third day –ever.

They disbanded. But the energy of their anger did not.

I could not shake the emotion of that event. I still cannot quite come to terms with what drives children to exercise such animosity and outward aggression toward each other.

While I do not have children of my own, yes, I have seen this before, most recently in my work in Kenya. But it still causes me to pause and wonder how the pattern is broken. When does a kid who is raised in domestic violence at any level, at home, at school, or at the skate park, grow-up to recognize that it is not ok, that hitting another human only invokes a chain reaction which perpetuates for generations. It is a domino effect with each fallen chip pushing the next to fall.

Why are these kids like this? How can such a new life, some less than a decade old, exhibit such raw anger and hatred, especially in a suburbia of Northern Colorado?

My friends Sean, Staci, and Matt later told me I should have just let it go, let the kids figure it out themselves. Maybe I should. But that doesn’t feel right. If there were four teenagers ganging up on one, should something be done? How about four forty year-olds? Call the cops, right? If not the later, then why the former? Are not the kids the most impressionable? The ones who need the most guidance? The ones who still have a chance to get it right?

The Bike & the Bully
A week or two later, I was at the park at the same time as the bully. He rode past Sean as I entered and did my first round, to warm up. He made a rude comment about me and my mountain bike. Sean mentioned this to me. So I rode over to him and said, “So, wassup?”

He replied, “Noth’n man. Noth’n.”

I asked, “Hey, you want to try my bike?”

He was obviously startled, looking at me and then my bike, “Seriously?”

Smiling, “Yeah, of course. It’s all yours. Just don’t wreck it too bad, ok?”

“Yeah, no problem. Cool.”

And since then, he has been ok. In fact, when I finally broke down and bought a proper Felt park bike, he wanted to ride that too. Yes, the tension is still there. The kids are still terribly mean to each other. But I have a better sense of how to dispell the tension, when I can, and how not to let it affect me. If I can break the pattern for just a few minutes and help the bully remember what it’s like to not be on the defense, then maybe he’ll return the favor to someone, someday. Maybe.

Sheltered Views, Exanding Horizons
I have edited this entry over and over with insight from many people and even more experiences, realizing that my reflection back on the U.S. is in fact jaded. I love my country, all that we have and hold dear. But I am challenged when I hear someone from another country hold the U.S. on an artificial pedestal of perfection. I feel the need to establish a balanced reality. Perhaps this is a knee jerk reaction. Perhaps it is my own frustration with the current state of affairs leaking through. I see the U.S. as an incredible marketing engine, its corporations and even the government excelling at the portrayal of a strong “Be like us!” campaign.

I recall a radio ad for a travel agency, a few years back, which closed with the catch-phrase, “So much like the U.S., you’ll never know you left home.” How horrible that instead of offering an experience, instead of offering the view to a new horizon and an opportunity to come home having learned something about another culture from which one may reflect and learn, this company sheltered its customers with the ease of travel.

At the bank yesterday, I spoke with the woman who greets the customers, explaining that I had Kenyan shillings to exchange to U.S. dollars. She gasped, exclaiming, “Were you scared? Did you feel safe?” I restrained a lecture, instead saying, “For every horror story you hear about on the news, there are a million people who enjoy completely fulfilling overseas ventures.” She nodded, hearing by not truly understanding what I had just offered.

Monday morning an NPR story told of the on-going battle for English v.s. Spanish as official languages in the U.S., even the Spanish speaking television station Univision caving to pressure to not ask questions of the presidential candidates in both languages, the post-event rhetoric stating that the candidates dual-language responses “diminished the quality of the event.” To see the presidential debates in Kenya in both Swahili and English was fantastic, the candidates flowing into and out of each language seamlessly. It did not detract from the debate in any respect.

How narrow a view! We are one of just a few countries in the world to not encourage, if not make mandatory a second language in the home, at school, and places of work, to not have street and airport signs, classes and manuals and tests in at least two languages. How can a country founded by immigrants who carried to this land dozens of languages come to uphold the statement that if one does not speak English, then that person is not American?

Language is beautiful! It is the fundamental foundation of our cultural heritage. It is the way we think, communicate, and live. A world that speaks only one language would be very sad, indeed, for it would quickly collapse the diversity of our unique cultures into a murky mix of lost identity.

I wish I had been forced to take a second language throughout grade school, high school, and college for I would be fluent in Spanish now, instead of good enough to get by. And my brain would be better wired to pick up a third and fourth language that much faster. I am a good writer, in part, because I speak enough Spanish, and learned some Thai, Polish, and Swahili in my travels. While not fluent in any of these, I can quickly recall the intonations, rhythms, and word orders, incorporating these into the way I think and write.

When a Kenyan aks, “How far behind is Kenya from the U.S.?” I laugh and say, “In some respects, you are far ahead. In others you are catching up.” The United States has a great deal to offer that is of benefit to others, but we have a great deal to learn as well. I ask only that as we continue to mature as individuals, and as a country, that we stop pushing so hard for everyone to be like us; that we stop long enough to ask, What can we bring home from where we visit? What do we have to learn from the rest of the world?

And with this world-view, perhaps inside our own borders too we may discover that we have a great deal to learn from those who live in our own town.

The real danger of home improvement … is your friends.
As I really do not desire to go through another winter waking to an ambient temperature of 42 degrees Fahrenheit (not joking) in the warmest place in my house, I am doing what I can before the Supercomputing trade show and the onset of winter to bring my insulation-less house back up to and then beyond its prior state. But installing fiberglass insulation is likely one of the worst jobs on the planet, even when wearing three layers, a respirator, and sleeves duct taped to gloves. And so I asked my good friend Sean to assist.

Last weekend we were installing batting beneath the new roof completed a year ago this October. We stopped to reload our mechanical staple guns every two or three rows. To make certain the gun again functioned prior to returning to the uncomfortable position created by the roof line meeting the ceiling of the room beneath, we sometimes held a good ol’ western shootout, right there in my attic.

Standing back-to-back, we counted off three paces, spun (careful not to lose balance and fall through the ceiling into my living room), and fired. Completely harmless, for at ten feet the staples would bounce from a balloon without damage.

But when Sean was lying on his side, struggling to force the batting to catch the last few inches of the rafter before it met the joist, I could not help but notice that his shirt had come un-tucked. At a distance of two feet I fired off three or four staples onto his back.

“Hey! Cut that out!” A few obscenities flew in good humor of the moment, Sean concluding with a “Just you wait!”

A few minutes later I had let down my defenses, again focused on measurements for the next run. He jumped behind me, pulled up two of my three shirts just as I turned to see the staple gun a few inches from my back and BANG!

“OUCH! Man! Are you crazy?#! That really hurt!” I spun circles like a dog chasing its tail trying to see where he had got me.

Sean responded, “You big pansy! You shot me three times! That was just one!”

I was still trying to reach the spot with my gloved hand for the pain had not subsided, “No. Seriously. That was way too close. That was –” And then I felt the staple in my back, “Oh! What the –” (now laughing) “It’s still in me! You shot me in the back and it STUCK!”

“What? No way. You’re bullshitting me. I wasn’t that –Oh man! You have a staple in your back!” Simultaneously horrified and laughing so hard he could hardly see straight, “Hold still. I’ll get it out.”

The staple removed, my shirt once again detached from my body, the sting quickly reduced to tingling. Still laughing, I reloaded my staple gun, shot Sean a few times for good measure, and continued into dusk, headlamps aiding us until we could no longer tollerate the fiberglass penetrating our clothes.

While this supposed one day job will drag into three half weekends, the interior of my nearly hundred year old roof neither simple nor regular in any respect, there is a sense of accomplishment in doing things with my own hands … and the enjoyment of working with a good friend.

Walking home from work late Tuesday afternoon, I came upon my neighbor Jeff three doors down, sitting on his front porch. He was talking to and laughing with two young girls (whose names I do not know) who are neighbors to him, another house or two away. They intentionally interrupted our conversation with playful banter, as pre-teens do, giggling more than communicating by words. I essentially gave up my attempt at a conversation with Jeff. We both shrugged our shoulders, smiled, and I walked away.

On my departure, the girls no longer had a conversation to mediate, and so they jumped from his porch and climbed to the lowest branches of a diciduous tree that grows from the space between the walk and the street. I turned to look over my shoulder when they asked, nearly in unison —

“J-e-f-f! Do you have insurance?”

Jeff responded, “What?”

“Do you have insurance?” the older repeated.

Jeff laughed, a bit nervous, “Uhh, yeah, of course. Why?”

Without hesitation, “Well, if we fall from your tree, we want to know if we can sue you.”

Yikes! I kept walking, shaking my head and wondering if a modern childhood can truly be that heavily burdened with such frightful concerns.

This summer unfolded as yet another rollercoaster ride, remaining in one state seldom longer than a few weeks. I ventured to Arizona a few times to visit Christa and family, California two or three times (I can’t recall), Hawaii for twelve days, on the San Juan river in Utah for ten, back to Arizona for two weeks, and finally home a little over a week ago.

In the between time I removed the roof of my house, all four layers of cursed shingles stubbornly refusing to find refuge in the 30 cubic yard roll-away (filled twice). While I have always believed, and repeatedly heard that reshingling a house is a 4-day weekend job, mine was instead two months.

It seemed to be going smoothly, although slowly, until I received a phone call while at work from my friend Chris who is helping me with this project.

Chris said, “Hey man, how’s it going?”

“Well,” I responded, noticing a slight agitation in his voice.

“Yeah, well, (pause) we have problem. So, what’s the worst thing that could happen on this job?”

I replied, “You fell off the roof?”

“What’s the second worse thing that could happen?”

“You fell through the ceiling into my house?”

“No, man. (pause) Not me. Ricardo did. And he’s only been on the job for an hour so he feels really bad. Do you want me to fire him?” I said no, and could do nothing but laugh.

(two days later)
Another friend fell off the roof altogether.

(a few weeks thereafter, while on the road)
I learned the contractor hired to wrap up the shingles on the south side of my house chose to forgo placement of felt beneath the shingles. A few terse words and the shingles were removed, tar paper installed, and new shingles replaced.

Upon return from my trip, I entered my house and was overwhelmed by the smell of wet, century old paster. A tremendous amount of water had come through the opening we cut (but apparently did not seal) for the dormer, dropping a portion of the ceiling into my laundry room and raising the grain on my hardwood floor.

(a few weeks later)
With the onset of fall rain and first snow storms, I awoke to the sound of dripping water in my living room. At 1 am, I scrambled across the wet roof top without roof jack nor climbing harness, in T-shirt and underwear bottoms. I struggled with a bundle of shingles across my shoulders. I tackled the 40×30 tarp which had become a large kite in the midnight storm and secured the corners. The pools of water in my attic later absorbed by every bedsheet that I own, which in retrospect, is not very many.

Yesterday, finally, I was given temporary pleasure in my properly shingled and snow tight roof, including four new skylights (a fifth to be installed –some other time) … until I recalled that I have no insulation and have yet to complete the rewiring before I can sister the 2x4s with 2x6s and lay down a new floor. Needless to say, if I don’t get this done soon, it will be a very cold, lonely winter as Christa will likely retreat to her home in Flag where she does not have to wear long underwear and fleece nor see her breath in the frozen morning.

TERRA SOFT TEAM SAVES APPLE CEO FROM INTEL FACTORY LINE

LOVELAND, Colorado – 1 April 2006 – Terra Soft Solutions, the leadingdeveloper of integrated Power Architecture Linux solutions, in a bold reconnaissance mission last night rescued Steve Jobs from captivity.

Borrowing attack helicopters from a non-disclosed Department of Defense customer, Terra Soft used an RTOS version of Yellow Dog Linux running on Cell processors to fly a nightime sortie to the headquarters of the Intel Corporation.

Ben Ratliff, Terra Soft’s Operations Manager lead a nervous but highly determined team into the heart of Intel’s empire, and then into the depths of their Santa Clara facilities to retrieve Apple’s rightful CEO from his captor.

“In December of ’05 we received an email from a woman at Intel [whose identity remains confidential] wherein she claimed to have seen Steve Jobs working the evening production line shift. We at first assumed the communication was a hoax. But when a similar email arrived a week later from another source, and then in January a few more –we were compelled to investigate,” states Ratliff.

Terra Soft spent the better part of January, February, and March working to determine if there was truth in this otherwise impossible scenario.

Ratliff continues, “It was only when we received an unmarked Intel Apple laptop that the unbelievable was made painfully clear. Before we even powered-on the unit, we discovered written on the screen in what appeared to be streaks of sweat, the words, ‘LONG LIVE PPC!’ We immediately recognized the truth– Steve Jobs had been abducted and cloned. Apple was under the control of an impostor.”

“We have been working hard since this moment, planting spies, infiltrating servers, and planning for this monumental task. With help from sympathizers on the inside, we managed to save Steve and Apple from an otherwise certain demise,” Ratliff concludes.

Once free from the confines of his prison of nearly one year, Jobs wore a tattered blue assembly line uniform but appeared in good spirits as he offered, “I am grateful for Terra Soft’s courage in this rescue operation. I will this week announce the return of the full Apple product line to PowerPC. And as a demonstration of my gratitude to Terra Soft, replace OSX with YDL on all systems from here forward.”