Xenosthesia.com

So You Think You’re in the Olympics

This is the time of year when a fistful of knuckleheads will end up at the local fitness center and throw the weights on the floor.

Why do they do that?

Because they saw it in the Olympic Games.

Never mind that the floor of the local fitness center is made of cement rather than wood like they use in many strength competitions.

The knuckleheads chip the concrete, then bellow as if they were something fierce in nature.

Yeah right knucklehead, you’re Olympic material, aren’t you? Yeah you are…in your own mind.

Then there are the imaginary Olympic swimmers. They jump in the lake, the local pool, or the backyard pool. They get going as fast as is humanly possible, slapping the water, punishing it, doing something circular with their arms and kicking their legs ferociously, only to find themselves three minutes later three yards farther than where they started.

“Are you sure you’re an Olympic swimmer?” asks the lifeguard.

“Are you sure you’re an Olympic swimmer?” ask the ladies doing water aerobics.

“What are you doing in my pool?” asks the nextdoor neighbor.

Then there’s the guy who watches the Olympic volleyball team and decides he wants to show off his spike at the beach volleyball courts. He winds up, jumps as high as he can, and slaps it right in the net.

“Aw dang, gimme another try. Somebody set me.”

He gets his wish, a perfectly arced set. Then he jumps again, this time higher, and he swings his arm at the ball, and misses. This time he’s in the net.

“Okay, I got this, gimme another shot.”

His third time jumping really is charming, and higher than the last. He can see over the net. He aims and hits the ball. It’s an actual spike! Nice job, v-ball dude, you spiked the ball into the ocean.

Who’s going to go get it?

It’s our Olympic swimmer. He runs to be the hero, spinning his arms long before he gets to the water. He’s in the water. He’s a bit faster now, because there’s a current. The same current that takes our volleyball out to sea, takes our Olympic swimmer out there too. They both bob up and down, rushing farther out with each wave.

In a short while we can no longer see them, but we’re not worried.

We’ve seen the movie and we know how it ends.

The Noble Tree

The noble tree.

What do we get from the tree?

On a hot day, we get shade. That’s a beautiful thing. We might take trees for granted until a hot day, and then the shade is so ultimately necessary. On a hot day the tree gets the appreciation it deserves. Sitting under a tree on a summer day is living beyond the average. There’s little better on this earth.

In a scientific sense, we get oxygen from trees. Many trees absorb carbons and expel simple oxygens. Humans rely on this process for life. There may be some funny folks who will tell you, “Yeah, but plankton puts off more oxygen than a tree.” That’s great, if you live on the ocean, where plankton lives. If you don’t happen to live on the ocean, then you probably rely more on trees for your precious supply of oxygen. The noble tree lives close to us, and we live close to it. We share and trade the things we don’t need.

From trees we get wood. From wood we get a variety of items so broad, we couldn’t list them all in one day. Wood forms the cradle, it shapes the casket. Wood makes the table, the chair, the walls, and the roof. The roof! Ha! There again, we get shade from the tree, though it is definitely better to sit under the tree as it grows on a hot summer day than under a roof. Wood makes yardsticks and cricket bats. Wood forms floors and billiard tables. Wood is used for the tops of Cholula bottles. Wood is used in fences, signposts, mile markers, and bridges. It is used in uncounted ways in construction.

Trees are where birds sing. If we enjoy birdsong, we might owe the tree something.

Trees are where jaguars hide.

Trees give us fruits and nuts in great variety.

And trees give us paper. Without it we wouldn’t have most of the things written, drawn, or charcoal-rubbed on paper. We wouldn’t have paper airplanes. We wouldn’t have something to roll up and swat at flys.

There are many more things.

What else do we get from the noble tree?

Dum On A Bike

There once was a smarter than average guy who attached sparklers to his spokes, lit the sparklers and rode around in the not-so-dark night on a 4th of July. It looked really cool as the sparkling fire spun, but the guy was wearing shorts, so his legs got burnt on every rotation.

More than one guy has built a jump on the edge of a lake. Many of them have jumped, caught air, and landed in the lake. It’s all fun and games unless the lake is too deep for you to recover your bike.

One time I saw a kid trying to do a backflip on a gap-jump on his BMX but he didn’t quite rotate far enough and landed on his face. He cried for a while, but eventually got back on his bike and rode away. Young bones bend instead of breaking.

Countless people have been caught on Halloween trying to ride a bike while wearing a cape, like a vampire. Guess where the cape ends up getting caught.

Not so dum, but funny anyway, is the gal who rode her road bike on one of those moving walkways, like at the airport. Hey, if you can get away with it, go for it. (I wonder how fast she was going.)

Soooo many bike races, of every kind, have been held on rainy days. When rain and dirt mix they make mud. When mud gets deep enough, and thick enough, you don’t just ride through it, you collect it. When you collect enough on your bike, the wheels no longer rotate. Racers end up carrying their bikes.

Another not so dum, but fun thing: Paniers can be a cool way to carry your stuff. Or your pets. Yes indeed, a lot of people let their pets ride around in the paniers.

Is it a coincidence that most dum things are done on BMX bikes? You can count on that guy next door for a laugh every time he tries to pick up some beer from the 7-11 and transport it home on his BMX. No he hasn’t invested in paniers, and he drops the case multiple times on his way.

And after the guys drink the beer, why do they always think it’s so funny to ride the toddler bikes? Get off it, old man, you’re going to break it!

Last, but not least of the dum, is the Florida man who tried to steal two bikes, while riding a bike. First off, why does he think he needs to steal bikes if he already has a bike? Next, how did he steer? With his knees? It doesn’t matter. He got caught, of course, because he couldn’t go far with all three bikes without tripping over himself. Hopefully the people got their stolen bikes back. The lesson to us all is: Be satisfied with what you’ve got, even when what you’ve got upstairs is not a lot.

Where to Focus?

Blue is the color of the ocean, and the color of cold lips.

Grey is the color of pigeons, and pocket lint.

Brown is the color of mountains and dirt and old bananas and beat up apples and a scoop of chili and new shoes and a sweet chocolate bar.

White is the color of snow.

Red is the color of blood.

What and which color we find among things depends a great deal on what we’re expecting. Maybe we were looking for shadows, and we found shadows. We focused on the shadows so that’s where we landed.

If, on the other hand, we were looking for bright rainbow-tinted glamors of sunlight, prisming through the distant window, we may find exactly that. One thousand walls between us and the window might be powerless to stop us from seeing the bright light we wanted to see. No one is quite sure how to blockade a determined mind.

Lemon is the color of yellow.

Orange is the color of itself.

Sand is the color of tan.

Grass is the color of sand, and at times even green.

Wind is the color of whatever’s in it.

What we find in the wind is often the same as what we find in the world—whatever we’re searching to find. The color of choice. The color of the moment. The color of our mood.

There is a reason for our momentary mood. It’s what we choose, and it’s what we were after in the first place.

If you’re tired of those greyed-out pocket lint moods, choose a different mood. Start looking for a different color. Choose accordingly.

Sure, you can choose a sour mood, a moment of focusing on shadows, focusing on bruises and blemishes, or even focusing on fire. Maybe you woke up tired of everything and you were hoping something would explode and burn—remember though, when the fire spreads it often spreads to the one who started it. That’s a metaphorical way of saying you might be mad, but someone else might be madder. Seems like there’s always someone madder.

Terrible moods can jump gaps exactly like fire, burning not only things touching, but also things nearby.

The sad thing is that when things get burnt, they’re no longer useful.

Fortunately, great moods can spread like sunlight through windows, shrinking the shadows and brightening the dim corners.

Isn’t it great that sunlight spreads without destroying? Let’s focus on that.

Who Rules The Trails?

It’s not really about who thinks they rule the trails.

It’s about the little bits of bike we all leave behind. It’s about the side of the tree with scrapes from the multitude of bikers who couldn’t see the towering thing and hit it with a handlebar. It’s about the plastic bottle wedged in a gopher hole.

Not even about the best athletes, or the stamina, or endurance, or the ones with balance, the point is about Nature’s balance, so it’s about and around and circumscribed on the need to leave nature with less damage, more care.

A singletrack should stay single.

The beauty of mountain biking is to have some exhilarating activity in a remote setting. While the remoteness may vary, the beauty should not, and so I send this plea into the wild webs: take care of the trails.

With that pleading, I offer this promise: if you take care of the trails, you will be the one who rules them.

There really is no doubt in my mind. The ones who keep the trails pristine are the ones who rule. Those who pick up litter when they see it, and don’t leave any litter of their own, are kings and queens of higher order.

There is ease in not doing upkeep. There is leisure in not repairing things when you see them broken, or even when you break them. Don’t be the one who rides past and says to himself, or herself, “Someone else will fix it.”

It’s fine if you don’t have the tools on hand at that very moment and you need to come back later. So long as you do. After all, not everyone rides around with a chainsaw on their back.

The answer to the old riddle, “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is “Yes, it makes a sound that every true mountain biker hears, and when they hear it, they stop whatever they’re doing and worry out loud, ‘Oh no, there’s a trail blockage somewhere.'”

It’s awesome to witness, like watching Obi-Wan Kenobi sensing the force.

One last item is this: those who go out to do some trail grooming, not with gas-powered tractors, but with picks and shovels, axes and machetes, well those are my heroes. They sacrifice perfectly good riding hours to put in some work hours. They make the trails clear enough for a two-wheeled traveler to pass. They put the dead wood back in the forest where it belongs.

Thanks be to them, the true rulers of the trails.