Paukku's Life Annotations

Koskenkorva Martini

2011-11-21T14:05:00.001-07:00

"I've climbed with some of the best climbers in the world, more importantly, to me, they are some of the best people in the world. That's another reason why I climb."
~Jim Wickwire

I really like to climb.

No, really. I do.

And why I like it so much - love it, in fact - is hard to distill down into a single statement. I've tried. But each time I think I have it quantified and pinned down, I realise I've left one or two or a hundred things out. Every climbing experience is unique and holds its own magical treasures. There are certainly things which top the list of why I love climbing and some ever-present themes - the zen-like quality; the control; the mindfulness; the freedom; the challenge; the dance-like movements - but I can have as rich and rewarding an experience playing around on 5.8s teaching new climbers as I have puzzling out the pieces of a rapturous - and torturous - 5.12 that draws sweat, blood and tears. How is it that I enjoy climbing as much on a perfect blue-sky day as on a miserable, rain-soaked and frozen-to-the-bones day? Why is a top-belay in too-small shoes in the blazing sun just as enjoyable as a sit-belay from a grassy field in the shade?

There has to be something, right?

A recent weekend adventure of climbing brought that something out of the shadows and into sharp focus. As variable as the situation, the weather, the location, the temperature, the comfort of the gear, the quality of the rock, there actually is a constant: the people. I get to climb with awesome people. And a day climbing, 'suffering' up an unknown 5.14 in Golden or in agony 50 feet up a cliff in Diablo Canyon because I brought the wrong shoes for multi-pitch or freezing my ass off in El Rito because a summer storm moved in to dump rain and hail while halfway up a 90 foot route, with people I truly like is better than most anything I can think of.

I turned 40 this year. I viewed turning 40 in the same way I viewed turning 20: a non-milestone. It held no more fear or excitement than turning 39 did. Or 12. Or 26. However, 40 is a nice, round number and it did elicit a good party and a wealth of presents (Yay presents!). Among the gifts was a climbing route. Really.

Two fellow climbers, Vaino and Doni, had scoped out a possible new route and had earmarked it for me to develop. I got a card. And a photo of the cliff. With a note: This is your route.

I don't squeal. But if I did? Big squeal.

To say I was excited is a bit of an understatement. I've rode shotgun on bolting before. I have some first ascents. My name is attached to a few routes. But I had never developed a route from start to FA.

And setting the route? Bolting it? Climbing it for the very first time ever? PERFECT.

Yes, it was a beautiful day for climbing. Yes the weather was incredibly cooperative. Even the burrito from Sofia's Kitchen - chicharones and red chile for me, thanks! - was remarkably tasty on the way to the crag.

But it was the company that was truly perfect.

Every climbing adventure I have had revolves around the shared experiences. And this was no exception. I am honored and quite flattered that Doni and Vaino entrusted me with such a gift. They have developed entire walls and Vaino has set some of my favorite routes both in New Mexico and Colorado. But what truly made the experience memorable was that they were with me and I got to climb with them.

So if you want to climb something I've set, head down to Socorro in southern New Mexico. Maybe you'll feel some of the joy I experienced - especially if you climb it with good friends.

It is in The Box. On Alcohol Wall, which is part of the Major Wall Area. It's a short 5.10a. But it is mine and I'm pretty proud of it.

Koskenkorva Martini (5.10a)
A short, fun route. Easy standing first clip. Start on some generous incut holds, moving left, making the second clip and up to the feature (a little cave with a large tooth that looks like the silhouette of a bat). Pull up on a solid match on the 'tooth' and reach for a juggy side pocket to the left for the clip. High feet will get you a decent hold on the right and higher feet will get you up to the great ledge on the left - definitely the crux. Pull up to a short scramble for another clip and up to the finish at the anchors.

Koskenkorva Martini

Vaino & Doni

Setting and bolting the route.

Safety first.

Drilling a bolt hole.

Hammering in a bolt.

Cleaning the route.

First ascent of Koskenkorva Martini.

The "bat" feature.

Moving past the crux.

At the bolts.

Why I Buy? The Shiny and the Solid

2011-11-14T12:59:00.001-07:00

"And I am a weapon of massive consumption

And its not my fault it's how I'm programmed to function"

~Lily Allen

Gear is almost indescribably wonderful.

I am a confessed gear whore.

gear whore n. someone who has to have the best, most expensive, coolest gear, useful or not.

Yes, I like the shiny and the new. And there are times when I look over my rack and I realise I am just one or two colour-coordinated draws away from being one of those sport climbers.

But really, why do I buy what I buy? Such a simple question does not have a simple answer.

I have worked in marketing and advertising for the past 20 years and have a pretty good grasp on how the artifice and casuistry of product pimping works. But that doesn’t mean I am immune. In fact, I have a high appreciation for a well-crafted advertisement and am more likely to invest at least my time into researching a product that is packaged well and peddled in just the right way to highlight its particular je ne sais quoi. Black and white sketches or flat product photos might be enough to pique some consumers’ interest, but many people really do prefer the glossy, full-colour splash of gear-in-action (me included). It’s a world of embodying the brand.

Not an actual product. Sorry.

Companies like Black Diamond Equipment and Petzl know this. They don’t casually spend their advertising dollars. And retailers know what they are doing when they put those pretty products in the hands and on the backs of pretty people.

But as much as the beautiful people and shiny colours get my attention, it is not the reason I buy. Getting the customer into the store or to your website might be half the battle, but half does not make a sale.

The performance of a piece of gear - be it a rope, draw, cam or headlamp - is crucial to any buying decision I make. I may like shiny, but that shiny needs to be backed up by solid and functional. When it comes to climbing gear, I’m trusting my life to its performance; if the lobes on a cam fall off, a rope fails in a fall or the stitching on a belay loop comes undone, the prettiness of any gear is moot. Taking a look outside of the sphere of neon advertising is important. And for that I love reviews.

Katanas = awesomeness!

To glean the information I need about gear, I love reading reviews. From the slick editorials in industry magazines to the postings on Internet forums and retailer web pages, the views of actual end-users is invaluable. Knowing the good and the bad and how they balance is key to get me from “Oh! Shiny! Want!!” to actually purchasing a product. No piece of gear is perfect (OK, maybe my lovely Katanas...) and knowing about the less-than-perfect aspects of it helps me weigh the actual value to me, myself and I.

But reviews can still be a bit remote or removed. It’s great to read what Sharma thinks about the new Sterling ropes (OK maybe we’ll file that one under ‘embodying the brand’ and walk away) or what badgirlclimber873 thinks about the Grigri 2. But it is even better to be able to relate those experiences to your own use of gear. And that’s where one of the most important elements of why I buy gear comes into play: personal recommendations.

I trust the people with whom I choose to surround myself. And a thumbs-up from a friend is worth more than all the glossy-pages any advertising budget can buy. The breadth of use of gear by my fellows may not be as far reaching as the pros nor even as broad as many other people out there, but it is immediately relevant to me and my use. Our abilities and interests run, if not entirely parallel, at least in the same spheres.

If I am looking to get a new piece of equipment, my most valuable resources are the people around me. Have they used it? Do they like it or not? Why? Does the x-factor of a particular piece of gear really matter in the end? No one is paying them - outright or under-the-table - to give me an opinion.

The final piece in my decision to buy is personal experience. I like to try out equipment before I buy it. On the trail, at the crag or in the store, being able to see how a piece of gear and I work together is important. It can be something as simple as knowing if my hand fits nicely into a chalk bag or as crucial as knowing if a pair of new climbing shoes (Don’t worry Katanas, I’m not replacing you!) cuts in at the ankles or has a toe-box that doesn’t suit my feet. That’s why I am so often a repeat customer; when I am familiar with and trust gear I will keep going back to it again and again.

Perhaps characterising myself as a gear whore is unfair and, in fact, untrue. I am actually very cautious and judicious in my decision to buy. A company might get my attention with flashing lights and sirens, but it is quality, dependability and reputation that will get me to cross that line and become an actual consumer. I do like to have pretty gear. And yes, some of my gear goes unused for long stretches. But I don’t have it just for the sake of having it. Make a quality product that is useful and innovative. Wrap it up in a pretty package. Let me use it and put it to the test and talk to others about it. I might buy it. And if I do, I'll tell others about how much I like it.

This post can also be read on the fabulous PembaServes website: Why I Buy? The Shiny and The Solid.

Climbing the Wu Wei

2011-09-12T08:31:00.000-06:00

"... at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

~T. S. Eliot

"The natural is sufficient. If one strives, he fails."
~Wang Pi

I had an interesting exchange on Twitter about climbing.

tweep1: Gnarly bruise and knot, plus a sore elbow, from fighting my way up a crazy 11c yesterday. :) #climb

@Paukku: Tsk tsk. You shouldn't be fighting. Flow with the route. Become the route.

tweep2: I'm a big proponent of having the ability to both flow and fight, then you can get thru whatever the route dictates

@Paukku: I find that if I think a route dictates 'fighting' I am climbing it wrong. I am very wu wei when it comes to it.

tweep2: but there are routes out there that require full extension lunges and low lock-offs, which many would call "fighting"

@Paukku: Semantics. Fighting is purposeful violent conflict meant to establish dominance over something. Not how I climb.

Semantics indeed. One could argue that I could just accept that "fight" in this context was being used to indicate "conscious exertion of power" and move on. Some routes are 'harder' and require different movements and more effort, right? But to me that is not the point. To me, climbing is not about power or winning or conquering. And it is certainly not about fighting.

Wu Wei

One of the seeming paradoxes of Taoism, a school of thought I greatly admire, is the concept of Wu Wei. It is a concept of effortless action or action without doing. Non-doing. Put another way, it is action in which there is no division between the object and the action that is done. It is action that is both spontaneous and effortless without being passive.

Got that?

From a climbing perspective, this translates to graceful climbing. And I admire graceful climbers. I love watching the flow - another key for understanding Wu Wei - of a climber who does not fight against a route. Each move is the right action, appropriate to its time and place, and creates greater harmony and balance within the climb. Capturing that beauty of form and movement is how I approach climbing.

This is key to the mental character of climbing - a constituent element of climbing that is sadly overlooked by many, especially as this sport becomes more and more popular.

Climbing in the Wu Wei is not the absence of action, but rather the absence of conflict. It is climbing without combative or egotistical effort. This kind of climbing is like water that flows over and around the rocks in its path; it does not try to force a path, but works with the natural rhythm of its surroundings. Water is yielding and soft, yet it is powerful and shapes the world.

Rather than seeing a particular move within a climb - a lunge or a lockoff - as an obstacle, I see it instead as an opportunity to understand the flow of the route. Those moments of clarity - those wonderful aha moments - when a route seems impossible and then suddenly becomes possible are never about how I can fight harder; they are about realising the flow of the route and then matching it. They are about accord.

Am I just splitting hairs?

I don't think so.

To characterize climbing, even a very challenging and difficult climb, as fighting is contradictory to the very essence of why I love climbing. I am not getting into the arena with an adversary who must be subjugated or defeated; I am journeying with a friend.

As Benjamin Hoff states in The Tao of Pooh:

When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn't try. It doesn't think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn't appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done.

That is how I approach climbing. And that feeling, when I am in the moment of a climb, when I am following the lines a route reveals to me, letting them lead me so that I flow, is one of the best feelings in the world. It makes me peaceful and present. I am the point, the still point.

One of the nicest compliments I have ever received is when someone told me that I make climbing look effortless. I could not do that if I was fighting.

Ahimsa.

Gear Review: PETZL Xion Rope & Ange Finesse Quickdraws

2011-09-01T09:47:00.000-06:00

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
~Lao Tzu

Sometimes things don’t go as planned. And sometimes that is just what you need.

The plan was straight forward enough. A day-trip to Castlewood Canyon for some rope climbing, specifically to Grocery Store Wall. It’s a crag I have climbed at before and it offers a good variety of routes. My climbing partner, Tali of Cupcake Mafia, was interested in some solid TR and I was excited about getting back on “Bozo No No”, a 5.11a sport that I was itching to climb again, and use my new, shiny gear.

Bozo No No, August 2009

I am funny when it comes to gear. On the one hand I like the familiar, the predictable and the comfortable. New gear tends to stay new on my rack because when I am comfortable with a piece of gear, I rely on it without thinking, reaching for it instinctively. It becomes an extension of me. I almost always turn to the old gear, favouring it over new gear which is untested in my own hands and can be, and often is, decidedly different in feel and operation. On the other hand, new gear is sexy and pretty and I’m...er... somewhat of a gear whore.

When some new Petzl Ange Finesse Quickdraws and a lovely 10.1 XION rope came into my possession, those two facets of my personality collided. What to do with the new gear? I had been getting rather anxious to go climbing. As most every crag in New Mexico was closed due to the fire danger and actual fires, climbing in my home state was pretty much out. But with a trip up to Colorado planned and the gear being so shiny, it seemed like this was a sign. Synchronicity!

So here we were, driving through Franktown on the way to Castlewood Canyon and some outside routes at long last.

Grocery Store Wall is easy to get to from Denver. That’s both good and bad. Good, because who doesn’t like a quick drive from Denver and an easy five-minute approach? Bad, because who doesn’t like a quick drive from Denver and an easy five-minute approach? It can get crazy crowded. But when we parked the lot was not even close to full. However, the two 16-passenger vans did make us a bit nervous.

There’s nothing more disheartening to find when you head out to the crag than ropes as far as the eye can see. It’s like finding a crowded indoor gym outside somehow. The vans apparently supplied the kids to complete that gym-feel.

Maybe “Bozo No No” would be open. But no, a sizable group was gathered around the route and there didn’t seem to be any open TR routes to set up on to wait it out. My new gear was making noises from inside my pack. It sounded a lot like “Climb!” So what to do?

Grocery Store Wall is the only wall I’ve climbed at in Castlewood, but it is by no means the only wall in the canyon. There’s rumoured to be more than 600 routes in there. And Tali and I had looked at some of the other areas in the canyon. The night before we had discussed options if we encountered this very scenario. The Dungeon had stood out as a good possibility because it is not as easily accessible and therefore might not appeal to the washed masses of hobby-climbers. The routes are harder, but there’s still a good supply of TR and I’d have a large selection of sport routes to choose from.

Of course we had not counted on the cat.

Each of the crags we had selected as options had been dutifully looked up on the ever-helpful Mountain Project and printed out as mini-guides. This was especially important as a) we had experienced a “wandering around Castlewood Canyon kind of lost” experience before and b) the other possible crags were unfamiliar to either of us. So we leafed through the guides to The Dungeon and found we had only the cover page. Because the cat likes to play with the printer. (Thank you, Finn!)

What the heck, we thought. We’ve got the directions to the crag. And a whole day to play on routes. Off we went along Cherry Creek River. As anyone knows who has set off to find something with only an indistinct idea of where it is and only vague directions on how to get there can attest, a moderate hike can become one of unusually great scope. But Castlewood Canyon is simply gorgeous and despite the humidity and heat the walk was beautiful.

(A word of advice here. Always, always read through the comments on Mountain Project. If you don’t you might miss important advice. For example, when the directions state that the area is “Located at the N end of West Rim” and you do not read the comments, you might miss where it states: “The Dungeon is not located on the north end of the west rim...[it] is located just north of the western-most projection of the east rim.” And if you are not wanting an epic approach, this is good stuff to know.)

Neither of us had planned on the long (long) hike, but the vistas were incredible and really, it was just what I needed. Great company and good adventure are a salve for the soul. (Thank you, cat!)

When we arrived at last at The Dungeon, it became immediately clear why it holds that name. We approached from the top, and looking down on it it really does look like a dungeon.

We were tired, over-heated and sweaty. But we were here. It was time to unpack the gear and climb. Wally, my ever present climbing charm, was ready to go.

The Dungeon offers sport climbs from 5.9 to 5.12d. Of course, not having a guide of any kind and not being familiar with the area, it was down to just playing on routes and seeing what felt good. We rappelled down into the shade (yay!) and started to climb.

The first thing I can say about the Ange Finesse Quickdraws is that they are light. Really light. The Ange S biners weigh in at only 28 g. That’s 9 g less than my usual biners weigh. The weight is not really an issue for day climbing on short sport routes (unless your approach goes from five minutes to several hours), but it is definitely appealing when putting together a rack for multipitch adventures. Twelve Finesse draws can save you up to half a pound.

The Ange S biners look different. They use a single wire gate system that quite honestly looks puny. But the design is pretty ingenious. The gate is remarkably smooth and despite its svelte appearance locks solidly into a hole in the nose. The hole, incidentally, prevents debris, like the flour-y dirt of Castlewood Canyon, from becoming trapped in the biner.

Another nice feature of the Ange is that the S biners sport nifty little grooves on the top and bottom on the inside of the biner. These act as guides that aligns the biner on both the sling and the rope, keeping the axis just right.

But along with the reduction in weight comes a significant reduction in size. The Ange S biners are smaller. A lot smaller. This is my only real gripe against the Ange. A smaller biner means a smaller gate which means a smaller opening. In the case of the Ange S it is 0.9-inches . I’m used to the 1.125-inches opening on my usual biners. That doesn’t look like much on paper, but this smaller opening made me fumble my clipping every so often. Kind of big deal as I (perhaps unwisely) warmed up on “The Rack”, a 5.11a. The last thing I wanted was to be groping awkwardly to get a clip.

I put the draws through the paces. I fell. A lot. And I hung on the draws quite a bit as well. Despite calling the Anges “Barbie biners” all day, they did what a draw is supposed to do. I was timid at first, the diminutive size making me think these were light-weight in the strength department as well, but I came to trust them. With a rating of 20 kN (4,496 lbf), gate closed - most of my draws have a 24 kN (5,395 lbf) rating, gate closed - they caught me just fine and I have no complaints when it comes to that.

Along with the Anges draws I brought along a pretty green Petzl 10.1 XION rope. I know. 10.1. Tiny little draws and a big rope. But the great thing about the XION is that it doesn’t feel like a big rope. The rope is smooth and supple and remarkably easy to handle. It glided through the ATCs without any problem. The weight was not an issue on the short sport climbs in The Dungeon. And it was a great rope for TR. And it’s green. You can’t go wrong with green.

(Quite happily we were unable to test out the Duratec Dry treatment that is a feature of the XION.)

After a day of playing in The Dungeon, we decided it would be wise to try to beat the setting of the sun and get back to the car. We could practically see the car from The Dungeon. Ok, it was across the canyon and across Cherry Creek River, but the hike in had been a little too epic. We decided to bushwhack. And that’s another story.

You can also find this review on the excellent Pemba Serves website: Gear Review: PETZL Xion Rope & Ange Finesse Quickdraws.

To Be a Father

2011-06-21T10:00:00.000-06:00

"The father who would taste the essence of his fatherhood must turn back from the plane of his experience, take with him the fruits of his journey and begin again beside his child, marching step by step over the same old road."
—Angelo Patri

It has been five years since I wrote "Fatherhood".

Five years of watching a miracle grow.

Five years of joy, worry, elation, sorrow, pride and wonder.

If I loved being a father five years ago, I'm not sure how to explain it now. There are things which define us because they are what we do - I climb rocks, therefor I am a rock climber - and then there are things which define us because they are what make up our souls.

The quote I used in "Fatherhood" has become even more poignant to me.

"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a mans words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself."
—John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

Growing up I was always very expectant of each new milestone. Kindergarten. First grade. Middle school. High school. Graduation. Turning 18. Turning 21. Each time I was disappointed. I always experienced that let-down of when you don't get the gift you were expecting. That morning-after-Christmas blues.

Because what I was expecting was to feel different. I always thought I would cross some threshold and would suddenly be a changed person. What exactly that meant, I wasn't certain. But I heard people talk excitedly about each milestone like it was special. And each time I failed to feel that wonder I thought must be there.

As I got a little older I thought I pinned down that elusive something. I wanted to feel like an adult. I was waiting for that one event that would signal my change from a child into an adult.

But that did not happen.

Each hallmark of a life-well-lived passed without me feeling very adult-like at all. In fact, I really felt like I was faking it.

That was it. Everything I have done in my life I have done with a sense of it not really being...legitimate. Like I was pretending to be something I am not. I would look at the paradigm for X and come to the conclusion that I was certainly not X. I wasn't an adult. I was a child pretending to be an adult.

I have found that most of us feel this way.

But the day the Chickabiddy was born I did feel changed. It was like the molecules of my being rearranged, reformed into something new. The birth of my daughter was like an annealing of my character. I picked up the mantle of fatherhood and found that it not only felt comfortable, it felt natural and right and...perfect.

I cannot now remember not being a father.

I have heard many people say that having children changes your life. I agree. However, I do not agree that this is a bad thing. The connotation of that statement is almost always a negative one. The implication is that life becomes limited and restricted because of children. Tosh. My life became richer, fuller and more vibrant. Possibilities opened up that I never imagined. Maybe I was more of an adult than I realised.

I simply love being a daddy.

I still watch my daughter with amazement. Six years have flown by since I heard her first cry of life and they have been a wonderful six years. She is amazingly intelligent. And her heart is so tender and caring it makes my heart ache. I am still excited with the potential of her life, but after watching her grow and learn for six years I am also astounded by what she has already become.

I am connected to both that potential and that growth. And maybe that's why this feels so natural to me. I do not have to pretend. It is not something separate or removed from the rest of my life. In a very real way I have picked up the experiences of my life and have gone back to the beginning, to walk along side my daughter. Hand in hand.

Ahimsa.

Hobbit Ninja Feet Revisited

2011-06-06T17:00:00.003-06:00

In the spring of 2007 I made a decision to work more on my cardio. This was not borne out of any tragic cardio-event, but more of a realisation that as I was getting older, focusing on my cardiovascular health would be a good thing. And the obvious choice for cardio, for many reasons, was running. The equipment needed is minimal and most of us have the coordination to perform it at least passably. But there was a catch. Running to me meant agony.

Back in high school I attempted to take up running. Not being a terribly sporty child (read: no soccer, baseball, volleyball, football, et hoc genus omne), running kind of went the way of Hardy Boys mysteries and Thundercats; running was a part of my childhood that just stayed there. But I remembered fairly clearly how to do the running thing. It was just like walking, only faster.

Not far into my new routine of running I started to get horrible pains in both my knees and in my lower back. The outer front of my right knee and the back of my left knee would swell considerably whenever I ran more than about three blocks and the pain would last for days. This put a stop to my high school running plans.

Throughout the rest of my teens and 20s I sporadically attempted to pick up running. Always with the same results. The pain I endured was just too much to make running practical for anything other than escaping slow moving zombies. I gave it up as a never-to-be and jokingly told people that I only ran when chased. Fair enough.

As I marched through the lower end of the 30s and hit some milestones, including the birth of my daughter, I began to once again think that working on some sort of cardio would be good. It is not that I was sloth - I rock climb and bike and swim and do gym things like lifting weights and bending myself to keep my joints well used - but I wanted something I could do consistently, on-the-fly and would give me that cardio workout I knew I needed. I could - and do - climb the stairs at work. But, dang it, I wanted to be able to take my casual activity and participate in an organized event every now and again. And the Stair Climbers 2,000 Steps just didn't sound fun.

Upon examining all the activities available to me, I once again decided that running was a logical choice, save for the whole excruciating pain part. So I started to do research. Initially, I was hoping to find something that would correct the defect in my running. I had never been told I run funny, but I had not, like one helpful website suggested, had someone video me running so I could analyze my running style. I read further.

I am not alone in my experiences of painful running. A lot of people experience it. A lot. And there are hundreds of thousand of websites dedicated to the subject. I read. And read. And read some more.

Apparently you can buy shoes that correct whatever deficiencies you have in running. There are stores that will set you running on a treadmill, analyze your gait and stride and countless other things and then give you a magical pair of shoes that will fix problems like supination and over-pronation and untold others.

This all sounded quite complicated for an activity we have been doing for as long as we've been upright. But I read more, because if this was going to fix my knees and back and let me run with wild abandon I was all for it. And in reading more I learned that those special shoes, over time, can cause new weaknesses to develop. But you can just go in and get a new pair of fix-it shoes for that.

I didn't like that.

Reading even more, I came across another school of thought on running and the pain associated with it. Shoes are the problem.

Ok, that is an interesting thought.

"Shoes do no more for the foot than a hat does for the brain."
—Dr. Mercer Rang, orthopedic surgeon and researcher in pediatric development

So why is barefoot supposedly better? Because running, as with any sport, is about developing good technique. Shoes can - and very frequently do - inhibit this development. That idea really opened my eyes. If I were climbing with Bob and Bob had a horrible technique that was causing him to injury himself, I would not suggest that he get a piece of equipment to cover up that failure in technique. I would tell him he needed to improve his technique.

And in doing more research I eventually found Vibram Fivefingers.

In May of 2007 I ordered a pair of Vibram Fivefinger Sprints from the Vibram Fivefinger website as they were not available in stores in New Mexico at that time. And I immediately liked them. They were the best of both worlds for me. The Vibram sole protected my feet from the stickers and rocks and even glass that inevitably litters the walkways and streets of the city, and the glove-like fit and the individual toes allowed my foot far more range of motion and allowed the 26 bones, 33 joints and 20 muscles of each foot to do the job they were designed to do.

I started running. And, much to my surprise despite it being the reason I wanted to try them out, I did not suffer the knee and back pain I had come to associate with running. Running became fun again. I started participating in 5Ks and having a great time. And I noticed performance in my other activities improve as well.

Fast forward to 2011. I still have those same Sprints. Yes, they are that durable. I'm not saying there has been no wear and tear. The soles are thinner than they were and the material between my toes has wore down, even through, in some places. But I have put them through the paces. I wear them all the time. Not just for running. I use them for trailing hiking and as approach shoes and around town and for outdoor yoga and at the water park. I still love running in them. There is a child-like joy I get and it is that, almost more than the lack of pain in my knees and back, that have kept me a fan for four years.

Vibram now makes many varieties of Fivefingers. And they even make a pair specifically for running. In May of 2011, four years after getting my first pair, I ordered a pair of Bikilas. And I love them as much as my Sprints and KSOs (my dressy, black Fivefingers).

The Bikilas are actually a bit of a step away from 'barefoot' as they have more support, more underfoot protection and a much more aggressive tread. But really this isn't about being barefoot so much as it is about learning and maintaining the proper technique.

For running, especially if you are going to do lots of trail running or running where there might be little rocks and other debris in your path, the Bikilas are great. They have more overall support. The Bikila is truly a running shoe. It is engineered as such. To great effect. Despite the more engineered feel, they still allow that foot movement that makes Fivefingers so special.

Vibram Fivefingers are not for everyone. You have to have a pretty typical foot, specifically your toes cannot be decidedly long or crooked. And some people just do not like the feel of something between the toes.The sizing can be tricky. So if you can go into a store to try them out, I highly recommend that.

If you are looking for a minimalistic shoe, one that can help you feel more connected to the ground you walk on, and maybe even one that can help alleviate the aches and pains of bad running technique, give a pair of Fivefingers a try!

Not Like Me

2011-03-31T10:29:00.000-06:00

"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

You are not like me. You look different. You talk different.

And that's just fine.

I am not, as so many people seem to be, suspicious of difference. In fact, I am suspicious of sameness. I am leery of it.

I do not understand the mentality that would lead someone to wish to live in a world filled only with people "just like me". How frightful that would be. And boring.

Like eating the same food all the time.

I am not saying I am not without preferences or prejudices, we all have them. But when it comes to the people with whom I surround myself, I want diversity and variation. I want to be challenged in what I think is the way things are. I want to learn and grow and change.

Perhaps I have an unfair advantage. I grew up in a house in which a multitude of different nationalities and cultures constantly mixed. My parents always had exchange students from all over the world staying with us. And if you walked out the front door and looked at my neighborhood, the same neighborhood my daughter now calls her own, you'd see a mishmash of cultures. It's still that way. 40 years later.

And perhaps, too, I have never felt I fell within a culture that required an assertion of "better than you". I never heard my parents say or saw my parents do anything remotely prejudiced. I was never raised with a sense of pride or honor because of my culture/race/socioeconomic status, rather I was raised to take pride and honor in the things I accomplished. Not the things I was by happenstance.

In my opinion, a culture is a not a thing that should be closely guarded and protected, but shared and celebrated.

We are not the same, you and I. We don't have to be.

Ahimsa.

Resolve

2011-01-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

resolve (ri zolv'). v., to come to a definite or earnest decision about; determine.

"We spend January one walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential." --Ellen Goodman

In a flurry of misapplied inspiration I made myself a list of goals. As one year slipped into another, I thought it might be a good idea to arm myself with a catalogue of to-dos and to-don'ts; a page of milestones to reach in 2011. Or at the very least an index of ambition.

However, I'm not very good at upholding this particular cultural tradition. For one, I am out of practice, having made my last list of promises a good 20 years ago. For another, I am not fond of lists. They are linear and confining. And I suck at making them.

But I armed myself with pen and paper and started to work on my list.

It looked something like this:

1. Onsight a 5.12
2. Send a V9
3. Drop my 5K time to under 22 minutes
4. Do 150 tpups (pull-ups) in one session
5. Ride my bike to and from work at least a third of the time
6. Perform a flawless Vrschikasana
7. Write at least one blog entry every month

Not bad goals, if a little too centered on the physicality of living. Each item seemed to meet the criteria of a good resolution (to my mind): specific, measurable, attainable, self-improving. I was pretty pleased with my list.

But the Universe, always with a wry sense of humour, did not like my list.

I did not charge into 2011 waving my list of resolutions in the air and conquering as I had planned. It was more of a stumble. A painful, clumsy stumble.

Starting off the New Year with two dislocated ribs was not on my list – I checked.

I assure you, the pain of this, if you have never experienced it firsthand, is quite impressive. It hurts to move. It hurts to be still. It hurts to stand. It hurts to sit. It hurts to lie down. It hurts to breathe. And it is not the type of injury you can tape up and ignore. Believe me, I've tried.

This left me with a pretty useless list. And a bad case of the self-pities. Despite my continued assertion that I am not a sporty guy, being unable to do physical things leaves me panic-y and more than a little depressed. I'm not good at resting. I'm not good at 'not doing'.

And so for the first two weeks of 2011 I pouted.

But I also thought a lot.

I looked at my list again. And I thought about my goals. And the nature of resolutions.

I am certain that this tradition of making a list of goals means different things to different people. People do it for different reasons. People do it in different ways. And perhaps for me this was the wrong way. I have never needed a tick list to send a route in rock climbing. I have never needed a mapped out plan for progressing in yoga. I am much more creative when I do not have an A, B and C set before me.

Along with its seeming sardonic cruelty, the Universe is also a very sneaky teacher.

Turns out that 'resolve' can mean a lot of things.

resolve (ri zolv'). iv., to progress from dissonance to consonance.

Aha!

When my life runs smoothly and I grow as a person, it is not from following a list. It is from listening – to my body, to what feels right and natural, to what the Universe has to tell me. When I approach an activity, be it writing or climbing or running or drawing or yoga, with affinity and not in an adversarial way I get the most out of it and make the biggest progress.

Some people need to overcome, master and control. Yet the things which bring me happiness and peace and quality of life are not things against which I have to fight and struggle. My strength comes not from overpowering a challenge, but by growing.

Two dislocated ribs. It is easy to see the dissonance. It prevents me from doing the things I love. But I can find the consonance, if I pause and look and reflect.

Rest. Reflect. I will accomplish all the things I need to accomplish in 2011. And I do not need a list. But I do need to listen.

Ahimsa.

Us vs Them

2010-12-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

"We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them."

I am reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

I'm having a very difficult time with this book.

I do not mean I am not enjoying it. On the contrary, I am enjoying it very much. But it is a 'hard read'. Not the text itself; Zusak has a lyrical and poetic style of writing that I find pleasing and even delectable. I find myself going back rereading passages, savouring them, rolling them around in my mouth like a delightsome chocolate.

However, the story is set in Germany. Nazi Germany. And I have always had a hard time with this subject. I find it uncomfortable.

And this discomfort is increased, folded over upon itself, inexplicably grown in weight and force because of comments I encounter daily from acquaintances and friends.

This distress, this discomfiture is not an abstraction directed at a single political ideal or group. Yes, it is easy to be horrified by what the Nazis did to Jews and others. But for me it has always been a question of the why and the how behind it. Why would a group of people target another group of people for such treatment? And how could it ever be justified?

This isn't a new thought.

And I'm certainly not unique in pondering it. In fact, Dr. Stanley Milgram sought answers to similar questions in 1961. I remember reading about Dr. Milgram when I was in high school.

The Milgram Experiment.

In a way, knowing about Milgram and his experiments troubles me more than any cogitation of Nazi Germany. It is disturbing.

It would be comforting to hold the proof in our hands that what occurred in Europe in the depravity of the 1930s and 40s, that the systematic killing of Jews, Romani, Soviets, Polish, homosexuals, people with disabilities and others – a number totaling between 11 million and 17 million people – was an aberration confined in both space and time.

But it is not.

Milgram did not find that the capacity to set aside morality was confined to Germans. Or officers in a war. Or people who lived in 1933. No, he found that most all of us have a willingness to obey an authority figure who instructs us to perform acts that conflict with our personal conscience.

"Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” --"The Perils of Obedience", Stanley Milgram 1974

I find this a terrible weakness of human nature. I have often struggled with this inherent flaw within myself. But it is a hard thing to locate, pin down, eradicate. Even more disturbing is that this blind obeisance to authority is a symptom. It is an indication of an even greater fault in human psychology.

As described by the Asch Paradigm, there is a fundamental relationship between a group and an individual. Put simply, a person who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the individual's behavioral model.

That doesn't sound too bad. If something is beyond my abilities or outside of my level of expertise, I rely on my group – peers, religion, state, etc – to decide the right and the wrong. However, stop to think a moment of what all falls in the category of what is beyond our abilities and outside of our expertise. It can easily become a catchall.

You know, like not decrying when the government takes away the Jews. Or rounds up the Japanese to put in "War Relocation Camps”. (In point of fact, that last little gem was not perpetrated by some foreign government 'over there'. It was something we did. Here. In the land of the free.)

We like belonging to groups. We seek out and attach ourselves to them based on religion and politics and even sports. And none of us has the ability or expertise we pretend. That's why they are comforting. They validate us. They empower us. And in times of doubt – an all too common occurrence – they tell us what to do.

That's pretty easy to see in an example like Nazi Germany. A country of people swept away by the Asch Paradigm. A county of people “just following orders.”

But if you look around, you can also see it in the everyday way we treat one another. And it is why an acquaintance jeering at someone in a different political party is disturbing to me. Friend X spewing vitriol at Friend Y based on political affiliation brings a single thought to mind. It's wrong to hate. Except those people, of course.

By reducing another human to just a member of a group you make it very convenient to bow to that very human tendency to give away your moral and ethical responsibilities. Your behavioral model is based on the group, not on your own morality. As one subject of the Milgram Experiment said later of his experiences, “Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority.” And a fundamental, perhaps the fundamental, quality that makes us human is that we have freewill. We can choose between right and wrong. Good and evil.

We just need to become aware when we abnegate it.

Ahimsa.

Internet Friends

2010-06-10T16:04:00.003-06:00

"We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people." --Pierre Omidyar

I was listening to the radio. I don't normally do this. I prefer to make my own music selections and don’t enjoy the advertising that necessitates channel flipping. Even rarer, it was a station with yappy DJs. Yes, they are occasionally funny – kind of like a broken clock is right twice a day – but mostly they are trying. Between the annoyingly compressed pieces of music, these particular DJs were discussing a news story about someone who did something or other online. I believe the person in question posted a video to You Tube or something similar. What the person did is inconsequential. Why she did it – for her 'Internet friends' – is important.

I would not have taken note of this at all had not one of the DJs made an aside, filled with as much derision and sarcasm as he could muster (very little, actually – the attempt being worthy of perhaps three stars), about this person's supposed 'Internet friends'. His exact words were: "Internet friends. Those aren’t real friends. People who have real friends don’t have Internet friends."

I found this interesting. And it made me very aware that those DJs are old farts who merely pretend to be cool.

And I don't say this just because I happen to have a lot of 'Internet friends'.

I say it because I think it reveals a distrust of and a prejudice against new media. And most interestingly, this criticism, so artfully enunciated in just such a way as to make Mr. DJ sound like an ass, is the latest manifestation of a very old fear. Each new form of communication threatens the ones before, if only by being a possible replacement. And people are uncomfortable with change. Especially the old farts.

Think I'm exaggerating about it being just another transmutation of an old prejudice? Plato, in his dialogue the Phaedrus, assembles a salvo of arguments against the written word. Yep, for the ancient Greek, writing was dreadful and would end life as he knew it. He feared that writing, in comparison to speech, would lead to forgetfulness. And in a very real way he was right. We do not have to rely on just our memories. But how bad of a thing is this?

One component of almost any new technology is its potential to undermine a way of life. Even if that way of life may not have been the best, our fluency with it makes it familiar and comfortable. It is far easier to point to aspects of new media that are not like the old media – even when, ironically, this might be just the point – than to look at the new qualities that the new technologies can confer upon us.

Writing makes us forgetful. Telephones make us impersonal. Instant Messaging makes us illiterate.

Back to 'Internet friends'. The forms of communication that the Internet now provides, be it Email (a relatively old new technology), Facebook, Twitter, 4-Square or uncountable others, are tools. And we can use tools to our advantage or our detriment. I have no doubt that there are people who use the anonymity of online communications to remain sheltered and isolated. But the true power of these new technologies is our expanded ability to reach out to others and form meaningful, reciprocal relationships.

I have 'Internet friends' I have met in real life. And I have 'Internet friends' I know I will never meet. The quality of my relationships is not driven by the medium of communication, but in the content of that communication.

Misogynist Me

2010-03-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

I was accused of being a misogynist today. OK, the nice lady didn't use the word 'misogynist', but her intention was pretty clear.

I woke early enough and feeling refreshed enough to think a workout at the gym was a good idea. I dressed, hopped in the car and headed out. The workout felt good. I've been sick the last two weeks and it felt great to be physical and strong. Near the end of my workout as I was making cool-down laps around the track I noticed a lady giving me looks. I could not exactly define the 'looks' – they could have been 'look at that cute guy looks' or 'he's got a booger on his face looks' or even 'he might be tasty with a light white wine sauce looks' – but looks they were.

I did not have to wonder long.

The nice lady, the one who was perhaps contemplating if I would be better braised or poached, walked right up to me, put her face very far into my personal space and announced with a little tremble in her voice: "It's guys like you that make this world a bad place."

I like to think of myself as hard to surprise. However, this did just that. I was taken aback (I think a first for me). I stammered out an "Excuse me?" and tried to back away from the little jolts of crazy now clearly detectable.

The nice lady, seeing that her point was being lost on stupid me, poked me in the chest and said, "Your shirt. It’s not funny."

I do have some funny shirts. I have one that reads: See a penny pick it up and all day long you'll have a penny. However, I was not wearing this shirt. I was wearing a workout shirt. You know, the wicking, breathable, don't-die-of-heatstroke kind. I looked down both at her accusatory finger and my shirt. Ah. I was wearing my Skirt Chaser shirt.

"It's a race," I said, still trying to back away from the crazy now achieving a rolling boil.

"I don’t care what it is," she said, still refusing to lower her finger-of-doom. "It's not funny."

I tried to explain to her that it's a 5K put on by SkirtSport, a company that makes sportswear for women. A company founded by Nicole DeBoom for cryin' out loud! And moreover the race had been a fundraiser for breast cancer research.

It didn’t matter.

I was merely a thing to be placed into a preexisting category.

This encounter left me…thoughtful. On the one hand there is enough irony in accusing me of being hateful towards women that it was almost funny. Almost. If I have a failing in that area it is that I'm perhaps too much of a philogynist. One the other hand, prejudice is not pretty no matter who wears it. Or why. And that was a prime and plump example of prejudice.

And that's kind of the point. The nice lady doesn't know me. She doesn't know anything about me. Yet she can judge me. I think that is a lot of what makes this world a bad place.

A prejudice is merely a prejudgment. And we all have them. They are both positive and negative. They are, in large part, our basis for likes and dislikes. But they can exist in a vacuum – which is what can make them so ugly and so dangerous. To judge something, anything, without ascertaining the facts of a situation, is one of the greatest failings of human nature. That we can hold onto an attitude that is resistant to reason creates much of the antagonism in this world.

I'm not angry at the nice lady; I feel sorry for her. I'm certain there must be a reason she holds that kind of hostility in her and lashes out. In her mind it might even be a good reason. However, it has nothing to do with me. And I am upset at an attitude that makes people dismissive of an individual's worth.

I don't think you should ever judge based on the lowest common denominator. And I will not judge the next nice lady I encounter at the gym based on my experience today.

If I know you, or someday meet you, know that I will do my very best to see you for who you are and how you act and not what I think you might be.

I Climb Like a Girl

2009-05-28T05:48:00.002-06:00

"The Big Concept: Climbing is a movement sport, not a strength sport. The best climbers are good at climbing; strength matters far less than the combination of the climber’s motion skills, attitude and mind. The best way to become a better climber is develop better movement; strength will develop specifically for climbing movement as fast as it is needed. Most climbs are combinations of movements; the better the climber is at those movements, the better he or she will climb the route. Strength is not even secondary, it’s about last on the list of needed skills."
--Will Gadd

I credit two people with teaching me the fundamentals of climbing, both are girls. And I'm damn lucky they took me under their girly wings.

Generally speaking, boys and girls approach climbing differently. In the beginning - on those first 5.7s and 5.8s - boys tend to use upper body strength and power to climb. Girls on the other hand usually do not have that upper body strength and must rely on *gasp* learning technique. This makes for an interesting comparison curve. Boys move quickly through those lower grades, being able to power through moves. Girls progress more slowly, learning balance and movement skills.

But strength takes you only so far. Mr. Gadd is correct: Climbing is a movement sport, not a strength sport.

As the climbing grade (difficulty) increases, it becomes less and less about pure strength. And this is due to many factors: balance starts playing a larger role with smaller holds and steeper inclines presenting a climber with more off-set balance moves; on higher grades the margin of error becomes smaller and things like center of gravity (COG) go from "important" to "critically important"; and the placement of hands and feet on holds and the timing of each movement become paramount.

Which is why when you work on your balance and hand placement and edging and all those other aspects of climbing in the beginning it means those higher grades are much more attainable.

So those who focus just on strength tend to move up through the lower grades quickly and then plateau; and those who rely on technique move through the lower grades more slowly but do not hit that same plateau. And the best part about learning technique? You gain the strength along the way.

I am eternally grateful to Rosa and Kristen because they would not let me rely solely on my boyish strength and were continually pointing out ways I could improve technique. (Rosa: "Use your feet! Use your damn feet!") At times it felt like the stream of commentary from my climbing partners was criticism, but it gave me the skills to lead a 5.12 in a relatively short period of time.

I'm not claiming that strength is unimportant to climbing. It is, in fact, on the list of have-to-haves in climbing. But the importance of strength is overemphasized and a misunderstanding of what kind of strength is needed (isometric versus concentric, anyone?) is perpetuated, especially by new climbers. I remember grumbling something about 'not being strong enough' and Kristen telling me that she couldn't even do a pull-up. This from a girl who looks like she dances up 5.11s. At the end of the day climbing is about a lot of things. But I'm lucky I learned to climb more fluidly and efficiently and not just stronger.

I climb like a girl. Thank God!

I'm like a motorcycle...

2008-10-29T19:40:00.001-06:00

I have said it before and will say it again, over and over again if needed - although I do fear it might be a case of "The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks." (Nods to my boy Shakespeare.) - I am not a sports guy.

I'm not.

Despite a love for rock climbing, running, cycling, swimming, snowboarding, et hoc genus omne, I do not like sports.

I realise that this seems like a serious disconnect. But it is how things sit in my mind.

Growing up I never enjoyed sports. I had an adversarial relationship with them. While both my brother and sister played basketball and soccer and baseball and volleyball, I did not if I could in any way prevent it.

When I was about eight or nine, thinking that their youngest was most likely very much like their oldest, my parents signed me up for the local youth soccer league. I cannot remember being more miserable in my youth. I felt awkward and out of place. And clumsy. Frankly, I hated it. And I sucked at it.

But as an adult I do many sporty things. And apparently my body is very much like a motorcycle.

According to a little quiz set up by The Car Connection, my body gets the equivalent of 45.5 miles per gallon.

45.5 miles per gallon
And that's a good thing. I like being healthy. I like doing physical things. I like that my body is like a motorcycle rather than, say, a minivan or a mid-sized sedan. But I still maintain that I do not like sports.

If I take a step back and look at things from the here-and-now I realise it is team sports that are not my thing. Yet I cannot separate the "team" from "sport" and when I hear "sport" it invariable registers as "team sport". Sport to me means soccer. Or baseball. Or any of those other games that to my mind seem like military maneuvers, like empty and disciplinary repetition. I just don't like team sports. Not to play. And not even to watch for the most part.

Individual sports, however, I like. Both to do and to watch. Perhaps I don't play well with others. Perhaps I prefer to have it all about me - I am an Aries after all! If I could wash the association of "sport" and "team sport" from my mind I might be able to admit that I am sporty.

Until then, I'll just be happy to be like a motorcycle.

Wind. Rain. And hail.

2008-10-11T20:12:00.000-06:00

The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta got quite a send off by Mother Nature today. In just under two hours the play area at our local park was turned into a little lake.

The wind swept in, quickly followed by a deluge of rain. That was followed by a crash of hail stones. It was alarming enough that I felt the need to bring the car in to the garage to prevent it from hail damage.

By the time the storm moved on an inch of rain had fallen and left the neighborhood quite a mess. The Chickabiddy and I went for a walk in the late afternoon and we decided to take a pass on the play structure in the park. We had forgotten our swim fins.

Finns! Finns! Eveywhere!

2008-10-11T14:49:00.001-06:00

As we do every year, we went to a Mass Ascension at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. It's always a treat - a feast for the eyes. This year there was a balloon from Hämeenlinna, Finland. This in itself is not remarkable. It is, after all, an international event and there are balloons from all over the world. But what is remarkable is how many Finns here in New Mexico - Finns who are not a part of my Finnish wife's rather extensive expat Finns-in-New-Mexico social network - showed up at the Hämeenlinna balloon.

I have long been suspicious that the Finns are trying to take over the world.

If the Finns are plotting for world domination (I point to Nokia, bluetooth technology and Linux as proof positive that there is some kind of plot) it is understandable that they are taking a slow and methodical way about it. That's how Finns work. They are good at it. But I fear that the intel might be lacking.

If they are taking over the world, one country at a time, they may have misjudged the importance of New Mexico. There are a lot of Finns here. And when they pull that mighty insurrection and gain control of New Mexico they are just going to find that the rest of the country will laugh.

If they notice at all.

Run Isi Run!

2008-06-26T04:24:00.001-06:00

This year, for the third year in a row, I ran in the Annual JCC Father's Day 5K. The first year my wife and daughter and I walked the 5K; year two my wife and daughter were in Finland; this year I got to run with my daughter. OK, I ran and she rode in the jogging stroller. I've pushed her around the neighborhood before in the stroller, but this was the first organized race in which I did it. It was tough. But fun. And I managed to come in first in my age category (read: older than I want to be) despite the added effort. I was proud. She was happy. And I love building these kind of memories with my daughter. At the end of July we'll run together (yes, we will both run) in the Chunky Monkey 2008 in the Kids-K (a kilometer). I can't wait.

National Bike-to-Work Day

2008-05-07T05:22:00.002-06:00

Pedal harder. Go faster.

May is National Bike Month

The League of American Bicyclists is promoting Bike-to-Work Week from May 12-16 and Bike-to-Work Day on Friday, May 16.

The Albuquerque Metro Area Bike-to-Work Day event is designed to give commuters both information and incentive to use a bicycle or take other alternative transportation to get to work. There will be four "breakfast stops" in Albuquerque open from 6:15am to 8:30am. At each stop bicycle commuters can enjoy a free breakfast from Einstein Bros Bagels and General Mills. While supplies last, reflective leg bands, blinking tail lights, reflective vests and t-shirts will be given away. There will be free drawings for more than $700 worth of gift certificates to local bicycle shops and restaurants.

For the location of the breakfast stops and more information call 311 or visit www.BikeABQ.org.

So ride your bike to work on May 16th. And stop by the Uptown breakfast stop and say "hullo". I'll be there giving out bagels.

The Me I See

2008-04-06T22:25:00.002-06:00

When you look in the mirror, do you like what you see?

"The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

"Wisdom begins at the end."
--Daniel Webster

Body image is an interesting thing. I was reading a friend's blog and it struck me how so much value and worth, pain and dread, effort and money are afforded to a subjective, insubstantial thing. Body image is, after all, just a perception. Most people's opinion of their own body is not aligned with the reality of their actual figure. That being said (or typed), much of our self-worth is wrapped up in that perception.

I have never been fat (or to use the preferred term, obese). In fact, I have always been the antithesis of fat. And whereas it is all but taboo to call someone fat, it is perfectly alright to call someone skinny. Being thin used to bother me. I "topped out" at 135lbs as a freshman in high school and did not gain another pound - despite every effort to do so - until I was in my 30's. I don't pretend that my flip-side-of-the-weight-coin makes me good at understanding people trying to loose weight, but body image is body image. And most people need to take a step back.

As my friend pointed out in her blog, various measurements are routinely taken at health clinics and then certain labels are often (arbitrarily) assigned - underweight, healthy weight, overweight, obese - without regard to eating and exercise habits or consideration of a level of fitness or a myriad of other factors.

If anything, the "obesity epidemic" is one of too much emphasis on weight and numbers without regard to eating habits, exercise patterns and other lifestyle choices. It is a belief that there is such thing as an “ideal body weight” based on height. The “ideal” of what our body looks like is based on body type, bone structure, muscle mass, genetics, what weight at which we feel our best and what weight our body tends to want to maintain.

We should all stop weighing ourselves and spend more time celebrating the miracle of our bodies and the marvelous things we can do with them. Let's MOVE and enjoy. Walk. Swim. Climb. Dance. Bike. Run. Not because it something we have to do, but because it is fun and makes us feel great!

Saisinko salmiakkia?

2008-04-04T16:50:00.000-06:00

Every so often I start to miss Finland more than just the constant light tug at my heart. Finland is home, just as much as New Mexico is home. The decision to leave there 11 years ago was difficult, and the desire to move back always present.

Quantifying why I adore Finland is tough; there's much to love and most of it is rather abstract. But for the sake of a concrete forum like a blog, I will attempt to write a few of the great things about Finland down.

Paukku's Top Ten Finland List

1. Suomalaiset (Finns)
Of course Finns top the list. Despite the fact that typically Finns are sullen, introverted and often have serious difficulties in expressing their feelings, once you get to know them - and more importantly they get to know you - they are generous, compassionate and a lot of fun to be around! Heck! I married one, after all.

2. Salmiakki (salt liquorice)
Not really salty per se since it doesn't have any sodium chloride in it, Salmiakki is a liquorice candy that contains a relatively large amount of ammonium chloride, which tastes a bit like salt. The Latin term for ammonium chloride is sal ammoniac - you see the connexion! (Those Finns are a literal bunch most of the time...) It is an acquired taste that, once acquired, is an addiction! I've yet to meet a Finn who does not love it. And with rare exception, I have yet to give it to an American who doesn't want to spit it out about 1.5 seconds after tasting it.

3. Siideri (cider)
And not just Linda's. Even people who are maddened by the habitually untalkative Finns, disgusted with salmiakki, offended by blood pancakes and think it's just too damn dark in Finland in the winter love Finnish cider. We don't have anything really like siideri here in the States. It is a bit like Smirnoff Ice but really not the same; siideri is not as sweet and there's just more FLAVOUR. I just found out that this spring Golden Cap will be releasing two new flavors: Golden Cap Puolukka (lingonberry) and Golden Cap Lime (citrus). Maybe it IS time to move back!

4. Sauna
Naked Finns love their saunas, and I love naked Finns. Enough said.

5. Koskenkorva viina
Koskenkorva is one of the symbols of Finnishness. It is a grain (barley) alcohol (high-purity industrial ethanol - yes, ethanol!) that is then diluted with spring water and a very small amount of sugar. Never heard of it? No doubt. The Finns don't export it. It is smooth. And will knock you under the table.

6. Summer cabins
Rowing or canoing on a lake, heating up a wood-heated sauna in the (still light) evenings and then having your fill of makara (knackwurst) on the grilli, swimming, eating wild berries in the forest, playing games with the kids, fishing...

7. Ruis leipa (rye bread)
In Finland rye and bread made from rye are as ubiquitous as Wonderbread here - and oh so much better! Rye bread is an essential part of the family diet, with round, flat loaves with a hole in the middle made from rye by a fermentation process. Whenever we travel to Finland for a visit we stock up on ruis leipa. And I make it here.

8. Public transportation
Finland spoiled me. I rarely drove while in Finland because I almost never had a need to do so. The buses and trains are spectacular, both in punctuality and cleanliness. It is what inspired me to use public transportation here.

9. Kauppatori (Market Square in Helisinki)
Finnish food isn't only about doing shocking things with bread and fish (Thank all that is good and holy!). Finland has great street food. Summer is certainly the most vibrant time in Finland and the open-air markets teem with culture and really, really good food. From the fresh-picked berries to the fresh-caught fish. YUM!

10. Finnish
I mean the language. I miss hearing it. I'm some-what and kind-a-sorta literate in Finnish. And despite my sometimes-frustrations with trying to go from an American with "passable" Finnish to the coveted "fluent as a native speaker" title, I really love the sound of Finnish. You just don't hear things like "Aja hiljaa sillalla" or "Kokko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko!" around New Mexico.

Sigh. I miss Suomi.

Shoes make the man.

2008-04-03T12:25:00.002-06:00

As Mark Twain so eloquently put it, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

As I was putting away the sundry rubble of my life in an attempt to set a good example for my daughter, I noticed that my shoes say a lot about me. I don't mean the leather hoohas I wear to work. Although I spend a lot of my time at work, the shoes I have for that activity are based largely on factors outside of my personal choice or even control. (Damn you, corporate America!) But the shoes I wear when not at work, they say a lot about me.

There are my Vibram Five Fingers (http://hirvimaki.blogspot.com/2007/05/hobbit-ninja-feet.html); my running shoes. Running, which used to be a chore to be avoided has become a pleasure to pursue since I found barefoot running. There is something very eight-year-old-esque about them that I like. I had forgotten how fun running could be.

And then there are my beloved La Sportiva Katanas. (Hmmmm...there is an undercurrent of a ninja theme here.) The comfort-opposite of the Five Fingers - I can only wear them for short periods at a stretch - they are none-the-less one of my favorite pairs of shoes. I love how I climb in them. I love how they look. They are technical and hard enough for the dreaded little, sketchy toe edges on a 5.11 and make me look pretty good on a V4 or 5.

And my Avalanche snowboarding boots. One word: comfortable. Well, they look cool as well. So two words: comfortable and cool. (Damn, that's three.) I love to hit the slopes - in style - with these guys. Snowboarding - which I only recently discovered as being wonderfully fun as opposed to skiing which is horribly un-fun - gives me that winter-activity to help round off the sports trifecta.

And what do these shoes say about me? For a non-sporty guy, I guess I'm a pretty sporty guy. Interesting. And strange. Running. Rock climbing. Snowboarding. Yet I still don't think of myself as being terrible sporty. But then, do the shoes make the man? Or at least say something significant about him? These shoes are indicative of the choices I make for my free-time; the golden moments I spend with family and friends doing what excites me, what I love, what I crave.

I suppose I should have included my flip-flops in the photo. But that's another story.

Happy Birthday, Silly Moose!

2008-04-03T07:03:00.000-06:00

Yep, it is my birthday today. I am a completely non-descript, un-noteworthy 37. For some reason 30 gets a nod, 35 is important and 40 is a milestone. Yet 37, not so much. Poor little 37.

This year, my 38th year of walking around planet earth in this body, I promise I will indulge more in my blog. I like the bloggity goodness of it, yet I let it sit almost forgotten for long stretches. So that is my resolution: MORE BLOGGITY GOODNESS! Ha!

And what else will this 38th year bring? More rock climbing. More snowboarding. More running. More tickling my daughter (and wife!). More reading. More smiles. More laughter. More living.

I don't feel old. I know, 37 isn't really old at all. But a lot of people seem to feel old when they pass that imaginary line of 35. I didn't and don't. Perhaps it is true that 30 is the new 20. I'm certain a lot of it is that I have such a vibrant life. My beautiful wife and daughter keep me on my toes, and maybe that keeps me young.

In any case, happy birthday to me! I'm looking forward to the next 37 years.

Unbreakab...

2008-04-03T06:23:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we need a little reminder of our mortality.

I was shopping at Lowe's the other day - we're in the midst of remodeling some of the rooms in our house - and I came across this very poignant, important reminder. Like most people, I walk around feeling pretty indissoluble - or at least blissfully unaware of my own transience. And while I can claim to be pretty resilient and perhaps even strong, I am certainly not UNBREAKABLE.

Cheer this!

2007-11-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

The Chickabiddy Cheers with the best of them.

My parents hold season tickets to see the Lady Lobos. And they invite us often. I must say that I am not much of a basketball fan. I don't dislike the game, I just don't get much out watching it. But Kaisa-Tinuviel loves it. She loves the crowd. And noise. And the spirit. Yes, the spirit.

She's not as much enraptured with the game itself, but by the cheering. And the cheerleaders. She thinks cheerleaders are the best.

This past week, after much begging - albeit polite (most of the time) begging - we got her a cheerleading outfit, complete with "Future UMN Cheerleader" emblazoned on the front. She wore it to the game right after Thanksgiving.

I don't know who was more excited and thrilled, Kaisa-Tinuviel or the Cheer Squad. All the girls were so very nice to us. They invited us down on the court so we could get pictures. And they let the Chickabiddy cheer.

I really have no idea if my daughter will become a cheerleader. But I know what it is to have a dream about wanting to be something and be excited about it. I love seeing the joy and excitement in my daughter's eyes. She really is my favorite cheerleader and I owe her nothing less.

Thanks UNM Cheer Squad. You've made a little girl very happy. And you've made her parents pretty happy, too!

Woof Toof Noof Roof

2007-11-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

It's cold and I want to climb. I really miss the warm days. And the climbing.

Being up on a climb (like Woof Toof Noof Roof (5.10d)) is what I need right now. But it is cloudy and 45 degrees. And that makes me sad.

I am a person who tends to take for granted the things that I love (sorry Eppu! sorry Pikku Boo!). I'm not certain why I do it. But it makes me grumbly when they are no longer around.

So on this cold, cloudy, depressing WORK-day, I realise how much I enjoy climbing outside. And I make this promise: I will stop taking things for granted - at least as much for granted. I will enjoy what I have. I will hold each moment of joy alive as it happens. A tall order, I know. But I think I can pull it off.

Spring, where are you? There're rocks that need climbing!

Daddy-hood

2007-10-18T11:57:00.000-06:00

I've been an isi (daddy) for three years now. I don't consider myself particularly good at it, but I do get better as time inexorably marches on. I figure by the time my daughter is old enough to have children of her own, I might be able to give her a pointer or two.

Despite my self-perceived shortcomings as a dad, I am very comfortable and happy in the role. Even the maddening moments of my daughter's childhood are precious to me and I walk around in a constant daze thinking that I was chosen - by fate or God or circumstance - to have this little being in my life.

She's a much better person than I am, perhaps because her existence has not yet included the ugliness that this world can produce. And she is smarter than I could ever hope to be. I tell her, as most all fathers must, that she can be or do anything she wants. And I truly believe that. I see in her the unspoiled potential that is what makes being human such a wonderful thing. I hope that I am around to see, experience and thrill in her successes.

Three years. I swear it cannot have been that long. Yet she's becoming a big girl so fast. Most of the time too fast for me.

Here's to you, little girl, woman-to-be, daughter and miracle. Three years. Three small steps. I'll hold your hand for as long as you want.

Friendship

2007-10-18T11:38:00.000-06:00

"A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be."
--Douglas Pagels

Friendship is one of the central human experiences. It is a distinctively personal relationship grounded in a concern of each party for the welfare of the other. Its importance lies in the fact that the concern we have for our friends has a place within a broader set of concerns; it is both selfless and selfish.

I don't have a huge set of friends - I am rather careful with my affections - but I am lucky enough to have some very special people as friends. They embolden, encourage and help shape who I am as a person.

For some reason today I am especially thankful for my friends. I am acutely aware of what they bring to my life, the value and richness that would be absent without them.

So thank you, dear friends, both near and far. I am lucky - no, blessed! to have you in my life. I hope that I never take you for granted, for I know only a little of your worth and would be poorer without you.

Shoe Envy

2007-09-12T04:57:00.000-06:00

"Jealousy is an awkward homage which inferiority renders to merit."
--Mme. de Puixieux

This past weekend I took my lovely family to the State Fair. After all the livestock had been examined, the horses admired, the displays of agriculture, paintings, sculpture and horticulture had been reviewed, the tasty snacks consumed and the variously entertaining shows taken in, we found ourselves, as we invariably do, in the Exhibit Complex. This is just a garage sale for everything and sundry. Booths struggle against one another and vendors vie for your attention. And you can find anything: ladders, cookware, ring cleaning miracles, hair bands that make you an expert stylist, imported clothes from all over the globe, bling, even more bling, a smattering of religious and political factions expounding upon what is right and just and moral, and shoes.

Oh, I knew what z-coils were. I have seen them before. But never had I seen them displayed with such garish intensity. And never before in such variety.

It was frightening.

It is true that I find them frightening because I do not understand them. Or rather, I do not understand why a human being would choose to put springs on his or her feet. I'm more of a minimalist. Myself, I like things simple. Like my Five Fingers.

And I happened to be wearing my beloved Five Fingers that day as we walked through the wonders of the Exhibit Complex. And passed the z-coil booth. There was a ripple through the denizens of the booth. And whispers were passed around. It was shoe envy.

Tergus

2007-09-11T17:11:00.000-06:00

"Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end."--Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Self-image is how you see yourself in relation to others. This is usually how you see yourself physically. It affects the way you interact with others, your confidence and your social habits.

Self-image is a complicated thing; it is shaped by unique thoughts, beliefs and experiences of each individual. And it is always biased.

When I look at this photo of myself, I see something different from anybody else looking at it. I see scars, which most people wouldn't notice at all, but that to me decry in a loud and uncomfortable voice of misjudgements and mistakes. I see freckles, which I never notice I have since I rarely look at my back. And I see age, which always makes me uncomfortable.

At the same time, I see written all the times I have lifted my daughter up in my arms, all the rocks I've climbed, all the push-ups I have done, and every time I have held close those I love. I marvel at my own body. I marvel at the engineering that went into it. I marvel at the miracle that makes it work.

I have a pretty good self-image. I actually like myself and how I look most of the time. And that's a good thing.

Finland, Finland, Finland

2007-07-15T14:00:00.000-06:00

Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping
Or just watching TV
Finland, Finland, Finland
It's the country for me

We're back from Finland. It was a wonderful - and relaxing - vacation. I needed the time away from work and the regular stride of life.

I really adore Finland. Each time I go back to visit family I am struck with the same sense of magic as I was when I first went to there when I was 19.I first notice the beautiful people. I don’t know how else to describe it. It is that Scandinavian-blonde, dreamy-blue-eyed look that I find so irresistible - my wife being the epitome of this. It gives my first few days when arriving in Finland an unreal, almost Hollywood-esque feel. There are just too many attractive people around for it to be real.

The fantasy-feel continues with the colour green. There’s just so much of it in Finland. Finland is a country of thousands of lakes and islands; 187,888 lakes (larger than 500 m²) and 179,584 islands. The landscape is covered mostly (seventy-five percent of land area) by forests and fens. And it rains a lot. All this translates into lots of green growing things. And it is simply beautiful.

My initial experience stepping into a Finnish coniferous taiga forest was like stepping into a child’s story book. For a boy from New Mexico, it was surreal and miraculous and I half-expected elves and fairies to appear in the thick foliage. I still have that same sensation each time I walk through the forest.

I think the people are wonderful; I guess that comes as no surprise as I have a Finnish wife. And although the inherent shyness of Finns can still be maddening to me at times, they are munificent and affable once you get to know them.

Although I am happy to be back in New Mexico once again, back into the normal routine of life, I miss Finland – as I always do.

Back together

2007-07-05T07:35:00.000-06:00

The two and a half weeks felt like much longer, but I'm finally reunited with my wonderful family. I joined them a week ago in Finland and I cannot describe the thrill running through me when I stepped through the exit doors at the Helsinki airport and saw them waiting for me. When the Chickabiddy came running at me full speed screaming "ISI! ISI!" at the top of her little lungs it was one of the best moments of my life.

"Happy" falls short as a description. "Elated" seems a little flat.

I'm most content in the role of husband and father. It is as simple - or as complicated - as that.

Right now my girls are sleeping soundly in the bedroom while I post this. It's early here, around 7:20 AM. I have been meaning to blog about the past week, but each time I sit down to write I find I don't know what to say. I am still overwhelmed just to be with them again.

The novelty of blue cheese pizza and rivers of martinis quickly faded, as I knew they would. This separation was imposed because of necessity, but I didn't like it one bit. And I'll do what I can do see that we have to be apart as little as possible from now on.

So let's just leave it at my joy of being able to hug my wife and daughter again. I know I'm blessed to have them in my life.

The year of...steel?

2007-07-04T23:33:00.000-06:00

We've been married 11 years.

I know, I know. How the heck did I get so lucky? I have no idea. But believe me, I know that I lucked out on this one.

Eleven years of marriage. And the theme for year 11? Steel. Huh. With ten you get diamonds. Twelve is silk and linen. Thirteen textiles and lace. Fourteen gold and ivory. Fifteen crystal. So what's up with steel for 11?

Steel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7 or 2.04% by weight (C:1000–10,8.67Fe), depending on grade.

Wow! That's um...boring.

But steel is strong. (Like I believe our marriage is strong.) And really, steel is very pretty. Sure, maybe it is pretty because it looks like silver, but pretty still. Strong and pretty. That's not bad. When you look into it, steel does have spiritual significance. In Sikhism, the kara (one of the articles of faith) is made of steel to signify equality and strength. You can't ask for much more than that in a marriage.

If you combine steel with that ubiquitous symbol of marriage, the ring, what do you get? The circle is the symbol that best represents connectedness, since all regular polygons are embraced by it. It is without beginning or end and therefor it represents infinity. In numerous cultures it represents fidelity, eternal love and commitment.

OK, this steel thing is not looking so bad. A steel ring would represent an eternal bond through the infinitude of the circle and the unbreakable strength of steel. Nifty.

My wife likes jewelry. Perhaps she needs another ring. A steel one.

Happy anniversary, baby! I love you!

My indulgence...

2007-06-14T06:38:00.000-06:00

...while Eveliina and the Chickabiddy are away in Europe.

"One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough."
-- James Thurber

Last night - in celebration or mourning of my current status as bachelor - I treated myself to Stilton, bre and a wonderfully decadent pomegranate and blueberry martini.

Yes, I know one is supposed to partake of Stilton with port...but I really am not overly fond of port. And I am fond of martinis.

The pomegranate and blueberry martini was not actually planned. Neither was the Stilton. Let me back up a bit. The day before I was at our favorite local market buying the essentials of bachelorhood - things one does not typically keep in the house as a father and a husband to an avowed hater of "skeezy cheeses" - namely alcohol for martinis and a nice blue veined cheese. Earlier I had explored our often neglected stock of compotational essentials. A nearly full bottle of Vermouth sat next to a lonely, empty spot. No vodka. No gin. I'm no martini purist. Far from it. And although I look upon a Cosmopolitan with some disdain, a flavored martini is a treat. So I was getting vodka. And Danish Blue.

That evening I made the most unsatisfying apple martini I have ever had. It was almost depressingly bad. So I turned to the Danish Blue for consolation. It had gone bad.

There are those in this world - my lovely and refined wife among them - that will profess that cheeses like Danish Blue are already bad. That is simply not true. That's like comparing wine and vinegar. I won't spend time defending my tastes except to quote Harvey Day, "People who know nothing about cheeses reel away from Camembert, Roquefort, and Stilton because the plebeian proboscis is not equipped to differentiate between the sordid and the sublime".

I returned to the store the following day, bad cheese in hand. I returned it with the intention of just getting more Danish Blue. But how could I trust that each and everyone one of those packets was not contaminated like the first? I got the Stilton instead. And then I got the pomegranate and blueberry juice. All very unplanned. Kismet? Perhaps.

I am happy it worked out that way. I highly recommend a pomegranate and blueberry martini. It is fruity, strong and somewhat tart.

1 1/2 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. pomegranate juice
1/2 oz. blueberry juice

Shake it with ice and strain into a chilled martini glass.
Garnish with blueberries.

And have it with some Stilton on light rye. It's decadent and yummy.

I'll admit to having had somewhere between "all right" and "not enough".

Cheers!

Single again...

2007-06-12T12:30:00.000-06:00

This morning I put my wife and daughter on a plane bound for Chicago, and ultimately Helsinki. For the next two and half weeks I will be a bachelor.

I imagine that the first few days could be fun. I can eat whatever I want. I can fall asleep on the couch and sleep there all night. I can make our dogs talk to each other in little annoying, goofy voices and have pretend philosophical debates - Topsi is a staunch Catholic Apologist and Dinky follows more of a Reformed Calvinist theology. (Oh, wait, I do that even when my wife and daughter are at home.) I can stay up late and watch "Night of the Lepus" or "Vampires in Havana" while drinking apple martinis or Disaronno. I can listen to two-and-a-half-year-old-inappropriate 80's punk as loud as I care to - which really is not as loud as when I used to listen to it in the 80's. I can drink milk right out of the jug - which I swear is purely hypothetical; despite my status as a die-hard galactophage, I would never do something as desperate and, well, gross as that. No, really. I wouldn't!

But I know that mostly I'm going to miss them terribly. I'll miss the familiar presence of my wife when I shift in my sleep. I'll miss going into my daughter's room at night when I just can't sleep to listen to her breathe and feel God's presence. I'll miss bumping into my wife as we try to get ready in the morning and find that there really is not enough room for two adults in our bathroom. I'll miss their laughter. Their hugs. Their smiles.

I already miss those things.

It's hardly a fair trade for being able to drink martinis and watch bad movies. Two and half weeks. That's 17 days...420 hours...25,200 minutes...1,512,000 seconds.

I hope they are safe. I hope they are happy. And I hope they know how much I truly, deeply, madly love them.

See you guys in Helsinki in two and half weeks!

Surprise! The eyes have it!

2007-06-11T12:13:00.000-06:00

No more glasses. No more contact lenses.

After mulling this over for quite a few years, my wife and I decided to finally get Lasik surgery done. And I am so happy we did.

After more than 24 years of wearing contacts and glasses, it is so strange (in a wonderful way) to see so well - both Evelina and I ended up with 20/15 vision. I keep reaching to take off my glasses at night when I go to bed and wake up in the morning thinking "Oh no! I left my contacts in last night."

On the day of surgery, after some additional tests to make certain we were still good candidates and that I still had enough money to cover the equivalent of our mortgage payment several times over, they gave me a little blue pill. Xanax. Xanax is a benzodiazepine, like Valium and Librium and a host of other "minor tranquilizers". Which is interesting, I suppose. But I digress.

Being unfamiliar with Xanax or any of its cousins, I inquired of the friendly staff attending my wife and me what I could expect from this little blue pill. "You'll feel like you've had a couple of cocktails before dinner," came the reply. Good enough. It's not like I really need to be any more gregarious and extroverted than I already am - my wife will agree - but if increasing the frequency of my witticisms would make the surgery go better, so be it.

After taking the little blue pill we were arranged in huge leather seats to await the procedure. Seated comfortably, I awaited the coming of the "couple of cocktails" euphoria I had been promised. After 20 minutes I began to be suspicious that whomever was tending this particular anteprandial bar was watering down the drinks because nada, nothing, no alchoholesque glow.

As I contemplated this, we were moved into another room, the pre-op room. "Who goes first?" asked the attendant. My wife indicated that I should go first by pointing at me and sticking out her tongue. "I just need to mark your corneas," said the attendant. That sounded...ominous for some reason. But I seated myself in front of the chin-and-forehead rest apparatus that is so ubiquitous in eye-care facilities. "Open your eye wide," she said when I was properly placed. And then she came at me with a green Sharpie.

I'd like to think there are special, disposable, 100%-sterile medical instruments made with exacting standards that are used for things like "marking your corneas". But this thing looked like a green Sharpie. Much like the green Sharpie that sits next to my keyboard at work, in fact. I've never been comfortable with things close to my eyes, but it really did surprise me that a green Sharpie coming at my eye would rank in the top ten of uncomfortable moments in my 36 years.

Fortunately, my eyes were numbed and so had no feeling, however I had a pretty easy time imagining what that green Sharpie must feel like pressed against my eyeball. She made two marks on my right eye and asked me to sit back. "You did great," she said. Nice to know.

"I was more than a little anxious," I told her. "In fact, it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming and jumping backwards."

She frowned. "Maybe we should give you another Xanax." My wife quickly raised her hand and nodded, indicating her desire for another round.

If a single Xanax does nothing to me, I can attest that two Xanax do exactly twice that. But I sat through the marking of my left eye and the remarking of my right eye - how lucky! - with as much stoic calm as I could muster. I was led away into the surgery room, my wife looking very much like she had hit pay-dirt at that bar that failed to deliver for me.

The actual surgery was fast; perhaps seven minutes. And although I never did get my "couple of cocktails", I made it through without any trouble. The laser making the adjustments was actually very pretty. And it didn't hurt. A tad uncomfortable, but no real pain.

So now I see very well, with no glasses and no contacts. My eyes feel so much better, healthier. They certainly "breath" better. I'm happy we got it done. As I told my wife, she and I can now see with crystal clarity all the things we can no longer afford.

Proud to be a Daddy

2007-05-31T12:10:00.000-06:00

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. "
--Elizabeth Stone

My daughter will be three years old in just four and half months! Time has flown by at such a rapid rate. I swear it was just last week that I drove my wife to the hospital (she was a study in calm; I a study in panic). My joys in life have expanded because of my daughter: the sound of her laughter; the way she runs with wild abandon; the way she has of hugging me with her whole being; her words of care and love. (I told her last night: I love you, princess. She responded: I love you too, princess. I suspect my wife was behind this exchange and had been coaching her for weeks to accomplish this...) Everything my daughter does fills me with a thrill and more than not a laugh or two or three.

Each day I celebrate the role I play in my daughter's life as her Isi (father). And each day I have a new and unique perspective on what it means to be a dad. Who and what I am as a father is directly related to the who and what of my daughter. That is no easy task. She is a dynamic, expanding being. As she changes and grows, so must my response to her. It has to. I find I must be nimble to accomplish this. She amazes me with her intelligence and cleverness. It challenges me and I love that.

As you may have guessed, I really like this Isi-thing. I'm not the best at it - not by a long shot and not even in my wildest dreams - but I do try. When I make her laugh, stave her tears or make her feel loved and welcome in this world, I do feel like a good father.

Ok, so I'm scared a lot of the time and I get frustrated as well. But my greatest pleasures come from the moments I share with my family, my wife and daughter. They inspire me. Make me feel alive and whole. Being a father gives me a perspective on living that was missing for most of my life.

Delight for Only Her

2007-05-25T07:46:00.000-06:00

This year I will start my 12th year as a married man. Yep, in June my beautiful wife and I will have been married 11 years. Amazing!

Thank you, my darling, for putting up with me (I know it is often not very easy).

Thank you for being the best wife a man could ask for.

Thank you for being the most awe-inspiring mother to our daughter I can imagine.

Thank you for being who you are, each day.

I wrote this poem for my wife years and years ago, before she was my wife, actually. I figured it was time to take it out, dust it off and show it the light of day once again.

Delight For Only You

Morning throws her golden light toward my lover's eyes;
Twin spheres of beauty who are upon the gentle sky.
And I beheld her beauty, for ecstasy and delight,
And with fanciful calm, peaceful, safe and arrogant,
Fill'd the heart of the obliging smile that she gave to me;
And so I received this fantasy, built from pleasures,
Cast in kindness; feather'd with hope, ever patient.

There with Lust, she danced in light and airy rain;
A fete for my abandon'd heart:
Her voice whose honeyed passion can reclaim
A spirit chain'd with links of pain.
Her eyes, alone in solitude,
Her lips a red that caught the sun, and morning's mist;
Upon her body lay the dew;
There dance, wreath'd in morning's gem,
The weeping of the rising sun,
With words of love calmed my frighten'd soul;
I saw the softest blue heav'n could intend.
In whispers from her flawless lips,
The wonder of a zephyr's laugh;
A wondrous wind that seeps this heart
And leads me down this fated path.

We live with this obsession:
Love us free from waiting death!
Around her perfect eyes, her soul's flawless image,
Like stars within the blackest night,
Living orbs of a lover's delight'd kiss.

To love her seraph's soul - so was I made,
In the breath of her dreams, and pass'd the ghastly moon;
A second self, chaste upon the midnight shade;
Fill'd with teardrops ne'er seen.

In you wonder and magic and calm in corporeal form;
The quiet mystery within the blackest storm.
With azure love that bursts upon my scarlet heart,
My lover's smile is true. Now my love before my eyes appear'd:
Bright, affectionate, just: an angel she seem'd;
Wherein my heart was laid her soul:
My soul did repose upon a silver cloud.

Beneath the whispering winds,
Like trees rock'd by spring's gentle breath;
My heart shall beat measure to her laughter, and delight;
And with its ethereal magic shall masque the shadow of yonder pain,
As midnight cries in the light of the moon.

The moon you now rule, and caress the absent stars,
The power of its eyes dim the halls of heav'n no longer.
Strok'd by the hands of this enamour'd kiss, a love divine;
Build a fair castle, paved with emeralds,
And the roof a frozen forest's call.

Your voice, whose laughter fill the hush'd wind
With everlasting joy,
Kiss'd the clouds, and gave the night its life;
The gentle moon, its yellow brilliance
Pierce the depths of my vanity's deep sorrow,
Whose violence made griefs that need your love.
--Paul-Baptiste

Hobbit Ninja Feet

2007-05-23T06:02:00.000-06:00

Vibram Fivefinger Sprints: a new, er, old way to run.

I ordered some Vibram Fivefinger Sprint shoes. Yes, they look a little odd. But we were born barefoot, right? And I have always wanted to be a Hobbit ninja!

The Sprints are basically just a sheath for your feet, including individual toe slots. This allows your toes to spread out, which works to stretches and strengthen muscles in the feet and lower legs, improving balance, agility, range of motion and speed. According to Vibram, "Strengthening these muscles not only leads to better performance, it can reduce injury and help develop healthier feet."

Originally developed as water/sailing footwear, they have been embraced by the barefoot running community. There is good evidence that the bare foot is still the ideal structure to walk, run, and live on.

That's the hype, anyway. And in reality?

They have no padding to speak of, just a "skin" of Vibram razor-siped soles (Vibram makes 32 million soles annually for more than 1,000 footwear brands including The North Face, Scarpa, Merrell, Timberland, Chaco, Lowa, Asolo, Rockport, Columbia Sportswear, Hi-Tec, Giorgio Armani, Prada Sports, Dolce & Gabbana and Hugo Boss, etc) held on to your feet with a stretch polymide fabric upper. Weighing in at just 5.6 oz each, it really does feel like you have bare feet.

The moment I got them out of the box I put them on. After the initial fumbling with getting big-toe into big-toe-slot and so forth, they were incredibly comfortable! Walking around the office felt strange at first, but I soon forgot I had them on.

They do take some getting used to. I rode my bike about 2.5 miles to try them out for comfort. It was a little odd, riding a bike wearing the Sprints, yet somehow familiar. Then it hit me: it felt like when I was a kid and used to ride my bike in bare feet! What fun! I certainly would not want to wear them on a 50 mile ride, but for my around-town-commuting they were a pleasure.

That same evening I went running in them - just about a quarter of a mile both on and off the paved trail around our subdivision. (Vibram wisely advises people not to hit the trails for a 5K the second you get them strapped to your feet; it takes some time for your feet to adapt to using the "new muscles", and running in them drastically changes the way you hold your body when running.) During the off-pavement run, I could feel the ground - I could even feel the texture of the sand. But nothing hurt. Not even the little rocks and such that I unavoidably stepped on. The Vibram sole does a remarkable job of protecting the feet while still allowing for increased sensitivity.

They do change the way you run. When you run in them your heel basically never touches the ground in any meaningful way; you land on your forefoot, flatten slightly, then launch again off your forefoot, which is a more natural way to run than landing on your heels. At first it felt a little awkward, but then it felt very natural and I got into a rhythm.

I plan on putting the Sprints through test next month when I wear them in a 5K. We'll see how well the hype matches the reality.
So far, I am pretty darn impressed.

The Privilege of Riding the Bus

2006-09-12T17:46:00.000-06:00

If I were like most members of my socioeconomic class, I would exclude utilizing the bus from my transportation plans. After all, I do not have to take the bus. I own a vehicle (more than one, in fact), so I can easily drive to and from work. And although gas prices are high, happily that is not the deciding factor in how I get to work. The truth is I like to take the bus. And this makes me a very fortunate person.

As an Albuquerque native, I grew up viewing the bus system with a measure of disdain. Buses, after all, are for people who don’t have a choice. As an adult, I now have the experience of having lived in other cities, cities where public transportation is a choice, not a socioeconomic hardship. And making the drive from the Westside to Uptown each day as the lone occupant in a vehicle got me thinking about things like hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. So instead of shunning the bus, as a lot of Albuquerque residents do, I have embraced it.

I’ve been taking the bus to and from work for more than two years. All types of people ride the bus with me; people who are often not like me. Sure there are people with questionable personal cleanliness, people who are noisy, even people that must be, in my unprofessional opinion, crazy. But riding the bus is a reaffirmation of the marvel of the human experience. Riding the bus is a continual lesson in ditching stereotypes. Riding the bus has taught me that goodness has little to do with where you work or live or how you dress.

If I didn’t ride the bus, I’d miss seeing the scary-looking teenage skateboarder jumping up from his seat to assist a young mother and her child wrangle a stroller through the aisle. I’d miss the high school students on their way to another day of learning, joking and laughing with each other, hopeful for the future and the world, and giving me hope at the same time. I’d miss chatting with the man who took the bus so his daughter could drive the family car to take her best friend to lunch on her birthday. I’d miss the child snuggled in her father’s arms, eyes full of wonder, riding home from a visit to the doctor. And I’d have never met the new friends that I have made.

Yes, riding the bus saves me about $2,500 a year in car expenses. Yes, I cause less air pollution. Yes, I don’t have to deal with traffic on a daily basis. But most importantly, riding the bus lets me experience the benevolence of strangers first hand. It lets me view life. And for that reason, it’s a privilege.

Fly, baby, fly! Dynoing...

2006-06-21T14:43:00.000-06:00

dynamic movement n /dI-'na-mik-'muv-m&nt/ a move that requires the use of momentum : v to perform a such a move : DYNO

Sometimes a hold is just too far away. So, what do you do? Is it possible to fly and land those crucial inches higher up? Yes. It's called a dyno.

So what's this dyno-thing? In simple terms, it's jumping from one hold to another when you just can't reach. Dynoing is leaving the rock completely, propelling oneself - using arm and leg strength - to the next hold. Every dyno is, to a certain extent, unique in terms of holds, angles, length, etc., but there is one aspect in which all dynos are the same: you have to let go...

It's cool. And it's a rush.

Blah blah blah, right? Here's a video - taken with a camera phone so I apologize for the crappy quality - of me dynoing. You'll get the idea.

10 Wonderful Years

2006-06-21T08:38:00.000-06:00

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

-- William Shakespeare

This month, on the 29th, my wife and I will have been married 10 years. I know! 10 years! (Happy anniversary, kulta!)

And after 10 years I still love my wife.

Let me clarify that statement. When I say that I love my wife, I don't mean I'm "in love" with her, I mean that I really do love her. I see a distinct difference between loving someone and being "in love" with someone. The ephemeral versus the eternal. The ubiquitous versus the extraordinary. Romantic versus rational.

But I digress.

Eveliina and I have known each other for 16 years and been a couple for 13 or so. But the "I do's" were bespoken 10 years ago in a quaint, wooden church built in 1763-1764 alongside a lake in Petajavesi, Finland.

I really do love this woman. And I love being married to her. (And in a culture which is openly hostile to marriage as a lifelong commitment that is an increasingly unusual thing.) I'm not asserting it is easy being married - there are no comprehensive set of rules, no manual to cover every situation, no way for both my wife and me to be happy with each other all the time - but it is a blessing and a gift which has made my life so rich and fulfilling that it is worth the effort, worth the sweat and tears, worth the commitment.

Our relationship started out like most do. I still remember the first time I met my wife. When I first saw her I thought to myself, "Wow!" And from then on I went out of my way to pay attention to her, and actively sought to meet her needs. I'm not saying my stunning good looks and modesty didn't have something to do with her attraction to me, but I expressed an interest in her, and she noticed that.

Years later, the very method I employed to get her to choose me over all the men in the world - and there were lots of them vying for her attention - is the tactic I use to keep her choosing me. (Shhh! Dont tell her!) Back then I showered her with attention, I let her know I adored her, and I showed her in many different ways that she is important; I try and do the same today. It seems to work.

Together forever is a wonderful dream. And although passion is not like crazy glue and the marriage ceremony doesn't guarantee anything, a healthy, happy marriage is worth the work. I hit the jackpot.

Thank you, Eveliina, for 10 wonderful years. Here's to 100 more!

Rakastan sua. Te amo. Te quiero. Te adoro. Te deseo. Me antojs...

Paul-Baptiste

Fatherhood

2006-06-21T08:23:00.000-06:00

"Theres something like a line of gold thread running through a mans words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself."
--John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

I've been pontificating upon my wonderful family. Expecially my daughter. And on myself. On the kind of father I am and the kind of father I wish to be. I've been exploring what it means to be a great father to her.

The natural place to start, of course, is a reflection on my own father when I was a child. I've made a list of all the things I most loved about my dad, recalling what I respected and what I enjoyed, the times that I miss, the best memories we had together, moments that touch me deeply when I think of him.

Much more difficult, but I think as equally important, I made a list of the things about my dad that I wish were different. The things that irritated me, things that he said or didn't say, things that he did or didn't do, negative memories from childhood, experiences with my dad that are sad memories.

Armed with this information, it became easier to reminisce, and to explore the foundational relationship of fatherhood. It gave me a new perspective on what a fantasy father would be like. Another list appeared, a list of the what this fantasy dad would do, what he would teach, the places he would he go, and the things he would not do.

An almost startling insight came to me. The essence of being a great father is not merely a one time insight, but a steady process of being with my daughter. As much as I would like it to come down to a list of ten things to make me a perfect father, it is more intanglible than that.

Do not misunderstand me, the lists were (and are) invaluable. They forced me to think and emote.

And I now hold three very clear facets of being a father in my mind and heart.

The first is that I wish my dad had been around more. I loved the time that dad was with me, whether it was cleaning, playing, working, studying...anything. I loved when my dad was with me in my activities. I always felt that my dad didn't have enough time for me - even though my dad was around a lot more than most of my friend's dads. So I will be around for my daughter. I will increase the quality and quantity of time I spend with her every single day.

The second is that, in the best way that I can, I will emulate the way my father listened to me, really listened. And beleived in me. Much of my courage and self-assurance as an adult comes from the times I talked with my father and he listened and treated me as a valuable, thinking human being.

And the third is that I will talk to my daughter, as my father talked to me. But I will try to better it. I will not only talk to her, I will open up to her. I want her to know what is going on inside of me. I will take that almost unimagable risk of being vulnerable with my child. She is deserving. And it is an incalculable gift.

Because I love my daghter with all of my heart, I will work very hard to become an even better father to her than I am today. Tomorrow. And the day after. And each day for the rest of my life.

Paul-Baptiste