At 6:10, a tear formed in my eye...

Things I learned while mountain biking v.2

After endoing and faceplanting into the dirt while listening to Slayer on the bike, I came up with the idea of sharing a few things I've learned over the past 15 years of mountain biking in San Antonio. Some might be obvious, but here they are:

01) Avoid listening to aggressive music while in an aggressive mood on a machine built for aggression. Ignoring this will lead to spectacular accidents.

02) A little vaseline rubbed into your eye orbits before you ride keeps the sunblock from leaching into your eyes as you sweat.

03) While we're playing with the vaseline, some rubbed in and around your nostrils tends to keep trail dust out of your lungs.

04) There is a huge difference between riding at dusk and riding at night. Night is really really really black when you are in the boonies.

05) You cannot ride at speed in the darkness. Even with that really cool mountain bike light you dropped a hundred bucks on.

06) The sudden smell of cigarette smoke while racing through a tree-shrouded creekbed at night usually indicates trouble. Especially when you don't smoke.

07) No matter how far back you lean, that 80 degree drop is going to flip you.

08) If you hit drop out at a fast enough speed, your foot will come out of your shoe.

09) People really do get hurt from hitting trees.

10) It will be hotter than you think once you get out there and begin riding in earnest. By the same reasoning, it will also be colder than you think after you've stopped for awhile to rest and then get back on the bike.

11) To quote a buddy from the 1990's, "Before you go balls-out on a trail, ride through it slowly to check for dangerous turns and stuff."

12) That sound of motorcycles in the distance as the sun sets? Vampires. Get the hell out of there.

Rapidly approaching the price of a breakfast taco...

Now if we could only fill up with tacos...

Drive Home

(EDIT: YouTube has decided to mute any videos containing any disputed copyrights of music, and this video features about 30 seconds of Robert Plant's "Ship of Fools". I have pulled the video from YouTube in disgust.

Looking forward to a day where we don't have to live with this bullshit anymore.

Have a nice day!)

If we are in a recession, then where do all these cars come from?

Watching the moon set in the morning

It didn't occur to me how much time had passed since I last posted here until a coworker asked me about my blog. Seems I have been creeping some people out with my twitter avatar (which is the same as the one I use in this blog), since no one sees me in a suit on a daily basis. Black concert or skateboarding t-shirts and worn Levis Jeans are the dress code at Rackspace.

And that... is if you feel like dressing UP.

Work continues to dominate all. I am currently in a 6-day stretch that feels like 6 months. A non-stop adventure in short bursts of energy drinks, phone calls, and systems administration on random Linux servers. Nevertheless, I must be doing something right, as many strange people continue to call and ask for me by name or even dial my extension at work directly. I often wonder if this has happened to other techs on the well-trodden path before me or whether I am truly blessed with the ability to speak coherent English and actually know a little something about tech problems-du-jour while I'm at it.

And then I get a tough phone call that puts me right back in my place...

On the weekends (if I am not working) I succumb to my desire to feel human again by mountain biking aggressively through the local hilly terrain. There is nothing quite like the feeling of accidentally hitting a tree at 15mph with your right shoulder or even flipping end-over-end and narrowly avoiding a concussion on sharp limestone rock after tearing through a segment of singletrack in the perverse Fall heat in South Texas to remind you that you are still mortal. Wisps of my competitive BMX past surface and I will take my bike into the air over and over again until I am caked in salt and physically depleted. Which drives home the point I am no longer 20 years old. And that electrolyte imbalance can be deadly if ignored (long story lurking there). I have never been much of a "exercise to be fit" kind of person. Just moreso a "HOLY GOD THIS IS FUN!" kind of athlete. I wish more people in the world could feel this way, although this is an exception given my chosen place of residence. Too much diabetes and sloth in this town. Which is why I will never meet someone who shares my interests. Never.

At the doctor's office today for a checkup, I was reminded of how routine my life has become, despite the daily swings I experience in emotions and anticipations that can be handed you by the nature of your job. Or even the by the passerby mentality of your bathroom-mirror life.

Do you ever wonder why no one says you look older anymore? Compared with when you were a child and your relatives at odd intervals in time would exclaim "how much you have grown!" (annoying cheek pinch)? It is because you see the same you over and over in the bathroom mirror every morning, and every evening.

To YOU, well, you have never changed in the slightest.

But as we all know, this is an illusion.