chollaball.net

because I am overcaffeinated or overstressed or ADD or too American, my brain won’t sit still.  I can not focus on the ginormous pile of money that moves from 1 place to another and the other ginormous pile of stuff that moves back, I am fixated on how Kila can get out to deuce and the tools i will need to install it.  And as soon as I’d bought them, I could not stop thinking about painting G’s room.  She wants a castle,  maybe with grey and pink and white sponge brushing, and some rolly green hills in the background, and some sky.  and then every person who comes to visit can buy some damn colors and paint in a rainbow or a unicorn or some yodas and shit. I am too busy to think about more than the grey\green\blue\white\pink\black paint i need to buy.  I may end up shopping for paint, before even having figured out how to buy a hand truck.  I’ve got a steam cleaner covered, but i can’t remember if that was before or after the hand truck.

I took Kila out for a dog ride last night, and convinced James to come along, there was knowledge yet to be dropped.  Dropped it was.  He rode some stairs for the first time woot woot, as did I - the new Bucket List item is now old, and my links are getting localized like my rides and my time on the trainer and the dog rides.  Kila spatted with coyotes and javalina in the same night, and got nipped by at least one of em.  Recounting these awesome details this morning and this evening got me through the rapids, at least for a day.  I dug deep for 1 more hour on 1.5 more projects to finish the 4 insane work toxins I’ve caught today.  The current ride is the trainer, which is not nearly so potent, which is probably why i find beer makes it all tolerable again.  And my housewarming gift to myself, cuz my back is gonna kill me.

Buried in packing all weekend, and staring at the sky all weekend to figure out when i could nut up or shut up.  Between the rain and the cold and the full-face and the armor, I was ensconsed in a body-condom, and continued sweating for several minutes after the sky opened up and puked on Kila and I sprinting home through a lightning storm.

I hit it 5 times.  The first time the expression on my face surely looked like this:  .  the next few times got easier, even when i tired and bailed out cause i didn’t have enough speed, even when my form went to shit: I now knew i could hit it, and there was nothing but myowndamnself to fuck it up.  The rest was easy…just ride.

A good day of progress, reps and all. This is nothing big, absolutely nothing, by many standards, and many friends could knock this out on a cross bike wearing tennis shoes.  I could not fathom it in 2004 when I first saw it done, I could not fathom it last year, I could barely fathom it til last month.  but I’m psyched, nuttin’ wrong with that.

a little vid of our day

We took G to her new school today, so she could meet her teachers and her classmates and we could meet the staff, and its not all such a sh0ck in 2 weeks. She was shy for about 2 min. The other kids in her class were very friendly and that made her feel better, nice to see kids of all different colors in the class. as soon as she saw the new toys and new playground she was her typical gregarious self. such a wonderful upbeat little girl - she surely doesnt get it from me.  She insisited on going back to say goodbye to her new teacher.

We drove around the neighborhood, to the house and back, to see the uphills and the downhills and the intersections.  The daycare is 1.2 miles, with 1 big intersection - a vast improvement for our 2-wheeled endeavors vs. now crossing 5 lights and the 202.  The McDowell Mountain Ranch park is 1 mile away, is offering Memorial Day-to-Labor Day memberships for $120, and has a good enough gym and pool to at minimum handle our shit through summer. Though the scenery at Mountainside Fitness will surely be much better, i think the pool shall help compensate for that. Too bad the skate park does not allow bikes - i would love to learn how to drop a bowl.  The nearest unfenced playground is 1 mile away, uphill, which means rolling home will be much better. The desert area is .5 miles for Kila to be onleash, .3 if i duck behind the school.  There is a lot back there, a lot of good walks to be had, probably no super gnar gnar, but i will remedy that with that with a shovel.

Alana and Kila and I rode out to pick up G again, more firestation runzeheunding, more budding bipedalism, but absent any melancholy. Grab it while its good.  Look for the next thing that is good.  Chooses to be near the next thing that is good. I am fortunate that I have had the opportunity to make choices in my life, I am jaded and resolved to continue to take advantage of opportunities, and I am sensitive to reflecting honestly upon them and their fragility.

G wanted to explore the construction site behind the Church again today.  It will only be around for a few more weeks, irregardless of our zip code.  She may ultimately be Daddy’s negotiator for AC service at Casa V. I am stoked on many levels.

doh!

just found a cool trial, 3 story office bld w. outdoor staircase opened across from the Walgreens.

after a couple night rides and shots at the curbs and walkways, i found the staircase w.out the security door. Hoofed the bike up and hit a 90 degree turn down a staircase np. next is to take it from the 2nd floor w. a 180 in the middle…and if i could get that i could take it from the roof all the way down.  It would make a nice video, extreme blogging about my radness.

never gonna have enough nights to practice this between now and moving.  Especially after I am fucking committed to jumping the 3-fter in my pit before the weekend is done.  I have pulled every card on Maadjurguer to make him come with me just in case the need for 911 arises.

Every time we go to Casa V I think about what I can hit and what i can find and what has skeered me and what will be new.  Every time I hit National i do the same. Its totally addictive, and once it hits the addiction center of your brain it is there forever - the passion and the mental maps.  I will be back to ride Hawes, and if we go 1 iteration/session then run from The Man in broad daylight, i’m good with that, i’m a natural born killer.  An excuse to stay connected to this part of the Valley is a small ice-pack & pair of ibu on the move, especially if I can check out the house in the process.

Despite my best efforts, I stole some software today. It cant be helped when they price something too expensive for the value-add vs. freeware and the freeware that will be free in 6 months, and a crack comes up on the 2nd click in google. I wanted to pay about $30, they wanted $90. It literally took me 20% of the time to find and apply the crack as it would have to order it and pay with my credit card.

I am a bad person.

I don’t want to be a bad person.  Its just too easy to say no.  If Megan Fox strolled up to you and pushed up on you and pushed your hand to her button, would you say no?  Its that easy sometimes.

I have lost perspective if this is just me or if these are the times, when security lags too far behind accessibility.  I think its just me, cause pretty much no one else i know does this, except other geeks.  I fixed a problem with Beckie’s computer before it had even shut down, I fixed another one before it had even posted.  I QA for friends, I have found bugs in PERL, I solved my Dad’s BSOD sight-unseen in about 5 min and then 5 more min later, I am evaluating a product for a friend next week. This is what I do, puzzles are one of my passions, and I am good at it.  It doesn’t make me above the law, but when the law is based on an essential premise of capability and I am far beyond that capability, am I wrong?

X-Men and Watchmen and Heroes‘ Hiro and every other superhero has had this angst.  If you even have the angst, perhaps you are different?

The site’s 2nd busiest month ever! The busiest month came after this year’s Crazy88 which has been my most-hit post ever. Its fascinating to watch the ebb and flow of traffic - posts have a brief wave that peaks then lulls over 2-3 days, with occasional flare-ups for annual events or heavy linkage. The spikes and continuing traffic follow a general pattern:

• bike stuff especially with pics draws traffic from MTBR, RideAZ and friends’ site.  far and away the most popular
• Adventures and Rocky Point draw a similar pattern but less action
• kids posts get little traffic, unless there are photos, which get gobs of repeated hits from a few people - traffic tends to mirror the number of pics, which usually means its a more interesting post, or people have no appreciation 4 tha rittin wurd anymoor
• no one gives a crap about much anything else I have to say

There are plugins that show you live traffic stats, average time to clickthrough, where the incoming IP is located and much other geekery.  But I didn’t like how it looked on my sidebar, and it seemed rather a pain in the ass to css-enable it.

The search terms that land people on the site are absolutely faskinatin’.  Anything dirty, slangish, or vaguely sexual brings lots of random traffic.  People angry over DUI laws is a big draw - its amazing how many people search for the terms “DUI Laws Are Bullshit”.   If I wanted to artificially inflate my hit count I should make my titles like episodes of Law & Order or titles from letters to Penthouse.  Then there are the hits that make me fear the internet and want to take the blog private.  Phrases like “g@n@vi@v@ pr@tty littl@ pu$$y” or “L!ttle g!rl su(k and du(k” - both intentionally mispelled so as to avoid hits.  A female friend of mine who has developed a vaguely-stalker following on a message board kept coming up in the logs, and when i posted on the board what was happening, the hits stopped.  Eww.  Icky icky eww.

The troubled economy makes salary adjustments and bonuses thin pickings. I understand. I’m not happy about it, but I understand. I get other perks, 2 days a week, to get all i like out of work along with most of what i like out of a day - software, sunshine, coffee, and the good company of my Budding Bipedalist, with a bike and no traffic or need for a shower. Its all work, whether its for TM or for G&A, I enjoy it all in the right doses and the right mixtures…perhaps it means I have embraced my sellout, perhaps it means i am blessed.

the carnage is kinda scary

About 4 we turned to a workout - mine and hers. Seriously…how did she get back there and manage to spill my beer?

then the Burley with Kila for some nubby-nosing en route to pick G up from school, and one of the World’s Most Perfect Spots!  How many awesome things can you count in this picture?

1. baby
2. beer
3. bike
4. sunshine
5. budding bipedalism
6. runzeheunding (offscreen)
7. blogging about my radness
   

failing to cap my recently-replaced rear shifter cable had a secondary benefit

Goodbye Hawes! Goodbye Pass Mtn!

Goodbye Firestation and Evil Traffic Light

Goodbye Red Mtn Church - thanks for letting us poach your parties and your spigots and your grassy areas, thanks for letting us hit your staircase and your curbs and launch off your bbq pits

Goodbye Boeing’s Longbow factory

The McDowells, are you ready Kila?

riding home from school

Almost as soon as she got in the trailer, G asked me if we could go up the bumpity-bumps and down the big hill near home. This took some Q&A to figure out she meant the giant mound of earth they pushed up at the construction site behind Red Mtn Church. We got up the hill, but could only reverse course to get down.

Everyone was already extremely extremely dirty, why bother holding back? The girls made mischief in the sand til they were good and done. Alana spilled my 3rd beer of the night, and my 2nd of this ride - if this sounds like I’m having too many beers, its cause I’m drinking none of them!

G had to potty, i told her just pick a spot any old spot

The desert area next to our neighborhood used to be 2 miles long and a mile wide, but the highway and the golf course and the church have wittled it away to just enough for Kila and I.  I’d be amazed if anyone but us is ever out there. I only know every inch of it cause Kila needed runs every day for 10 years. It worked with my love of exploring on the bike, which fed my need to string routes together. I have the zone around my house so dialed that moving is terrifying, but also a challenge to find something new. Kila is getting old, she will not want to roam outside a comfort zone like she used to; she used to do 18 miles up and down Bulldog Canyon.  But there is a high school and a wash and a canal blocks from the new home.  It will be fun for us.  I managed to find every jewel in the sand in Rocky Point; Kila and I will work it out.  And who says I cant bring a shovel and a mcleod and make some ramps into the wash pit?

It was supposed to be something of a “goodbye Hawes” ride for me and my invited guests, revealing every locals’ B-line learned over 10 yrs. But the weather turned to shit for the 2nd day in a month (averaging 24 days of shit weather a year - I still love AZ). About 10 people bailed, even Alex who invented most of the lines, leaving only me and Beckie, James and Dave.  This last-crew-standing made sense: we lived here and were in hock for a babysitter, Dave is from like - i dunno - Nova Scotia, and James is a wannabe-mountain-man who won’t even wash his beard.

A quick stop at the Walgreens turned this into Team Showercap

Dave and Beckie coming up Tower

Top of Tower

Winter brings downed trees

for the first time ever on the intertubes: The Las Sendas Staircase

Dave jumped down the Las Sendas Face before I even explained the line, which was much his idiom on the day.  His new Pivot 429 has empowered him, and it is a handsome bike. James gave it a go next, followed by Beckie.  That’s right!  Beckie, technically speaking, sessioned.

We stopped and hit the Beetle, both ways

Dave learned the hard way about the sticky spot, but 3 of us were able to bail him out

After 2 hrs on the trail, noon and Candyland brought sunny skies, which lasted til the end of our ride.  The rain was just not that bad, we hugged the worst AZ had to offer with core-warming base-layers of toastiness.   Rolling was a bit slower, but the control on the DH’s was crazy and the Heckler rocked out.

Secret Trail, needing a new name.  Leading candidate is ‘Sandy Sister’.  Comments?

My play pit.  The 8 beers James and I carried were fully utilized

Full of Irish Courage, Dave leaped off the 2-footer.  Impressed, humbled, and emboldened I followed.  It took us 3 reps each, but we jumped it.  Woot woot!!!

We rolled up the road home instants before the impending rain, and hung in the garage drinking beers while potential buyers trolled the house and Alana crawled the floor and the storm poured. It was mellow, holistic, if only the (potential)buyers hadn’t been between me and my camera I’d have captured a shot of sunny skies through dumping buckets of rain out the door of the ManCave, Red Mountain in the distance, Hawes .25 miles around the corner.  We shot pool, drank beer, hung with the kids, and chillaxed. Hawes is the kindest trail in the Valley, letting you get out of it exactly what you want, and this day went exactly as I wanted.  Couldn’t have asked for a better goodbye.

A rainy weekend, but the girls needed to get out, so we bolted when the sky was clear.  The camera loved it.  G had fun, tons of it on the 2-Bike, so i don’t feel so bad that this is the Alana Show.