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AIDS/Lifecycle Days 5 and 6: A Ribbon and A Raven

AIDS/Lifecycle Days 5 and 6: A Ribbon and A Raven

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Day Five: Santa Maria to Lompoc

This day was the so-called “red dress day”, a call for the riders to wear a red dress, or in my case just red in general since I dropped the ball on dress shopping. When you see the entire peloton of riders wearing an almost uniform shade of red, it creates a powerful image: a living, moving ribbon of AIDS awareness. It being a 40 mile ride, the pressure to leave early and not procrastinating was gone. We all slept in, ate breakfast late and left the camp basically at the last possible moment before they locked us out of the bike parking. Today was for vibes! We decided to stick together pretty much the whole ride, it was like riding together back in Long Beach, just for fun. I even broke my most hallowed ALC rule and stopped at the first rest stop which on this day was a HUGE party. There was a sea of cyclists in red dancing and hanging out. It was so full that we couldn’t even get back to our bikes to leave until people cleared out. We weren’t sweating it though because we were informed that we couldn’t even get into the next camp until after 1 since they still had to set it up.

Extended LBC family


Eventually we got moving again and I guess my body had slipped into recovery mode because I felt that lactic acid burning in my quads. We had two substantial climbs that day which were nothing to scoff at but compared to the bigger picture almost became irrelevant. My reality had been redefined by the previous four days, I was no longer a tech worker who cycles in his spare time but a cyclist who had no time to spare. Mountains and hills were just natural occurrences, not challenges to be overcome but objects to move past and through. I was going with the flow, feeling Wu Wei. Physically I still hurt, and suffered on those hills, but my mind had shifted into a place of clarity. We got through the 7-9% gradient climb at Devon which led into a descent and then a second climb (lesser evil twins?) up the switchbacks of Cabrillo Highway and ending at the much maligned Vandenberg Space Force base. Here is where the column of riders twisted into a ribbon that could be viewed overhead. It was impossible not to feel the weight of the symbolism as I saw red for miles, stretching out around the bend and out of sight touching places I’d never see and people I’d never meet but was still connected to.


We pulled into Lompoc around 12:30 pm still before we could even get into camp so we went to get a well deserved lunch. Like the rides we did back in the LBC we found a cool pizza spot to bike to and walked in. I think almost everyone got a personal pizza. I got a bacon apple gorgonzola one that was leagues ahead of everything we had eaten thus far (save that burger). We hung out for hours and chatted away without any foreboding sense that time was ticking away and we still had miles to go. That night, camp had enough programming to fill the extra hours: a talent show, cyclists performing DIY versions of Broadway hits, and a burlesque performance of the anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao.” In short, it was a relatively relaxed day — a much-needed break before the final two-day push, 175 miles left.

Day Six: Lompoc To Ventura

I woke up feeling amazing. The chill day before, combined with the apparent vanishment of my cold, had me feeling like I’d emerged from the 35th Chamber of Shaolin as a master cyclist. This part of the route I had done before as part of my training so there was going to be no real surprises. I knew the day started with a climb then a long stretch of riding the 101 until we hit Goleta, followed by a cruise through Santa Barbara to Ventura along the coast. With the end of the ride rapidly approaching, having reached the end of my illness, and cycling back in familiar territory I felt relief begin to wash over me as I thought that maybe…just maybe I was actually going to finish this crazy thing. I began the climb to the 101 early and in earnest knowing that no matter what the group would always catch up with me.

The previous night at camp I was talking with a roadie about how I didn’t know having license plates on your bike was a thing. I guess it provides an easy way for riders to call out to you when they don’t know your name. He gifted me a plate that said “OMG OMG” and now that I was so slowly climbing this hill I enjoyed all the variety of ways other riders announced they were about to pass me.
“oh my god oh my god, I’m coming on your left.”
“om gomg (phonetic pronunciation), on your left”
“oh em gee! on your left”

I skipped the first rest stop as was tradition and maybe by this point a hint of superstition, lest I upset whatever delicate cosmic balance had worked in my favor to get me this far. It was bittersweet passing by all the riders enjoying their break but in the dense fog of the morning I quickly lost sight of the stop as I ventured higher and higher through the marine layer. A shadowy figure materialized out of the haze: A man in a hat, and he said to me “May these good vibes give you safe journey home”. I said thank you as he vanished back into the cloudy unknown and I wondered whether I had just talked to a spirit or Odin himself. Not long after, the outline of a raven appeared on the shoulder. As I got closer, I realized it was a corpse. My oxygen deprived brain wondered whether it was Huginn or Muninn, Odin’s ravens of thought and memory, sprawled out and discarded on the side of the road and what it would signify for the last two days of my ride. It must have been Memory, I decided, because I was the ultimate Taoist cyclist now. What did I need memory for? There was only the constant flow of the present with no past or future and me riding in it forever!

Breaking me from my existential spiral came along one of my teammates, and I could mercifully chat about the weather and breakfast instead. It didn’t last long though because soon we hit the crest of climb and began the incredibly fast but fun descent down the 101 to the coast. This was probably the steepest descent besides the unbustin’ part of the Quadbuster and I would have been more worried have the crew not already done it three weeks back WITH cars blasting by. We got to Gaviota and rest stop 2 was not so far from there. We chilled there and recharged, the hard 1/3 of the ride was now behind us and I had the fabled ice cream stop waiting for me at the beach of Santa Barbara so we didn’t dally long and kept going. I was by myself not long after, being the slowest pedaler out of the bunch, but my spirits were high as I was looking forward to the comforting sacked sandwich vibes of the lunch stop in north Santa Barbara. I would swiftly learn a lesson though, just because you feel good doesn’t mean your body is doing well.

When I got to the lunch stop I felt a strange tingling in the back of my legs that I had not experienced before. Strange pains are not uncommon when you are putting in this many miles, so I pushed the negative thoughts to the back of my mind, even as the slightest limp began to appear. After lunch I pushed hard to the beach to get this fabled ice cream. The stop was affectionately called Paradise Pit and it was manned by volunteers and the mayor of Santa Barbara. They really went above and beyond because not only were there six ice cream flavors to choose from but there were also churros, coffee, fresh strawberries and chairs lined up along Ledbetter Beach so you could stare at the vastness of the ocean while you ate your tiny little sweets. Against the magnitude of the sea what’s a few little calories going to do? We definitely took our time there, enjoying the amazing stop but also starting to reflect on the impending finish of this crazy experience. Eventually we left since all the other riders were saying that rest stop 4 was the “dance” stop. The only thing I remember between paradise pit and rest stop 4 is how even though I’d ridden to Santa Barbara so much I had never ridden in this direction, on this bike path along the beach. As Heraclitus said more or less: different river, different me.

We approached the next stop and from down the street we heard the “oontz, oontz” of whatever massive festivity was happening. The scene spread out before us as we turned the corner: a sprawling park dotted on the sides by cyclists lying in the grass and in the center a massive bacchanalia of shirtless dancing riders overlooked by a DJ and performers on podiums meant to evoke the go go dancers of the 60s. It was clear that everyone had a lot of stress to relieve or perhaps they were enjoying the last gasp of the love bubble that would end the next day. We stopped here and some of my teammates immediately joined the dance but I preferred people watching and lying down on the grass, almost wistfully falling to sleep even as the music pounded with whatever electronic rhythms carried people into perpetual motion. I can’t know what an Ancient Greek party was really like but I don’t imagine it was much different than this. Even with no wine or alcohol everyone seemed content to let loose, all I needed was grapes and a toga (and maybe a light sacrifice) and I’d believe I was at Dionysia itself.

When we finally decided to call it a day and finish the remaining 17 miles before camp I felt a tightness in my hamstrings that had me almost hobble back to my bike. At this point I thought maybe I pulled a muscle or something but as I got back on my bike, the motion of pedaling still felt fine. So we played it a little loose with the rules of the ride and we pacelined to the last camp of the ride so we could get there faster. The reality that this was the final night we’d spend at camp together hung over everything I did. My last mobile shower (not really going to miss that), my last kind of bland but nutritious buffet dinner, our last team meeting, my last time pitching a tent which I was pretty good at by now, and the last time I got to just exist outside of the time and space of my regular life. To cap it all off the tightness in my hamstrings was worse and I could barely walk around camp. I thought I had done irreversible damage to myself, with ONE day to go! I brought it up the group and they quickly asked how much I stretched that week and I said “none…”. They immediately took me to task for being so dumb. but I have never suffered repercussions for not stretching, which doesn’t mean that I should have ignored it but us non-athletes have to learn the hard way. I was given a quick how-to on foam rolling which felt like I was squeezing pins and needles through my legs due to six days of built up soreness. It was undeniable that my hamstrings felt so much better afterwards though. I could walk again which made getting to participate in the vigil that night a realistic option.

The last night of ALC the camp hosts a candlelight vigil on the beach where participants light candles and place them in the sand next to a riderless bicycle. It’s meant to honor those lost to AIDS and show support to survivors. During the ride, it was easy to forget that this was not just my personal endurance project. It was also a way to raise money that would affect people immediately. I lit my candle and walked out onto the beach with hundreds of participants. The procession was mostly silent, I didn’t hear a single word spoken. After placing my candle I stepped back to join the circle and everyone stood in solemn muteness for as long as they felt appropriate. I have not been personally affected by AIDS and I’m not sure I know anyone who has but if causes only reached people with direct personal stakes, they would not be causes. They would be private grief. The ride afforded me an opportunity to accomplish a goal I once thought impossible. The candles in the sand represented people who never had the chance to attempt whatever impossible thing they might have wanted for themselves. For that perspective, and for every friend and family member who donated to my campaign, I was grateful. All I had left to do was actually finish the endeavor. Little by little people started walking away back to the tents as the candles still illuminated the darkness. Eventually I did too, ready to finally make it home.

AIDS/Lifecycle Days 3 and 4: Climbs And Lines

AIDS/Lifecycle Days 3 and 4: Climbs And Lines

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Day Three: King City to Paso Robles

I woke up at 5 am and rather than try to fight it and return to the dreaming I just decided to pack up my stuff and get on with it. I was developing a system, I was learning to be efficient with what I put where so I could grab and go. Efficiency is the name of the game here at least if you don’t want to waste hours waiting in lines for restrooms, food, snacks, or coffee.

There was one inevitable line again, the one to get out. One dirt road leading out that intersected with a street with actual traffic at which cyclists were making a left. This meant that it was the traffic signal from hell now. Every time cars drove past the procession stopped and waited, there was no going around and no shortcuts. At the back of the line, I didn’t know what was happening, just that we were inching along this dirt road. I wasn’t on my bike for long since there was no point pretending I was riding.

I had lots of time to contemplate the challenge of the day though: the Quadbuster. It was a five-mile climb that starts immediately upon exiting camp. The last mile is an infernal 10-14% gradient. The kind of hill that has your quads screaming in repentance. My goal was to finish it without having to get off my bike. I wasn’t even thinking about how fast because at efforts this big I have to worry more about not falling off the bike rather than beating any sort of time. Everyone around me was pedaling as slow and as steady as they could, we were crawling up a hillside. There were plenty of people that got off and walked up, which was definitely a move maybe I wasn’t above making but I wanted to give it my all first. Near the top, most of the people that completed the climb were all waiting to cheer the rest of the cyclists on. This was motivating and inspiring, but the sad human truth is now I had an audience and I didn’t want to fail in front of them. That got me past the last agonizing quarter mile. One of our team members was already there and cheering us on so I parked my bike in a bush and joined him, and we whooped and hollered until our whole group was at the top.

We all left together and as Isaac Newton successfully predicted, we accelerated down the backside of the Quadbuster, taking turns re-busting our quads but this time to go fast. In the blink of an eye we were at the second rest stop, mile 18, which for a 65-mile day was almost a good third done. The rest stop we were at was a church, and it had opened its door to the cyclists as a way to get out of the sun and relax a bit, no religion required. I took a peek inside as an excuse to get to the star of the show which was the banana bread the congregation was handing out. I took a slice of bread as well as a sprig of lavender that came with it which I stuck in my helmet for good luck and a pleasant scent. I think we hung out a little too hard here, it was 11 am by the time we left and lunch was still 20-ish miles away.

The church of the immaculate rest.


We were riding somewhere east of the Santa Lucia Coastal Mountain Range and experiencing the mediterranean climate of the Salinas River valley firsthand. It was getting hot! So when I saw the third rest stop, even though I was starting to hurt I wanted to just make it to lunch once and for all. I had lost most of the group probably because I left it all at the damn Quadbuster. That was the running theme of the week, we were not so much a team as we were a group of riders whose paths connected and intersected in sometimes mysterious ways and other times in less mysterious preplanned ways. I was always happy to run into one of them or spend time at a rest stop chatting about how different this was than riding around a considerably less hilly Long Beach. I ran into another teammate and we both agreed to just hightail it out of there before it got hotter and so we could get lunch. We set off together but pretty soon she was pulling and I was struggling to stay on her wheel. Ces’t La Vie, but we were rolling through some scenic vineyards as we approached Paso Robles so I just took it all in.

We made it to lunch and connected with the rest of the crew. This was another stop I oft heard about, the elementary school where students sold burgers as a fundraiser. They also sold postcards and keychains, it was a real enterprise. You could even pay a premium to get your burger faster and eat it in an air-conditioned room! Who’s teaching these kids about capitalism so early?! I didn’t get the VIP package but I DID opt for the double cheeseburger, and I’ll tell you what: I know they were just store-bought frozen patties but, on that day, on that ride, it was the best damn burger of my life. Not to mention it was probably the single most delicious meal I had all week. The food at camp was for the masses and had to fit that nostalgic blend of nutritional and palatable. That burger though had grease, cheese, and calories. I showered the kids praises as I left full and content.

Because the heat was approaching 90 degrees, even though I left with the group I was quickly dropped. Historically speaking, if you’ve read any of my ride reports, the heat is like my kryptonite and it was no different today. I’m not sure how the “easy” 65 mile ride turned into an almost whole day ordeal, but I had officially boarded the struggle bus. I wanted to finish quickly but I found myself needing to stop at the fourth rest stop because I was dying and my bike started making a weird noise when I braked. I sat there and just tried to enjoy the spectacle of seeing a drag miss America pageant performed while I waited for my bike to be looked at. Say what you will about the convenience or cost of doing this ride supported but that’s an experience you’ll never get anywhere else but on AIDS Lifecycle. Eventually my bike was ready to go again and I lazily pedaled to Paso Robles. I was hurting and stopping at every chance I got, including for some goats that were hanging out on the side of the road. When I finally made it to camp I felt a sense of relief, which immediately was subsumed by annoyance at having to set up my tent in the windiest section. I near passed out from the heat and exhaustion of trying to wrangle that damn tent without it flying away but eventually I got it done after anchoring it with my luggage.
That day they had Ice cream root beer floats waiting for us. I think I probably had mild heat exhaustion or dehydration and combined with my cold I felt sicker than ever that night. It’s probably not good for recovery to put my body through all that in one day but I didn’t come that far to quit then. That night I called my mom since it was her birthday, I had to miss it for the ride and she told me I sounded very sick. I didn’t let it get to me though, after a nice dinner and plenty of fluids I was feeling okay. I was even allowed back into the group tent since they decided I was *probably* no longer contagious. We talked about the day and about the plan for the next day. It was an 88 mile day but I only had one thing on my mind: cinnamon rolls at Pismo Beach.

Day Four: Paso Robles to Santa Maria

Again I woke up early as I was having fitful sleep. Yet somehow I also felt refreshed and re-energized, my body was learning to use the times between rides more effectively and finally fighting off the damn cold that plagued me. I was up way earlier than the rest of the group, I was ready to roll out while some were still waking up. I decided to just go ahead and get a head start because if there’s one thing I was certain of it’s that they would all catch up to me.

The first part of the day consisted of crossing back over the coastal mountain range so we could ride down the coast proper. I was thankful because it meant getting out of the heat and back under the nice overcast marine layer. I wasn’t thankful that to get there I had to get through “The Evil Twins” first. To get back across we had to go over the mountains using a route that had one big climb, then a descent that lulls you into a false sense of accomplishment (evil) before running straight into and even steeper climb (twins). The first rest stop was right before the twins began and I just zoomed right past it, at that point in my life I didn’t need first rest stops. This was an example of a bigger change in attitude I was experiencing.

It was the 4th day into the ride and I was beginning to feel that flow state of Wu Wei. The ride was hard, the climbs were hard, the weather could be against us or with us and it all just started to blend into one experience. I started to feel that with the proper nutrition and sleep cycle I could pedal forever, a perpetual motion machine powered by chicken, rice, Oreos, gummy bears, mac and cheese and an occasional double cheeseburger. Whereas normally I would obsess over the minutia the route: all the elevations, efforts, rest stops I started to cede control over to fate. More specifically my confidence that I could overcome any obstacle had grown and that whatever was thrown my way would just be part of the experience, I was beginning to act without doing. I knew that eventually I would surpass the evil twins, since my style of kung fu was superior, and get to the much celebrated halfway to LA point at the top.

That I did, but once again I was met by my bureaucratic and logistical foe: the line. Lines! Was this a bicycle ride or a waiting-in-line-thon?! I could have kept riding, which would have been the more Taoist approach, but I also firmly believe in the modern philosophy of Instagram permanence. It was a photo op I would not dare miss. So I got into line thinking I was so far head of the rest of the group that they wouldn’t be here before I got my photo and they could cut in front of me. This thought summoned an instant pre-emptive strike from karma because to my horror three members from a different team in front of me slowly let the rest of their teammates cut one by one until there were 20 or more, all taking photos individually AND as a group. I gaped at the gall of luck that had befallen me, I was not feeling the Zen of yin OR yang at that particular moment, rather I felt the sting of suffering due to my attachments and preconceptions of what it means to be in a “line”, the Buddha would be pissed. I bit my tongue and waited. It was fallacious of me to assume that moving to another line would be time wasted yet I held my ground until this massive team was done taking photos. The funny part is that even though holding the sign was cool, the normally majestic backdrop was completely covered up by fog due to how early I had gotten there. In the time I spent waiting, the rest of the group caught up. In a way getting waylaid by that initial group set up the Long Beach crew’s photo so going with the flow proved beneficial once again.

We left together and once again it was a matter of descending from the mountain as fast as possible. This time we went West back to the coast then turned South towards San Luis Obispo. We got to Cayucos which was a big party because there were several bakeries. This is where I had my first non-camp coffee of the week. It’s crazy to me that I wasn’t doing one or more coffee stops per day but normally we were riding in such remote environments that our options were non-existent or limited. No wonder the streets here were overrun with cyclists they also got cookies from the Brown Butter Cookie Company. I indulged, it was a nice little halfway celebration. After that stop I was back in known territory as we passed through SLO and Morro Bay, Morro rock was still a sight to behold and I felt satisfied to have closed the loop from the training ride I had done. I pushed on to Pismo beach. It wasn’t as hot as the last couple days and somehow I was feeling great. This is the exact moment when my health turned around on the ride, conveniently at the halfway point perhaps but I’ll ascribe it to the glorious cookies I ate.

Unfortunately, I was not to have a second dose of medicinal pastries because when we rolled up to Old West Cinnamon Rolls it was swarming with cyclists. The line for rolls was down the street and around the block. That most despised and evil of foes, the line, here reared its ugly head once more to rob me of my most coveted object of desire. Can man do battle with a metaphysical entity?! Would that I could greet it on the battlefield of reality or cast down curses upon it that no person should have to wait in a line ever again! This was why ancient civilizations anthropomorphized concepts into deities, so that we could HATE them! I swallowed my disappointment and moved on to the next stop; I had already burned time with the earlier lines and the cookies. I ate some sad consolation pop tarts instead and kept going. I had 20 miles left and I just pushed through, skipping the 4th stop since I was feeling good for the first time at the end of the day that week, 340 miles in and somehow I was getting better.

That night camp proceeded as usual and as we were hanging out underneath the large tent where dinner was served, about to head to sleep, something truly serendipitous happened. Someone with the roadie crew came by asking if we wanted leftover cinnamon rolls from Old West! Apparently the crew bought them in bulk and had leftovers, lots of them! The roadie exacted payment from me in the form of a physical offering to him, a hug, and left us with a box, no lines required! I grabbed some decaf coffee and my dessert that night was one of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever had. It was a good night, my health had turned around, and fortune favored me. I was beginning to think maybe things were turning up Jairo. The next day was the 40 mile “rest” day, which is something only a cycling junkie could consider restful.

AIDS/Lifecycle Days 1 and 2: The Learning Curve

AIDS/Lifecycle Days 1 and 2: The Learning Curve

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Day One: Daly City to Santa Cruz

I woke up in a sweat, a good fever breaking sweat. I felt much better though I had to admit to myself I was definitely sick, still had a sore throat and a congested nose. I couldn’t back out of so many layers of organization and planning though. As far as I was concerned, I was on a one way train to Santa Monica whether I got there on my own pedaling power or on the SAG car. I took care not to breathe or otherwise interact with my teammates too much. My mantra for the day, as all days really, was “keep going until you can’t”. It applies whether I’m sick, dehydrated, tired, overheated, or not feeling it. I’ve ridden enough to know that how you feel at the beginning is not how you feel in the middle and is not how you feel in the end. The first day was going to be 80 miles in a freshly sick body which I have never even attempted but I wondered… what’s the worst that could happen?

The energy at the starting line was infectiously high. I think the sheer adrenaline from the mass start, hundreds of spectators cheering me on my way out, banished the sickness right out of me for at least those first 20 miles. Every day would have four rest stops, more or less evenly spaced out throughout the route. So when I got to the first rest stop I thought “why not take a little break”. This turned out to be a huge mistake as basically the entire ride stops at this rest stop. I could have turned right around and left, but the salty dog in me refused to leave after I already “invested” 20 minutes into the bathroom line. I swear it must have taken me 40 minutes to leave which was a little absurd for being the first stop of the day. That was my first AIDS/Lifecycle lesson: Never stop at the first rest stop.

There was some climbing at the beginning of the route, it wasn’t hard but with all the riders having left at once and with the mandate to stick to the shoulder of the road things got very crowded. It was like being in a traffic jam where you kept having to leapfrog past other cars. What I noticed though was in this section and in the next before lunch as long as I kept going I didn’t feel the symptoms of my illness. My body was too busy pedaling to worry about fighting the cold I had contracted. This was so alleviating; although I’m sure I wasn’t performing at peak capacity, not being able to breathe or having a lingering cough while exercising would have been a much worse experience. Then of course once I stopped moving I felt the symptoms come back. At lunch I thoroughly enjoyed eating my sad packed sandwich meal that they had prepared for us while overlooking the ocean at San Gregorio Beach. As I felt the solids in my nose quicken however, I decided it was time to leave. One of my team members was departing around the same time and I rolled out with them, only to be unceremoniously dropped after a mile or so. Given the climbing and my waning health this was just par for the course.

I never truly rode alone though since there was one unbroken steady stream of riders the entire way to Santa Cruz. This was a unique aspect of AIDS/Lifecycle. With over 2000 riders participating I was never far behind or too far in front of anyone for very long. It warps an individual feat into a greater accomplishment. The stronger riders, the slower riders, the roadies, the rest stops all form some sort of collective cycling consciousness whose sole goal is to move all of its body parts from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Being a cog in such a glorious machine is comforting since all material concerns and objectives are replaced with one defining motivation “keep going”.

I kept riding down the coast, which this was my first time ever riding north of Santa Cruz and the views delivered that same magical California coastal vibe that we get all the way down to Long Beach, so I never felt far from home. It was overcast but the temperature slowly started to climb. By the time I got to the last rest stop (“seamen” themed) I was not feeling 100%. My sickness had come to roost, or my body was catching up to pushing too hard in the morning. I almost skipped the stop, but I wanted to load up on oranges and vitamin C to fight the cold. I pulled into camp around 4 pm which I thought was a great time. But on Day 1 I was going to have to figure out the ropes about camping on the ride so there was going to be a learning curve.

It goes like this: You pull into camp and park your bike at the bike parking. Once you park, take everything you need off your bike, collect a chocolate milk from a handy cooler by the exit and get to the cargo trucks. The truck I left my stuff at in the morning was the same truck I’d be picking up from at camp. From the truck I collect my giant bag of stuff which I regretted bringing because sometimes the walk from the truck to tents was long. The first thing I did when I got my stuff was take off my cycling shoes and put on my Crocs, which quickly became my favorite part of the day. Then I would wander in the direction of the tents trying to find my “site”. My teammates did this on day one and never again, opting to place their tent wherever they could get away with and was convenient for them. But I doggedly adhered to the rules every day, not really having the mental capacity to consider actual options after I finished. Assembling my tent sucked, but it was better to get it over with immediately, so I actually had a place to relax. Putting the tent together on an empty stomach made me feel woozy as I wrestled with the hooks, flaps, and the wind. That first day was the hardest. I was so tired from the 80-mile day, the struggle with the tent and my illness that I just lay down in the tent and tried to process everything. My stomach began to rumble. I knew it was time for dinner but before I could eat, I needed to figure out how to shower.

Contemplating why I am even doing this


I’ve never used a shower truck before, but it was kind of like the locker rooms at school or showers at a gym. It was a great feeling getting rid of the gunk from the day and the shower is a good way to signal my body to relax a.k.a. start the recovery process. It’s not lost on me that if I was doing a real self-supported bike tour, showering every day like this would be a huge luxury that was unlikely to happen. I tried to keep that clarity of mind as I realized the hot water in my stall wasn’t working. The cold water was bracing, and it woke me the hell up from the stupor I was in.

Finally, I was in my comfy clothes, and I could just relax and desperately try not to think that the next day was the most challenging single day out of the whole ride. Dinner was something carb heavy and bland that night, I can’t even remember now but I’m sure at the time it was a blessing. Our group had a little team meeting inside one of our member’s tents, but I excommunicated myself to the outside as I was still trying to fight off whatever cold I had. We discussed the plan for tomorrow which was going to the be the same plan for the rest of the week: try to meet up for breakfast and leave together. Afterwards I went to my tent to just try and let my body rest, and to actually sleep early so I could wake up early the next day and get out of Dodge.

Day Two: Santa Cruz to King City

I woke up feeling like crap. Had a stuffy nose which didn’t let me sleep very well, that and my body was still getting used to the inflatable sleeping bag mat. I sighed and got to work deconstructing my belongings, my tent, and my life. I was grumpy at the Jairo from yesterday who threw around all his stuff as he was trying to shower and get dressed for dinner. I was able to more or less pack everything the way I had the first night. It’s sad how taking down a tent is so much easier than putting it up, “the universe really does favor moving towards entropy”, this was my pessimistic thinking as I groggily rolled over my belongings to the truck. I needed coffee asap, then a light breakfast, and I would be able to start around 630 am to allow for spending extra time on the road if I had to. At least that’s what I thought but I learned some more ALC lessons that morning.

The sheer logistics of getting 2000 riders fed and onto the road was staggering. I saw the line for breakfast and knew I’d had to throw my planned start times out the window. Even the line to just get coffee was absurdly long in case I wanted to skip breakfast. I waited patiently as more of our team showed up and we began to chat. I decided to just get food and skip the coffee line but once we put our heads together, we divided and conquered. I sang exalted praises underneath my breath because I would have to otherwise stop somewhere during the day for this delicious elixir, adding logistical overhead I didn’t want to deal with. Then when we were done eating, I realized we made a huge mistake. The bikes were stored in a baseball field with a very narrow entrance and exit. It wasn’t a problem getting them in since every rider came in at different times based on their pace, but now that almost every single rider was trying to leave at the same time it created a huge bottleneck. It was a traffic jam from hell. Everyone’s instincts in this situation were to get in a line and wait their turn but even that proved chaotic because the number of riders and bikes was enough to wrap around the field several times over. A zig-zaggy queue formed but it was clear that the further back you were the later you would start due to people hopping into the line wherever their bikes were instead of dutifully walking to the end of the “line”. This morning I played it straight, but I took mental notes for the next day about what would be morally permissible, at least from a line-ethics perspective. I got out around 7:30 am, an hour gone just like that due to the challenges of moving bodies at scale.

I tried to make up the time by implementing the lesson from the first day and completely blazing past the first rest stop. It was a honey pot for basically every rider that didn’t get to use the restroom before leaving and also there wasn’t enough time from the start to spread out the massive column of riders into digestible chunks yet so it was crowded when I rode by. I knew I made the right choice and surprisingly I felt much better on the bike and pedaling than I did when I woke up. It’s like the symptoms of my cold had become subservient to the goal of finishing this ride. My sickness and my body were putting aside their differences to meet the proverbial gauntlet. This part of the course I had actually ridden previously as well on a Santa Cruz to Big Sur century so I knew I was expecting lots of farmland and crops. It made it easier to ride the 32 miles to the first rest stop without pause, and what a stop!

As if it was the culmination of all the vegetation I had seen up until that point the stop was Pezzini Farms: an Artichoke farm that had a dedicated shop with artichoke themed merchandise and food. It was crowded but not obscenely. I was able to enjoy an artichoke cupcake and grilled artichoke. As it turns out I don’t love artichoke, but the frosting was delicious. We very quickly came to rest stop 2 at mile 40 where the DJ was playing some throwback music that lured me to stop and eat a banana just to soak up the vibes. Then before I knew it, Bam! Lunch at mile 50. Not sure why the rest stops were bunched up but I could never say no to lunch so of course I stopped and ate some sandwiches under a tree with my cohorts. It was meditative to lie there and relax, I can see how the Buddha reached enlightenment that way, but before I reached Apotheosis I had to get on with the next 60 miles.

Time was waning and we left Salinas and away from the coast through neighborhoods and more farmlands. Stop #3 at about mile 70 was yet another park, I saw the fabled cookie lady delivering homemade cookies to all the starving cyclists. I couldn’t deny myself the pleasure! The temperature started to climb as we left the overcast coastal vibe of the morning for a more sun-drenched valley situation. To sour the deal we even had a steady headwind that had slowly snuck up on us. This was the hardest part of the day when you threw in some elevation and the high mileage count. Our bodies were exhausted and mine was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I pressed on and eventually came upon the otter pop stop, which offered otter pops to cyclists on this last stretch of a hotter day. I took one look at the never-ending line of sun kissed riders and peaced out, it was tempting but this day was dragging on and if I didn’t get to camp pronto I’d be setting up my tent in the dark.

It was about mile 90 when I came to an interesting sight, I crossed a bridge and there were dozens of bicycles on the side of the road seemingly…abandoned? All day I had heard people talking about the “secret” skinny dipping spot unsanctioned by the ride itself of course, and yet all these bikes left next to the bridge could only mean that the secret wasn’t so secret. Our group wanted to check it out, so we dutifully left our bikes propped up against a hillside wall and clopped down to the side of the river. I had no intention of dressing down or even getting wet but I wanted to be part of the experience. I will say this, there were a lot of people there and plenty of appendages soaking up the sun. This was the perfect time to indulge in some Beaver nuggets I had brought back from Buc-ee’s on a recent trip to Texas. If you look at the sugar content on those things, a 100 mile bike ride is just about the only way to justify eating them. Before we knew what was happening the Sheriffs arrived to break up the party. Apparently innocent families had chanced to look down at the river while crossing the bridge and what they saw had been burned into their minds as indecent and criminal. The Sheriffs told everyone to leave immediately or they would take all the bikes. Of course we got out of there, “not the bikes!”. It was better this way, I was definitely indulging in killing time when I should have buckled down and just gotten to camp.

The beaver nuggets. Just out of frame: human nuggets.


Finally, we got past all the climbs of the day and like some sort of token victory from the universe the wind changed direction and all of a sudden I was flying towards the “privilege” of setting up my tent. I was doing so well that I ignored the last stop somewhere around the 100 mile mark. It was time to eat dinner!
That night I was so tired from the day that all I could was slowly set up tent, shower, and scarf down dinner. My cold was waiting in the wings, biding its time until I got off the bike to make its presence known again. I went to bed early, still sick, still tired, and now aware that every day brought its own set of challenges. In the morning, that challenge had a name: The Quadbuster.

33 in 2023

33 in 2023

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Usually I try to write these yearly reflection posts for my birthday. The better, and more accurately to coincide with my yearly dispositions. Yet I have felt that not much has changed since last year, which is reflected in the fact that it feels like the year has passed me by dizzyingly fast. Has it only been a year since I was holed up in the restroom of the Alamo experiencing a separation of mind, body and spirit? It feels like yesterday, or rather like one long unbroken and deterministic chain of events that hasn’t really stopped. Something has definitely changed though, my creative output on all fronts has slowed down. I write less, film less, produce less “content” for lack of a better word. Though to be clear none of this is ever meant to be marketable (because you would need a market) and in fact anything you ever read that is meant to be profitable should be looked at with suspicion. Not because of any ill intent on behalf of the author but they are now serving something outside of their authentic self, and despite claims to the contrary this master will creep into their process. Sorry, this could really be a post about the Hollywood studio system vs less profit driven world cinema but I wont digress.

Why has my output stopped? I think I’m victim of a pattern I fall into where I consume consume consume in an attempt to parse through and come up with some subjective view of an objective reality. To put forth an example, if I want to write about a movie I love it’s easy to watch the movie, then read everything written about it, then read about all the sources of the prior reading, then explore tangentially related topics all in a vain and desperate attempt to hold an opinion that is unimpeachable. Obviously I’m not the subject matter expert on anything because once I see the maw of knowledge open itself to me I recoil back and think “you know what I think I know enough”. Yet I don’t feel satisfied enough to ever really publicly say anything so I think “let me just sit on this for a while longer”. There’s a clip I’ve seen of Ethan Hawke stating how Leo Tolstoy thought his brother was the real genius, but he lacked the ego to put pen to paper so Leo was the one who was showered with accolades. Here we have a terrible shadow though for if those with egos are the ones who write then wisdom, or even competence, is not really a determining factor in success, and with success comes the further dissemination of ideas. Maybe this is best reflected in our political landscape where we have a bunch of Socratically deficient dummies that don’t understand that they know nothing. This is an oversimplification though because even the smarter politicians get consumed by the political game everyone plays to assure majority support but regardless being able to show your face in public and say “yeah I got the answers I can do that” is always a lie, regardless whether the person saying it disagrees or not. To break down that into its arguments though…I think the mere statement “I know” is false. The implications are thus:
If I have verified something as a fact then I know it.
I have verified it as a fact.
Therefore I know it.

The jungle cat lying in wait to eviscerate this argument is “I have verified”. When is the last time you verified something? a quick google search? A text? Asked Alexa or Siri? Academics all know to check sources when reading through others’ works. Yet how deep do we search through this tree of knowledge? Sources have sources, those sources have sources, even when it coms to raw data and numbers it is interpreted by someone or something. This is a pedantic view but my point is all our knowledge is built on others’ “knowledge”. So then when we say I know it is not the previous argument we are really saying it’s this:
If someone/something I trust has verified a fact then I know it’s true.
This fact has been verified by someone/something I trust.
I know it’s true.

Of course the second ticking time bomb here is the definition of verification. Scientifically we have errors of measurement but what of non-empirical matters? If I find a friend who looks down on there luck I may say something “I know you’re sad, but things will turn around”. Do I know they are sad? I am interpreting their emotion using body language. Or to remove doubt I ask them what’s wrong and they may answer “I am sad because my ice cream fell”. Ah there we a firsthand verified source. I know they are sad because I trust them to know they are sad. Later I may go and tell mutual friends that I know our friend is sad without any second thoughts. But does my friend know they are sad? Is sadness something we learn or is it something within us that carries a blueprint of what it means to be sad. Of course the final question is what is sadness? And do I really know that my friend’s definition of sadness is the same as my own? When I say “I know you are sad” what I’m really saying is “I think you are exhibiting signs that I identify as sad” or in the second scenario where I tell our mutual friend: “Our friend is feeling emotions he has defined as sad and I think it closely resembles my interpretation of sadness”. Our language is mutable enough that in both cases we understand what is being said and since “being sad” has no true objective definition we all have to accomodate various interpretations of sad into one term. I can never really know if my friend is sad just as they can never really know if they are sad because being sad is an external concept which we have continuously tried to define in the course of our lives. There are more accurate words you can use to be sure. My friend could say “I am unhappy” which relies upon both of us understanding what it means to be happy first. Or he could say “I feel upset that my ice cream fell because I wanted to eat it.” which is more precise language. Yet we had already no doubt assumed that was the case when they remarked that their ice cream fell. Even now do we know they are upset because of that or is there some deeper significance to the ice cream. So the margin of error lies in the abstraction of our language and thus in the abstraction of knowledge.

It is how we have advanced as a species to rely on secondhand information that we accept as true empirically or non-empirically. Yet it is the same reason that in the age of technology we have come to our reckoning. We have unlimited sources and virtually unlimited discourse. We can pick and choose trusted sources that say whatever we need them to say. It’s a relativist nightmare which we cannot wake up from, an unceasing churning of truth. Which is all to say that if nobody can know anything, then maybe it’s okay if I produce more dumb stuff next year. I know you’ll agree.

The Death Of Jairo Lopez

The Death Of Jairo Lopez

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Or Puss In Boots: The Last death

Jairo Lopez is a man, men are mortal, Jairo is mortal. When I write that name I am referring to myself but it’s not me, it’s the version of me that slots into your mind when you hear that name. If you’ve never heard it before then an impression is already beginning to form. That impression can become complex and informed by real experiences but it will always be just an elaborately built network of associations you make of me. There are perhaps hundreds of Jairos living in the minds of all my friends and family each of them a little different, imperfect copies of me that come into conflict with each other as perspectives change. These shadow clones are not mortal, they are eternal in the way that ideas can exist forever. I carry in me the ideas of all the friends and family I’ve lost over the years, holding them arrested and transfixed in time as I knew them. They perform in scenes of my memories, ambiguous actors in dubious plays with the same start and the same finish but always different in between. I may pass on these productions to others who may not know the original versions, a hasty rendition of a badly transcribed opera. They may retell it to others still, each time it jumps from person to person the actors in the plays become less true to their creators until only ripples of emotions and colors are left. The imaginary people and memories are distilled to the very essence of sensory perception, crushed into the miasma from which our very thoughts spring and in which the selfhood sits.

In this way we are not mortal, we cannot truly die. As our physical bodies return to the Earth so do our spirits live on in the collective human conscious via those we have touched. If we all exist as a conjunction of mind, body and spirit then upon our death each of these realms are released, disentangled from being. The body persists through the soil, the spirit lives in the hearts of others, but what becomes then of the mind? It ceases to exist…it’s the true death and no one can experience it but me for my mind is uniquely and unequivocally mine. Or rather, my mind is me, it gives me the ability to be a self in opposition to the other and it is unknowable to you.

My body seems to want to keep reminding me of that impending death. This time it was a gall stone, one I was carrying unknowingly but which demanded its presence known to me via an incredible pain in my upper right abdomen. In a flashback to the events from my birthday three months previous, once again I was stuck in a public bathroom writhing in pain. This time there was an overwhelming sense of pain, which triggered the symptoms from before: nausea, lightheadedness, difficulty of breath. Public bathrooms are such wonderful things, truly you never know what you could be walking into at one. I don’t know why I felt more comfortable suffering in the silence of a stall while my friends waited outside, presumably starting to wonder if something had gone wrong as the minutes ticked by. Indeed they walked in at some point to ask if I was okay. But how do I explain the iceberg of feeling and symptoms I had experienced in the span of the last hour or so? The deluge emotions and thoughts passing by my brain as I bargained with primordial forces to absolve of me of the little demon pushing his way through my insides. How could I explain the reconfiguring of my limbs and stomach to ease pain if even slightly, standing up and sitting down again when I thought I would lose consciousness and fall to the floor? So I told them I had a stomach ache but was okay.

I couldn’t monologue at them all that I felt as I was still going through it. Even in the present I was projecting myself in the future talking about the very events I was going through. This is a technique (or coping mechanism?) I picked up from some of the long distance cycling I do. Disassociate from the present you and think about how future you will look back on the events you are going through. Perhaps this comes from a strong desire for the present to be the past, if only time could pass faster through a sheer act of will. Most notably when I projected my thoughts forward some version of me, now relaxed and past the event, was discussing perhaps with you dear reader about what happened that night in the bathroom stall, ipso facto I wasn’t dead. I didn’t believe I would die and yet are we all not one terrible accident away from death? But there’s a difference between being killed and dying.

Eventually the intensity of the pain passed through like a storm. As it faded I thought about how objectively I should have dashed to the emergency room because I knew this was not a normal pain regardless of the rationalizing thoughts I began to have. Again my mind tries to play tricks on me, after the pain is gone already it begins to erase the internal promises I had made to myself and to soften the freshly minted memories into a nostalgic film instead of a blueprint of my doom. I resolved to at the very least see my doctor the next day. Which in our current healthcare system is a bigger undertaking than I knew. I couldn’t see my doctor but I saw a doctor and phenomenologically speaking that’s the same so screw it. I felt fine but the next day I was told to go to the ER because I had signs of liver damage. My own liver betrayed me, so this is how it would be I thought, there is no mind over matter, only mind in spite of matter.

The hospital kept me for 4 days. I had to watch my tightly scheduled and varied days fall part into one haze of cable TV and liquid meals. Each time I had to cancel a meet up I felt a pang of loss for a moment I would never be able to live. It’s a small price to pay to make sure I could stay alive but that’s 4 days diverted like a railroad from good times city to bad times central. I’m not the first to make this comparison but it felt like a prison, sure I was free to leave at any point, but I didn’t want to keel over after my first slice of pizza back home. So I sat there as my world shrank down from the greater metropolitan area of Los Angeles into a single room in Harbor City. As my agency dwindled, my problems and obsessions also narrowed in scope. If you have not realized how used to living life in the abstract we are then stay at a hospital for a couple days. I read this example in Irrational Man by Barrett: when you think of 2+2 do you stop and take the time to prove the 2,913 subtheorems that allow us to come to the answer 4? No, someone else has done that for us so we are free to go trotting about telling people 2+2=4 like medieval math gods. Being in the hospital was like removing these abstractions from my everyday life. The best parts of the days where the meals, and I would make sure to keep the phone next to my bed so I could order exactly what I wanted from the cafeteria. And OH! that bloody phone, a cruel joke played upon me by Fortuna. Unbeknownst to me the phone I had did not ring, so for the first two days I was not able to make a choice, all they gave me was the most milquetoast meal available. Being robbed of these choices was of course where the feeling of imprisonment came from. My days involved meticulously planning when I would stand up from bed and use the restroom so I didn’t have to drag my IV and medical pole behind me. I would strategically read my book at regular intervals so I didn’t get bored of the TV or the book too quickly. At night when sleep would come I welcomed it as I knew it was the single fastest way to pass the time. Just weeks ago I was exploring the cradle of my family in El Salvador, poring over ancient Mayan ruins, and zip lining across volcanic jungles and now I was here warring with a telephone and planning when to stand up and pace my room. Outside this prison I never have to stop and think about these things, in fact each moment I can spend reading my book or catching a tv show is a breath of fresh air in a fast paced life. That is the power of abstraction.

My doctors informed I developed an infection in my blood probably caused by the passing of the gallstone. In an existential jape I was symptomless, apparently they caught it early enough that I suffered no ill effects. Are you still sick if you don’t feel sick? Even with the knowledge that I had the infection I didn’t feel any better about being in the hospital. Perhaps if I had just a tiny fever, enough to whet that drive for self pity I could have withstood the experience a lot more easily. I started a round of antibiotics which I ended up having to take home in the form of a long term intravenous line in my arm, with a snaking plastic thread laid deep in my veins. I had an access panel, like a Cronenbergian version of the tin man needing direct access to his inner fluids. You know what they say, you can take the man out of the hospital but you can’t take the hospital out of the man. It was all very inconveniencing but the sobering thought I kept having was that 100 years ago I’d be laid out on my back literally dying of a fever from an infection I could have never prevented caused by simple stone from a near obsolete organ blocking my bile ducts. Again the abstraction of modern life rears its ugly head, without antibiotics I would be withering away without a hope or a prayer in sight of getting better. It would be a violent, disgusting end no doubt as the bacteria in my blood slowly started to destroy all my organs one by one. Yet in our blessedly modern society, I was complaining that I never had a symptom at all. I thought about how many times I would be dead by 1800s society standards. That one time I had cellulitis in my leg, that second time it happened a year later, that one time after the car accident, this new gallstone incident.
Four times over I’d be dead, perhaps we should all keep an internal count lest we believe that thought terminating cliche: YOLO.

During my reading in the hospital I came across a passage from The Death Of Ivan Ilyich. The passage clearly resonated with me in the way that only a perfectly aligned moment in time can, so I ordered it and read it within the week. Ivan lives the perfect, complete life at least by the standards he has been taught. One day he bumps into the side of a table while decorating a room. An innocuous bump that somehow ends up gradually killing him. Needless to say my reading of this involved Ivan passing a particularly troublesome gallstone. He experiences physical pain at first but over time he starts to be tormented by his mental anguish until they become entangled and inseparable, the death of his body becomes the death of him. The pain in his side represents his inevitable death but it also serves as a beacon of illumination that cuts through the falsities of his life. He tries to go about business as usual, performing all the rituals that brought him joy and comfort before but the constant nagging pain does not let him slip back into complacency and he realizes that these things never actually brought him happiness at all they were only useful in allowing him to never confront his death and so to never confront his life.

As he begins to accept that he will die, the complete bullshit of every day existence angers him and he sees the masks all his friends and family wear. He feels as if he’s sitting next to this unknowable, eternal void that everyone around him refuses to see and which compared against the pettiness of their rituals do not matter. Playing Bridge with his friends was his favorite activity and as he realized he will die he stops caring for it. This is contrasted with the the fact that at his funeral his closest friend decides he wants to go catch a game of Bridge since the service ended early enough. Your friend’s death is not your own. What does it take to shake everyone out of the abstraction of ritualistic life? Coming close to your own death changes you, and although we know of it, when we meet it perhaps then is when we actually begin our lives. When you stare into that eternal, unthinkable void what will stare back? Ivan wondered if he had lived a good life, and he cannot admit that he did not because if he did it would require him to die a death of the spirit and reorient his entire existence.

Which at last brings me to Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (spoilers ahead I guess?). How could I know that when I dragged my little brothers to the theatre on Christmas morning I would be treated to such a deceptively Tolstoyan film about a cartoon cat. Puss In Boots is on his last life, a respectable 9 compared to my measly 5, when he meets death. He’s died in the same way that I have died, deaths that have been abstracted away not by modern medicine in his case but by fairy tale logic. At last he comes face to face with true death, literally in the form of a wolf. Unlike Ivan Ilyich he recedes into a false life where he is in a purgatory of rituals and adopts a mask in the form of a beard. This mundane existence is a death-in-life which compared to his previous lives is a shadow of his existence. Yet before he met death, he lived a life-in-death, never stopping to have real purpose or meaning because without knowing he would or could die he lived only in service to his legend, the idea of a Puss In Boots not his authentic self. He finally shakes himself out of his depression and latches on to the notion that he can regain his former existence by getting more “lives”. We know that he can’t ever do that though because after knowing death, he is irrevocably changed as becomes apparent in how he interacts with the characters going forward. He meets his former self at first metaphorically in the echos how he affected his former partner Kitty Softpaws and then later on more literally as all his previous incarnations are present to convince him to abandon his newfound morals. The change in him is clear as he does not recognize his present self in his former actions and he realizes he can never un-know this. The only thing he can do is stop fearing death and dedicate himself to a purposeful meaningful existence. Like Ivan Ilyich, he dies a spiritual last death so that he can begin life anew. Of course I see myself in the cat, trying to ease the burden of existence by continuing to perform in the theatre of Jairo’s life. While I don’t exactly feel like I have lived rudderlessly it’s a reminder that there’s nothing wrong with taking stock of life, taking a quick peek at the void to measure up against what you’ve been doing lately. The truth will always come out in that moment when you ask yourself, have I lived a good life?

Fleeting

Fleeting

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I feel like it was five weeks ago that I was graduating college, elated, thinking I had my whole life ahead of me to make my mark upon it. It’s been almost 10 years since that and life continues to evaporate on sight. Where does it all go? Is it pooled up somewhere beneath the floorboards of my home waiting to be discovered? It’s 80% air and 20% chips. The more life I try to have, the faster it goes. Time dilation is a hell of a drug. Yet my purse holds but a meager three decades of life whereas others have lost more than that on a bet.

At a child’s birthday party last weekend I was acutely aware of the whole spectrum of current human existence. I’ll chalk it up to the first big event of the kind that I’ve been to since the great stop-gap of covid 19 but I could see the generational lines in the sand. The baby boomers were sitting, observing, and vibing with the kids, generation x was taking a chill pill and laying back as their children took on the duties of the party, the millennials were hurriedly looking after their kids and frantically making sure the festivities took place as planned, generation z was talking about the latest music and sitting in a corner laughing at tik toks, and the children…running around with boundless energy, ready to replace all of us.

I was there with my baby brothers who my father decided to have later in life. So I got a taste of what some of my friends are going through right now having to manage two walking, talkings ids. There was an octogenarian acquaintance of mine who I touched base with briefly since we hadn’t spoken in a long time and as we watched my little brothers marvel at the animals in the petting zoo he wasted no time delivering straight cold hard truths to me in only the way a man whose shed all pretense can. He told me how all the friends he went to high school with were dying, “that’s just the age I’m at.” I thought how crazy and distant that sounds, all my high school friends are buying homes, getting married and having kids. Yet I remember how quickly the last 10 years have flown by. When I was 15 I thought living on my own seemed almost impossible and here I am in the third decade of life in the blink of an eye spinning the plates of self-sustenance. All of a sudden it seems like getting to 80 and watching the world crumble around me doesn’t seem so far away. What’s the lesson here? Be present, self-reflect as much as you can, the saying goes that you don’t know you’re living in the good times until they are over but that sounds to me like that person never stopped for a beat to evaluate their happiness. Better yet, assume it’s always the good times and don’t ever stop making them so.