Gulf winds

Tonight I sat outside, facing east, and watched the clouds sailing by.  Clouds coming off the gulf.  The springtime on the Gulf brings south winds and south breezes, and these bring the humidity.  In the spring, the humidity is nice.  It only gets oppressive as the temperature climbs about 85F, then 90, topping out around 95F in high summer.  Lately, I have all the sliders open, wishing I had more screened windows, and wishing I had star jasmine growing in the yard.

"Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning."

I've chosen for my red clay plot a delicate oolong.  It must be reserved for this one flavor.  The tea leaves come bunched up, little balls, and they open up into full leaves in the water.

Day off ramblings

I love Tuesdays off.  I took my 19/30 flex day today.  These days are normally consumed by vacations, because I try to stitch together holidays, vacation days and 19/30 days to maximize my trips per year.  Not doing so well this year on that.  Been taking half-days to go dirt biking.  It's worth it.  Only other trip this year will be driving to Colorado over the Independence Day holiday. 

Today I focused on rational hedonism.  I've lately realized I don't do much I enjoy.  I'm forever trying to get done the "things that need to get done" and finally, after 32 years, I realize that this list never ends.  It is an ever-flowing well; an endless spring.  Now, don't get the idea I'm giving up lists.  That would be crazy!  If I don't have three or four lists to update, cross off and throw away with a little squeak of glee, what would I do nights and weekends?  My new specialty is themed lists: home projects, shopping, places to consider visiting, things to look up online. 

Enough with lists, what do I really enjoy?  That needs to be mixed in, in a big helping.  If I'm to survive in Houston and stay sane, I realize, I need to change some things, and that's one of them.  What do I enjoy?  Last night, I made a list.  One: I enjoy driving my convertible. 

I strung together a list of "should-dos".  First I slept in.  Then I dropped off the cleaning and enjoyed the beautiful, dry, cool morning from the seat of the Mazda, which has 7200 miles, 95% with the top down.  Next was Pottery Barn to try out some leather chairs -- I decided I want a reading chair and lamp, to enjoy.  Nothing doing -- all the chairs are too long in the thigh, which means I sit in a slouched position.  Next Sears tool department -- a fun place to look at and touch shiny metal objects.  A shrine to male-ness, right at your local mall.  Maybe I should get a part-time job there, for the spiritual fuel it would provide, just smelling all those tools for a few hours a week.  I was looking for a better torque wrench but decided $80 was too much.  Next to Big Tex to pick up my real metal trailer license plate, then back down to Ikea, where I found nothing at all.  Their chairs are no good either.  Just north of Ikea in Houston is a neat, tidy little 1940s and 50s neighborhood.  This must have been a nice area then too, as these are big houses for that time period - 2500-sq-ft-ish.  I drove north up Antoine, amazed at how nice much of Houston is.  Big, gorgeous trees.  Lots of green everywhere.  Gnarly oaks.  The neighborhood then went downhill as I drove north -- it's amazing how one can pick up even slight changes in the "goodness" of the neighborhood, and how quickly they change laterally.  A few more cars parked outside, a little peeling paint. The $66k lot I went to check out was also in a 1940-50 neighborhood, but very simple small houses with carports.  Today, it has taken a dive.  Not the place for my new ideal house. 

Off to Java Coffee and Tea.  Through the villages, my favorite part of Houston.  Picked up a variety of odd teas -- none fruity -- and got a red-clay teapot, but not the one I thought I wanted.  Covered in Chinese characters, probably the Abbreviated Teachings of Mao, for all I know.  I'm like the Japanese Tourist with a T-shirt that says "Butt" in English.  A couple of tiny red clay cups with it.  These things bring me joy.  The ritual of making tea, and pouring it out, and feeling the grit of the sand and silty in the making of the clay cups.  Finally, the highlight of the day, I went to Happy Great Hand and Foot massage for -- you guessed it -- a "deep tissue" hand, foot and body massage.  I can't say I enjoyed it at the time, or that it felt good.  It was definitely deep tissue.  At times I was in severe pain.  I think I popped a lung.  But for an hour and a quarter of torture, I paid only $20.  Amazing!  E.R. Flesch, you need to try this place if you're in Houston.  If they can't break you, I don't know who will. 

After recovering from my "massage" with about twenty mini-clay-cups of whole-leaf oolong tea, to cap off the day, Sabkha and I went for an "adventure walk".  This is going for a walk someplace you haven't been before.  Today, it was really close to home.  We walked about 1/2 mile south to the Westside High School in Briar Forest, and walked the road around the school grounds.  Quite interesting.  Lots to see.  Stuff you don't see from the car, driving past 1,000 times.  Little wooded areas.  Puddles of water.  Cool trees.  On the way we smelled jasmine.  Some of the ritzy houses just south of me have jasmine climbing the fences.  In Tucson I had a huge spread of jasmine.  I need to plant some here.  The Eldridge corridor, where I live, is on the rise.  They recently finished a nice new LEED office tower near my house.  And a brand-new Hilton.  The landscaping is great.  The trees keep getting bigger every year.  It's good to be the cheap houses surrounded by much higher-end neighborhoods.

Here is a map of our adventure walking route.

White White Moutains

From a long time ago...

"A few weekends ago I went up to the White Mountains, AZ, east of Show Low and north of Alpine. This is really in central AZ, not northern AZ. Arizona has some high country in the White Mountains, then elevations taper off a bit toward Utah and Colorado. It's still high country up there -- Colorado Plateau -- but flat red rock and desert. The White Mountains are largely volcanic, made up of several large volcanoes, lava flows and cinder cone fields. Does any state have more cinder cones than Arizona? I doubt it. They're easy to find here: big fields north of the San Francisco Peaks and north of the White Mountains proper. I drove up to Mt. Baldy, second highest peak in the state, but found the access road closed until December 31, 2006. I got a late start from Tucson, so I didn't get to Sunrise (ski area) until early afternoon. I browsed through the hiking guidebook and picked something down south of Baldy, turned the car around and headed toward Greer. That's when the blizzard hit..."

Huntsville State Park

Huntsville State Park, TX

Dirt biking killed the mountain bike star

Went out on the trails tonight -- the Anthills, nearly out my back door.  The rootiest trails around.  Riding a mountain bike is very different than riding a dirt bike, which I've been doing a lot of lately.  Years (almost decadeS) of mt biking definitely helped me get started with dirt biking.  The main carryover skill is choosing a line.  As you ride, you constantly scan the trail just ahead and choose a line you want to ride, hopefully avoiding bad roots, bumps, puddles, flaming logs, etc.  Yes there are flaming logs out there in the National Forest.  But go back to the mt bike and things are different.  Riding dirt bike has made me cautious.  You don't want to drop the dirt bike.  The mt bike, you can be more aggressive leaning into corners, and you don't have to worry about falling over -- the bike weighs 26 lbs versus 280 lbs for the dirt bike.  Dirt bike has longer wheelbase.  The handling is different, causing me to steer less than needed on the mt bike...  Roots: a problem with dirt bike.  You don't want to hit a root at the wrong angle, i.e. while turning at all.  Big knobby tire + mud + root + turn = slide!  Not the case on mt bike.  Tires are grippier and much, much softer, and weight of rider+bike system is far, far less.  This means on a mt bike you don't slide when going over roots at an angle.  Mt bike has no rear suspension and much less travel = much bumpier ride and more standing up when riding over obstacles.  Anyway, dirt biking has messed with my mt biking skills.  But that might not matter much since the trails here in Houston are getting overgrown -- it must be spring.  Soon the spiders will claim the trails, and I'll stick to the gym or the bike paths until late November (frost = spider death). 

In other news, I love my Klein.  Too bad no more Kleins.  The bike is perfect.  I don't want a new mt bike.  It has the original tires, chain, etc.  It needs some TLC but goes fine without it.  It's really light.  Probably time for a shock rebuild, but just need to give this bike major props, kudos, and boo-yahs.  Klein, I love you.  Now shopping for a used Klein road bike.  Yes, I love steel (Rivendell) but I like the stiff Al frames too.  And I want STI.  Down-tube shifters are a pain.  Their days are done, done.

Finally got around to some long-delayed tasks.  One was: refurb shoes.  I have a shoe "problem", it's true.  "So many shoes and so few days to wear them."  I got these AE cloggy things stitched up in four places, now for some laces.  Then I smeared the wondered Bissel.. Bizwax... (?) stuff with beeswax.  It's some oily stuff in a metal tube, smells like kerosene, rub it in with your fingers, ooooo!  After, the shoes look all dark and nourished and waterproofish.

 My Clarks got the same treatment.  Yummy shoe oil in a tube!

Today I rode the Anthills and got frustrated with my decayed skills.  So I crossed Buffalo Bayou at Dairy Ashford and rode the "high road" on the north side out to the Beltway.  I was hauling butt!  It was nice to crank, I normally ride at a la-de-da level, I realize upon reflection.  Hopefully this new intensity is back to stay.  The Klein is easier/more fun to ride fast.  Bike paths are not built for drop bars and down-tube shifters, and poor brakes to boot.  Too many evil, lurking Rabbits of Death.

The frontispiece photo is some Art I made in high school.  Normally all my attempts at art/craft are epic failures.  This one turned out pretty cool!  I have a T-shirt stamped with this image.  Can you figure out what it is? 

Free Music Floweth

About three years after my friend Sara recommended it, I gave Last.fm a real gosh-darn honest-to-goodness try.  And I love it.  My dilema is that I have no music-playing apparatus in my house.  I used to have a couple of old Sony speakers hooked up to my terribly slow HD-DVD player -- hit "open" about 15 minutes before you plan to start viewing a movie -- but it wasn't a satisfactory setup.  You've got to change CDs every 40-60 minutes, which means you have to pick a new album to listen to.  I'm not that decisive.  I can't decide what to listen to next.  Ok, how about an iPod dock?  In theory, that would be great.  You can create playlists and you don't have to wait for the HD-DVD tray to open, you don't have to change disks or be decisive.  Problem -- you either have to create playlists, which sounds a lot like being decisive -- or you can just push "random".  Problem there -- dwelling on my iPod are many things besides songs.  Chapters from Atlas Shrugged, a relationship self-help disk, and numerous sound clips recorded by me on various trips.  Also, you might want some upbeat cleaning music.  So you start with the Pixies, "Debaser".  Then the next song comes on, and it's Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now".  Last, I tried the FM radio.  Commercials, poor music, static.  You understand the problem.

Last.fm is the solution.  Type in the name of a band you like, hit play, and you're done.  Last will typically start with a song from the band you choose, and go from there, in ever-widening musical circles, while staying more or less in the same genre/mood level.  No commercials.  The only two slight annoyances: after an hour or so of inactivity, Last.fm stops playing and asks if anyone is home.  Problem #2, the playlists don't seem that dynamic: typing in, say, Guster, tends to give you the same list of songs in approximately the same order.  This may just be a fluke since the sample size is very small (only the second time I've tried "Guster" as a band seed).  On the ne plus ultra side, Last.fm doesn't seem to have the hiccups associated with streaming from, say, KXCI or other local/regional stations.

So hook up those Harmon-Kardon Soundsticks to your underutilized laptop, and you've got a cheap home stereo, ready to go.  No need to drop $800 on a new stereo.  Those HK's are pretty good, too, and will be perfectly adequate, even in a large room, if you're used to hearing your music on a 4-speaker Subaru system.

Dirt Fever

It's been a long process, but I finally got a dirt bike, and rode it.  It all began in the summer of 2009 when I was pretty bummed out about Houston, and complaining about nothing to do.  I decided to look up dirt bike training, since I didn't know how to ride a motorcycle.  I knew how to shift and had some practice on my uncle's ATVs many years before, and about a quarter-mile on Erik's motorcycle, but that was it.  I signed up for a Honda riding school -- a "closed range exercise" -- designed to cover all the basics.  The school was in late October, and I eagerly awaited it.  Then it got postponed to November.  The course was fun.  I rode a Honda CRF150F, which is basically a teenager bike.  It seemed a fine size.  At the end of the class I hopped on the larger CRF230F and found it perfectly fine.  It looks big to a non-dirt biker, but once you're on it and moving, it's not too big at all.  After the Honda class, I was totally sold.  Now I just needed a hitch on the Subaru, wiring for trailer lights, a trailer and then... a dirt bike.  Months went by as I tried to find a place to install a hitch.  I was loathe to call U-Haul but finally I did.  They did not return my several calls.  I had almost given up when coworker Sam went to Master Hitch and had a hitch installed on his Audi.  He was impressed, so the next day -- sometime in December -- I went and got a hitch and the wiring.  Next came trailer shopping.  I couldn't find what I wanted -- a 5x8-ish, lightweight trailer but beefier than the basic "lawnmower" trailer.  Prices seemed too high at the local joints -- $750ish.  Finally I checked out Big Tex, which had exactly what I wanted for $599+ttl.  $720 out the door.  5x8', 12" wheels, easy to move around by hand.  A cinch to pull with the Subaru.  Now I scoured Craigslist.  The going rate for a beat-up Honda 230F was $2000-2500.  The better ones seemed to land around $2200.  Meanwhile, Honda West had a school-used 150F for $2600 out the door.  I agonized over this for a while and had decided on the 150 when I saw an ad for a lightly used 2005 Honda CRF230F with minor carb problems for $1800.  Woo hoo!  On a rainy March Saturday, I drove down nearly to Galveston to pick up my bike. Back home, a new spark plug and an overnight battery charging went a long way to fixing the no-start issue.  Next was carb cleaner in the air intake, an oil change and viola, a ready-to-ride dirt bike.  Now, where to ride?  The next weekend, the trails in Sam Houston National Forest were closed due to wetness from recent rain.  I had to ride.  I started up the bike and rode in circles: down my driveway and around the front yard.  Finally, this weekend came.  The weather looked good.  The trails were open.  We had Good Friday off work.  All the planets came into alignment.  I picked up friend Ben and his 1982 Honda 125 enduro.  We drove up to SHNF and met two other co-workers, one on a spanking-new Suzuki 400 enduro and the other on an ATV...

To be Continued...