May 30: Dragons

My son loves dragons.  We started reading the Hobbit yesterday and the big hook for him was that there was a dragon.  He loves watching Wahammer 40k battle reports with me and has creative ways of converting something in the battle into something he can call a dragon.  Some people may wonder at this as there is not, nor has there probably ever been, such a thing as a dragon.  The primary impetus and cause here, I think, goes back to the fact that my son has a father that loves dragons.  I love how they lithely float through the sky, I love the shimmer of their scales, I love the terrifying eyes, I love the rampant destruction they cause.  I even have a soft spot for their non-flying cousins the drakes.  Ice dragons, swamp drakes, Imperial dragons.  I love them all.  I love the crazy, fluffy, dog faced thing on Never Ending Story (which should be converted into the most comfortable bed in existence outside of a walrus).  Japanese Dragons, Aztec Dragons, ancient alien theorist contend dragons.  My poor innocent son has not even a glimmer of an idea of the wide world of dragons that is available out there.

Now I know there are lucky dragons, and good dragons, and guardian dragons.  I know that there are good dragons besides dead dragons.  Acknowledging that 1 thing I love even more than dragons is slaying dragons.  Insanely courageous men and women who through sheer bravado, desperation, and cunning are able to out fight the greatest threat known to man.  Armored, flying, intelligent beasts of single-minded destruction.  Whether it be Beowolf, a fellowship of mixed race fantasy creatures, or a horribly written tank driving dragon savior (“We can do this the easy way, or the real easy way”) I am continually mystified by dragon fighters.

My son was trying to cover my eyest while I write so I asked him to stop, I'm writing about dragons.  “Dragons!” he whispers.  “What kind of dragons?”  He knows the way to my heart.
“All Kinds”
“Black dragons?”
“Should I write about Black dragons?”
“Yes”

To be honest I usually imagine my dragons a deep red, shining emerald green, or a mix of colors that blends into a mystifying brown that slowly changes and shimmers as the beast moves about its golden hoard.  The is a very specific reason that I don't think about black dragons.  They scare me the most.  Totally blending into the night sky, slithering unseen through the thick woods.  A shiny black dragon, could walk write by your house, this very minute, and you would not know.  Think about that.

Luckily as a nerd I am allowed the cultural flexibility to still think about dragons and it not be a surprise to anyone.  Most of my dragon slaying these days is through the pages of a novel, little cards on a table, or plastic and metal warriors frozen forever in the pose of defiance.  But I still vividly remember the last time I fought a dragon.  My friend Pat had a large stick.  Kurt and I had smaller ones.  If your brain works like mine then you already understand that the large stick wielding Pat was in fact a dragon.  A dragon whom Kurt and I were dutifully bringing a gory end to.  Pat was up against the steep side of a service road that was located at the bottom of a small canyon behind Kurt's house.  We darted in and out of the chaparral parrying and thrusting.  Shouting curses and commands.  Bloodying knuckles to the rattling sound of wood swords striking wooden scales.  Rat-Tat-Tat... “Go back to the Hell from which you came, Beast!”...Rat...slide...tat.tat.tat.   If you are going to fight a dragon in the middle of quintessential suburbia we were doing it in the best place possible with the brash slogans and aplumb that only come from the childhood innocence of never having fought a real dragon.

My daughter just came out to the porch wearing a bright red bandanna tied about her like a super hero's cape.  She has the freedom to be the hero, be the princess, be the dragon slayer.  She can look into the eyes of the beast and not have eyes that fill with the tears of remembered scars.  Cuts and gashes deep inside from the dragons you have already fought.  Dragons you have defeated and outwitted.  Dragons you have slayed, but just barely, and not at all like in the fairy tales.  The fairy tales don't talk about the heroes collapsing from exhaustion and blood loss next to the corpse of their defeated foe.  Just wanting to rest, unable to continue on the adventure, seemingly as dead as the freshly dispatched nightmare.  Armor still smoking, sword still hot.  The fairy tales don't talk about the fear of applying for job after job knowing that your young hot wife is working her tail off and you can't help provide for your new, fresh family.  The stories don't cover living in an apartment with holes in the roof which birds and snow enter at will because you can't afford a real apartment.  The stories don't cover how that funny story felt like utter failure and defeat when you stared up through the utility closet and saw the little money you had going up through that frigid sun lit abyss in the form of electric heat.  The stories don't show the hero curled up under his desk because he doesn’t have the answers and can't fake it anymore.  In the stories the burly bare chested barbarian sits at a table laden with suckling pig and dark ale, surrounded by equally inappropriately attired Valkyries and pagan deities.  I've never fought that dragon.  I've never been that hero.

I can tell you for me, fighting dragons does not give me the courage and confidence to go dragon hunting.  Everyone tells you, “You've been here before.  They didn't eat you.”  You should now be able to do anything because you did this already.  That is not what I feel.  I feel scars and damage.  Deep brokenness.  You may have finally in an act of utter hopelessness plunged your dirk deep into the gullet of the beast and been washed by the fiery blood, the last life force of the monster.  But that was only because you were already in its mouth and it was savoring the last moments resistance before it crushed you.  And you know it.  You know you were only saved by a monologue, a twist of fate.  But looking back at the stories most of the great heroes are too.

I may have been saved by a monologue but I can take the crazy risks again.  I can be the burn scarred and broken hermit who dwells in the mountains because he has seen the monster like no one else has.  I've done it.  Maybe you have done it too.  But when I cloister myself within a cocoon of scar tissue and hurt I'm safe, but I'm not alive.  That tomb of memories and pain leads only to self-condemning depression.  The hole only gets deeper.  The beast only grows in your broken reminiscence.

I know that sometimes the monster has leapt on me in my wanderings, unannounced; the black dragon.  Those moments are filled with confusion and doubt, fear and contagious inadequacy.    If I'm truly honest with myself, though, most of those ambushes have followed a very intentional avoidance of confronting the beast.  I've skirted the mountain with my fingers crossed.  The huts are burning around me and I've thought it a pleasant time to go for a walk.  I knew the monster was there and just had the bad luck that it finally found me.

There have been rare moments when I decided to climb the mountain simply because I saw the smoke rising from the crevices.  To hurl myself into the cave though there was nothing but darkness and stank inside.  When you choose to make the leap, when you dive into the mouth of the crypt you are no longer the victim but the hero.  And that moment is when I feel most alive.  It is terrifying to write up that cover letter for a job you are totally unqualified for.  The doubts scream at you when you see the gap you know you are too scared to jump, but why don't you jump it anyway?  Why don't you throw aside that bent and chipped sword, you've only been using it to block him anyway.  Pull out that dagger and charge her gaping maw with a sound that is far clearer than your courage and strength.  So what if you fail?  So what if she finally eats you.  At least they will write a song about it.

I think in replacing our viking sagas with real stories of burden that we have forgotten how to be heroes.  We have collectively forgotten how to fight and maybe we never have.  We are sourounded by zombies and Marvel movies because we see how our souls are being consumed and we are desperate for someone to save us.  We are the young scared boy running with Brad Pitt's family.  We are looking for an anchor and a strength.  Well, why the hell don't you stop whimpering in the corner and be the hero yourself?  You can totally kick Bear Grylls ass and you have no clue because you've never done it.  You've always ran, always hid, always just been the fleeing 8-bit villager with your hands in the air.  I know I've done it enough.

Rat-Tat-Tat, rat-tat-tat.  Maybe that dragon really is just a big stick with a menacing bend.  Maybe you just have a stick but what if you used it?  Bring a knife to a gun fight and kick the crap out of all 10 of them.  Who knows what it would feel like if you were victorious for once.  Not just because of a coin toss and a monologue but because of a leap and a snarl.

Morning Pages

Hey team,

I've been inspired by the Back to Work podcast with Merlin Mann.  I've decided to write 3 pages every morning for a month to get my fingers moving and, just because I need to stop being such a wuss, I'm going to post it here for both of you to see.

Enjoy.

There will be a slight stop when I'm in the mountains in a few weeks but that is a sign of exuberance not failure.  I will deliver 30 days of nothing.  To that, dear reader, I commit myself.

Parental Review 2014

This last weekend my hot young wife and I got away to celebrate our 10 year marriage anniversary.  We took along with us our 4 month old but the other 2 went off to spend the night at a friend's house.  It was wonderful to sit by the pool, relax, and eat wonderful food.  What surprised me was that it gave us a chance to just talk about hard things which had not been pressing enough to resolve.  What is wonderful about having a truly remarkable wife is that most of the things she brought up were things that I had been thinking about but didn't know how to verbalize.  She was able to extract truths from me that I was nervous about or unsure of letting out into the wide world.  

One of the primary topics of discussion was how we can do our most important job better.  It has been truly wonderful to see Bumpkin and Buddy change so much over the past 6 months.  At their age 6 months allows for a massive amount of personality development.  Personalities that are so radically different to each other.  It gave us a chance to discuss the beautiful changes in our adorable children and how we needed to really change our parenting styles to fit the specific developments of each of the 2.  Bumpkin is a dancer and Buddy is a tinker and they way they react to almost anything is different.  My parenting still had some homogeneous tendencies from when they were little and those needed a radical shift in this stage in life.  My cognisant son and daughter have very different ways in which they need to receive my love and attention.  For my daughter it is playing dolls, dancing to the closing soundtrack of Frozen, having Daddy Daughter Dates.  For my son I thought it was building things.  I love building things with him but it is sometimes hard to come home and try to put Legos together in a methodical way and not steal from him his joy of tinkering by an impatient, overworked father.  He had become a little more aggressive and disobedient recently (in small ways he is still an amazingly easy kid) and my young hot wife suggested to me that I needed to spend some time wrestling with him.  I thought that would be a great way for him to just work out some of that extra energy that sometimes sprouts out as doing what I asked him not to do, which is really the basis for what he has been doing lately, he is just fidgety.  What surprised me was with what deep intensity he threw himself into Pappa wrestle time.  He dove into it like a parched man into an oasis.  Like a gasp of air and he loved it.  

On the one hand it was amazing to see a psychological need in a human being filled, especially when it was my son's need.  What really surprised me, and made me feel more than a little guilty, was how over the past few months I hadn't really wrestled with him like I used to and that lack was leading to some real uncertainty in his life.  It really re-centred me.  I have been procrastinating on a Father-Daughter date for some time now and this weekend it is happening.  Not because Bumpkin has really done anything to deserve it but because I just love the crap out of her and want to make sure that she knows she is more important than all the other garbage that I could be doing.  And today when I get home I'm going to let out a primal roar, even if it is after bed time, and wrestle my little buddy until we smash heads together or until his asthma catches up to him.  Today I'm going to be a little better father than I was yesterday.

A Clean Pipe

I sit on my balcony on this unseasonably cool morning listening to the pitter-patter of the odd, pre-hot season rains.  Every day this week we have had these wonderfully short little showers that cool the breezes and wash the air.  It is not the muggy, heavy air of the monsoon.  Monsoon air is still warm from the heat of April and May and carries in it the overflowed sewers and flooded streets that are the direct result of that delugional period of the calendar.  This air is Spring air.  Fresh and alive.  It dampens the sounds of the tuk-tuk traffic and the horns seem to be carried more distant by the gentle breeze that it rides.

I sit on my balcony in this near perfect mix of air and water because I wanted to start working on a book.  This book has been building in my mind since college and I've been fairly surprised I haven't run across it already written.  That tends to be the fate of most of my good ideas, someone else has already had them.  This theme of my life, which apparently no one else has written about, has been pushing against the membranes of procrastination and doubt and feels as though the time for delivery has come.  The idea was conceived in college while listening to my favorite professor at that notable institution and it has been slowly and powerfully germinating all those years since.  Since I vocalized a few weeks ago to my young and hot wife that I was going to finally write my book I began to slide into a completely debilitating state of depression.  These last few weeks have been miserable.  My camping equipment has continued to dwell in its fabric state and my aspirations of greatness for this year have dwindled to a mere survival mentality.  A combination of personal doubts, my own self labeling, and the influence of certain parties who do not want said book to be written had pushed me this morning to a near comatose attitude lying on my bed trying to motivate myself to get ready for yet another day.

My young and hot wife saw me in this stupor and in her beautiful and compassionate manner was able to make me see past some of the notions that were festering and reproducing in my diseased mind.  So I decided to start my book.  What follows may explain why my book has yet to be commenced.

If one is going to begin booking it is advisable from this party to begin in the manner of many of the great minds of old.  That manner includes a hot beverage and a venerable briar, preferably with an English tobacco.  I have been cleaning and smoke waxing my pipes recently and the most venerable briar to have yet to receive this treatment was my Peterson St. Patrick's day 2004 shape 606 pot.  This pipe is meaningful to me in particular because 2004 is the year I was wed to my young and hot wife and the celebration of St. Patrick falls on her birthday every year.  The 606 is also a shape that is scholarly in proportion and sweet in smoking and so I had a mind to load it up with the last remnants of what has become one of my favorite English blends, Cornell & Diehl's #970P Pirate Kake.  I could wax poetical about this superb tobacco but as my mind began drifting in that direction I was shocked into a state of enhanced reality when I noticed the abject and discolored nature of this particular pipe's stem.  For my reader who stands outside of the Brotherhood of the briar I will explain shortly the chemical and natural reaction that can present itself in the stem of one's favorite pipe.  My Peterson St. Patrick's day 2004 shape 606 pot has a stem made of vulcanized rubber which gives it a comfortable, slightly chewy feel in the mouth and is near perfect for sitting down and writing one's life journey book, or as it has devolved currently, to one's blog. Vulcanized rubber has the unfortunate propensity to oxidize and like rusted steel is not quite as tasty as polished so oxidized rubber not only creates a distracting taste that detracts from Cornell & Diehl's #970P Pirate Kake's symphony of flavors but it also looks atrocious.  Similar to pond scum on an oily puddle instead of the bright polish of the shoes of a Gordon Highlander on parade that a pipe stem should reflect.  Look at the stem on Dad's wizard pipe and I'm sure you will see a perfect example of this chemical reaction.

One simply cannot begin his or her life work with such a mouthpiece and so the pipe was loving triaged and treated.  A little baking soda and water was mixed together and briskly rubbed on the stem.  This mixture quickly turned from pristine white to the brown of well trafficked snow and in that brown tincture the oxidation was removed.  Unfortunately I no longer have at my disposal a buffing wheel to bring the wet shine out of my dear mouth piece but an application of Olive Oil returned it to a comfortably black matte.

The reason I share this episode at all as I lovingly rub bees wax on the warm bowl of my newly cleaned pipe is to communicate the feeling of setting something right.  Of giving my venerable Peterson St. Patrick's day 2004 shape 606 pot a new lease on life.  A fresh beginning for a pipe that had aged and become diseased with lack of care.  I was amazed to see what a fresh application of attention and concern could do to turn this wearied warrior into something that could once again deliver the multifaceted flavors of my favored English blend without distraction and with a renewed sweetness.  It took the loving words of my young and hot wife to do the same thing to the horrible and confining state of my own mind this morning.  I am not returned to museum quality but most tools in that state are not used but simply displayed.  My pipe now looks like a tool that can be enjoyed but also used.  There are bite marks on the stem that stubbornly refuse the baking soda treatment.  There is a patch of filler on the grain where a sand pit presented itself in the making of the pipe.  The edge of the bowl is slightly singed from loving use.  But it is loved and it is useful and so am I.

The lies that fill our minds and disable us are not the blocks that build us up, however much we try to convince ourselves that we must continue to harden and steel ourselves against the burdens and pains of life.  A wonderful play I once saw performed, yet whose title eludes me, carried the line, "You are hard like steel mama, but you're cold."  Steel can cut and shape and mold.  I have a sword for that.  In opposition I desire to be usable.  I desire to bring comfort.  As my bowl fills with a fine gray dottle I don't want to be polished and I desperately need to stop striving for it.  I want the warm glow of a used but clean pipe.

The First Pitch

Some options for the ever flexible tarp

I finally had an opportunity to get the Blue Shelter pitched and try a few different configurations.  There are a few things that need done to make the whole set up better.  I'm going to add 5 tie-out points to the interior on the tarp (2 on each panel and 1 dead center).  I also still need to seam seal the stitching to ensure water proofiness.  I also am a little unhappy with the guyline schema.  I followed the tie out plan from a great article I found on tarp camping but I think the shortness of a lot of the line lengths will limit what I can do at any given time.  I think I will need to get a good 50-100 feet more of 2mm guyline to be able to make the setup more easily flexible.  Even on my first attempts I was very happy with how fast I could get the BS set up and out of the rain.  The still be produced Bivy will reside in the tent for ultimate weather and bug protection.  I tried to set it up as a pyramid but the pole slipped so I'll need to work out those details with the tie out point.

Storm Mode

A-Frame

The Flying Diamond/Hammock rig

The Blue Shelter

After searching and searching for good materials here in India I finally pulled the trigger and ordered some goods from DIYGearSupply and Thru-Hiker.

Bag of goodies

My Goal is to create a 9x9 tarp, a bivy bag, a 32* sleeping bag, and an insulated vest.  The tarp seemed like the biggest and easiest so I started there.

So starting out I needed to decide on a plan.  I primarily based my design and procedures on the instructions found on DIYGearSupply.  I really wanted a catenary cut hex tarp but with the reality of camping mostly on the ground in this neck of India I decided that the square tarp was the most flexible and would work with the hammock, just not as sweet as the hex tarp.  I'm also planning a trip up into the Himalayas sometime this year so the hex tarp's usefulness is further diminished for my current situation.  See ya later sexy, here comes Mr. Utilitarian.

So first what I did was created a layout using the tiles on the ground and some masking tape.  Once I had it all measured out then I marked it with a sharpie.  A not of caution with silnylon, if you mark something, you will be able to see it forever from both sides.  I have a few marks for the tie-out reinforcements that I will be reminded of for perpetuity but as my first big project I'm okay with that.

After laying out the sil I cut out the reinforcement triangles out of the 200D nylon.  Then I got nervous and decided to make a stuff sack.  Electric blue wasn't my initial color selection but they had ran out of grey the day before I ordered and didn't have it until the week after I ordered.  Not very stealthy but as a white guy backpacking in India I'm probably not going to blend in too well anyway.

Tent stake stuff sack with some of the trimmings.

 I had read so much about how slippery the silnylon is and what a pain to sew so I wanted to test out my skilz.  It actually sewed pretty similar to the thin polyester I'm using to make my kids hammocks so it wasn't too bad.  I just had to go slow and pin a lot.  By pin a lot I mean use a lot of binder clips and bobby pins.  The bobby pins were great.  They were light, held the material securely and I didn't have to worry about punching holes in what will hypothetically be my rain cover and a frigid, tempest swept mountain side.

Not perfect but much better than I expected.

After I had marked out my tarp I cut it with my 100 rs soldering iron.  It did a great job at cutting and heat-sealing the fabric but I needed a 3rd hand to do it accurately.  I stayed pretty close to my black line so I'm happy with it.  First I made the hybrid felled/french seam to get the 2 main tarp halves together.  I was very happy with the way the center seam turned out.

Thankfully I have young kids to supply my hem edger.

 Then it was simply just putting the re-enforcement triangles where I wanted my tie outs and hem it up with a rolled hem.  I followed this article in relation to tarp set ups.  I went with 5 tie outs on each side (corner, quarter, mid, quarter, corner).  Once I had that set up I got sick and let the project sit for a week or so.  The next phase was definitely my least favorite.  Taking down the corners and putting the tie-outs down with the included D-rings.  I don't really enjoy repetitive work, which is all this was for that period of time.  Eventually, however, it was over and I had a near completed tarp.  I tied on some guy-lines and my tarp is now practically finished.  I still plan on some tie-outs on the sides and down the ridgeline to give me the most headroom/flexibility/storm worthiness.

Tomorrow on my morning run at the park I'm going to attempt to pitch BS with my trekking poles just because I want to.  I've been super happy how things turned out.  I think we're looking at about 8 hours of layout and sewing but it is hard to tell as it was done over a multitude of days.  Gear construction is a lot like machining.  3/4 of the time is spent laying out, planning, prepping.  Only about a quarter of the time is actually wielding the thread injector.  I'll post some pics if I get a chance to pitch the BS in the near future.  Off the Top Quilt!

Couldn't resist the opportunity for a campout in the living room.

The Art of Adventure

A shortly upcoming blog will focus on my newly arrived bag of goodies from DIY-Gear Supply and Thru-Hiker.  I have all sorts of high-tek insulation and fabrics to construct some wonderful camping goodies.  A 9x9 tarp, bivy sack, quilt, and ultralight vest are on the bill as I prepare for the possibility for a week long trek in the Himalayas later this year.  Adventure has always been a ethereal concept for me.  I love to be outdoors in the piney woods.  I love the hidden life concealed in the chaparral of yuccas and Joshua Trees.  I love the majestic beauty of sand-dunes and the limitless expanse of the ocean at sunset.  I've never, however, been a fan of heights and going anywhere approaching high speeds.  I burned out the brake pads of my bike at least 5 times faster than my friends.  One of our common weekend rituals was to ride down the steepest hills in our neighborhood or the sharp cut terraces of the Southern California landscape being scarred into suburbia.  It is strange how as a kid those hills seemed so steep as you were frantically squeezing the brakes and feeling the panic ride up within you as you tried to look cool and confident screeching down the asphalt decline to road burn hell.  As an adult I have revisited those hills and realized not only are they scary steep and I was too easily influenced by my peers.  My friends loved flying down those hills on their bikes or sitting atop a skateboard doing poor man's street luge.  I was continually horrified and in my panic often bailed at the worst and most painful time.  Knowing the limitations of my impaired coordination and obese pre-adolescent frame adventure to me was humiliating and more often than not physically painful.

During my memorable 5 month stint with the boy scouts I was shocked at how difficult it was to backpack and canoe with the other kids.  Now I am shocked that not only did I fit so much junk in my backpack but that I was able to carry it at all.  I loved being outside, I love being remote, I just don't respond well to dangerous situations.  As I nerd I have decided that education and what I carry between my ears relieves some of those fears and mitigates the opportunity for disaster.  Nothing that I carry in my brain, however, will make jumping out of a helicopter with a set of skis on a remote mountaintop alluring to me.  You let me grow out a beard and hermit in the mountains with a few like-minded people and I am in nerdboy heaven.

I love the idea of loving dangerous adventure.  I watch lots of documentaries, play extremely exiting miniature games, and die horrible gory deaths on violent video games.  I love to vicariously experience danger and mimic that elusive co-existent virtue: courage.  I want to out danger Bear Grills in a Risk Off.  I want to be a man who faces his life, from the adventurous to the mundane, with dignity and courage.  I want to stand firm in the face of the boar of life.  As a nerd in the IT world my cubicle doesn't allow me many opportunities at dangerous adventure.  I think many of us in the professional world have allowed our safe lives to wear down our capacity for courage.  Suddenly our big risks involve office politics and meeting quotas.  Just as living in the 3rd world redefines one's use of the word "poor," particularly in a self-inflected sense, so living without adventure atrophies our sense of personal courage.

Something deep within me has decided that 2014 is the beginning of a more adventurous life.  I will put myself in a place to view nature in all of her exposed beauty.  I will allow for opportunities for catastrophic failure.  I will allow myself the opportunities for real and measurable success.  I'm totally stoked about the chance to go into the highest mountain range in the world.  But I am more exited to live a life that exposes itself to real risk with only the protective hand of God surrounding me.  To lay aside the safe way of life that threatens to not only corrode my sense of courage but to force me into a small life.

I have often thought that relationships are like a diagram of a wave.  If it stays constantly in the middle there is no opportunity for hurt below the line.  But that also forces a limit on the opportunity for love.  The last 10 years of my life I have been married to the world's most wonderful woman.  in the beginning of our relationship it was very difficult for me to transition from a chain of broken hearts in high-school to risking total and utter devastation by becoming involved with a woman that I was falling truly and irrevocably in love with.  It was the greatest risk of my life.  Taking that risk, embracing the pain and insecurity of those early days has lead me to a life of greater fulfillment than I could ever have imagined before I met her.  She has given me 3 beautiful children and raised them to be pretty close to perfect kids.  The greatest risk has lead to the greatest payoff.  Now, on the verge of my 30th year of life, I am finally ready to live life with the same kind of abandon.  To finally step forward into a life that allows for triumphs and defeats.  The same life has left me stressed and seeing my failures as daunting and my obligations overwhelming because there are no balancing victories.  There is very little that I have truly had to battle for.  Nothing that carries the inherent value of a trophy smeared with one's own blood washed clean only be sweat and tears.

Alea iacta est

Or for you nerds out there:

Dovie'andi se tovya sagain

Who is with me?