Jhciacb

Brandy (you’re a fine song)…

Most days my head is all over the place when I ride. Other times, I’m hyper-focused on just one thing — to the point that I can think of little else. Two nights ago was one of those nights.

Earlier in the month, Big Todd and The Monsters released a recording of the song Brandy, via YouTube. Originally recorded by Looking Glass in 1972, the song was a huge radio hit when I was 10 years old. Brandy was subsequently released on a K-Tel compilation album the same year. I owned Brandy both as 45 RPM single, and on the K-Tel album which included it.

In 1972 I had a portable record player that could close up and could be carried by a handle — like a small suitcase. Brandy, along with Harry Chapin’s, Taxi were the only two records I owned for a while. I would later add Don Mclean’s American pie, which had been recorded a year earlier in 1971, and Elton John’s Rocket Man, also from 1972.

Brandy remains one of my favorite songs, a regular earworm, and a song I still listen to digitally at least a couple times a month. I think it’s a near-perfect pop song. I also think my affinity for shipping ports and harbor communities is in large part due to that song working its imagery into my young brain.

Last week when I saw the Big Head Todd cover of Brandy I was blown away. The Boulder-based band are hometown heroes, and I’ve been a fan since day one. Brandy is a hard song to cover, which is why it hasn’t been done successfully to this point. Todd Park Mohr’s voice is a perfect fit for the song. The inclusion of the brass arrangement and the added background vocals put this song in a rare category for me — better than the original.

I’ve watched the video probably 20 times now, maybe more. Each time it gives me chills. Last night when I was riding, I sang Brandy in my head, from beginning to end, over and over again. It’s pretty much all I thought about for 29 miles.

I did think about one other thing while I was riding the other night, in-between the rolling karaoke in my head. I remember being with my mother at a Kmart at East Evans Avenue and Monaco Boulevard in Denver when I was 10. I begged her to buy me that portable record player, which was light blue with gray stitching for the trim. I also asked for two records, Taxi by Harry Chapin and Brandy by Looking Glass. Mom being mom, she caved and I got my wish. I would sit in my room and listen to those records again and again for hours.

That little record player was the first portal I ever encountered — the one which allowed me to leave my house and leave my life, without ever leaving my bedroom. Give a kid a record player, and he’ll always have a doorway to a better world.

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb

This week by the numbers…

Bikes ridden: 7

Miles: 205

Climbing 9,100’

Avg Mph: 15.5

Calories: 11,713

Seat time: 13 hours 12 minutes

Whether you ride a bike or not, thank you for taking the time to ride along with me today. If you haven’t already, please scroll up and subscribe. If you like what you read, give it a like and a share. If not, just keep scrollin’. Oh, and there’s this from Big Head Todd And The Monsters. Enjoy…

Jhciacb

Flip And Circumstance…

I was passed by a San Diego sheriff’s deputy on my way out of town one evening last week — he was in a patrol car. I don’t see patrol cars too often these days. It’s all SUVs now. It didn’t take long before I started connecting the dots to other patrol cars, including those I’ve ridden in the back of as a teenager. Before I knew it, I was reflecting one patrol car in particular — driving down my street in the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years.

I don’t remember for sure, but I might have just finished mowing the lawn. I do remember standing in my front yard wearing a swimsuit and being shirtless. An Arapahoe County sheriff’s car passed slowly in front of my house. The window was down, and feeling all of my 13 years, I raised my left hand and gave the deputy my middle finger. He immediately stopped.

My dad, who must’ve been in the garage, found his way to the front yard as the deputy stepped from his car to the middle of my lawn — where I stood scared to death. The deputy and my father had a conversation a few feet away from me. They spoke soft enough that I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but loud enough that I knew that’s exactly what they wanted.

My father asked that I apologize to the deputy and I did. I looked down as I shook his hand though. My dad raised his voice as he told me to look him in the eye. I looked up to see real person — a man with reddish hair, a reddish mustache, and a very stern look, but a forgiving one.

The deputy drove away and my father sent me upstairs to my bedroom. A few minutes later dad arrived with a legal pad and a pen. I was instructed to write the following 500 times…

“I will not give cops my middle finger”

That was the only time I ever experienced writer’s cramps. The following day my hand was sore and continued cramping well into the afternoon. I’m not sure writing anything 500 times ever did much to minimize my bad behaviors, but it was the punishment of choice by my father. What did make an impact though, took place the following week.

I arrived at Skyline Acres Swim & Tennis Club for my first diving practice of the season — at that point I’d been a 1-meter and 3-meter springboard diver for a couple of years. Springboard diving is something I excelled at in my teens. At practice that first day, I was introduced to my new coach, Ron Genlsow.

Yup, my new diving coach, who would stay with me for the next three years, was also Deputy Ron Genslow from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s department. He and I had met a week earlier — on my front lawn. He remembered me from the incident the previous week, but said nothing to the rest of the team. Ron was a great coach and a terrific leader.

There was one dive I’d struggled with the summer prior, for fear of hitting the diving board. That dive was an inward dive in the layout position. My fear of hitting the board was obvious. During our first practice, Ron deliberately coached me closer and closer to the diving board so I’d scrape my head on the edge of the board — to get it over with. No stitches were required. To this day, that remains one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about physical pain — that it’s always temporary. I still think about that day all the time.

Ron loved yacht rock. Driving to diving meets with him each week I was introduced to Hall & Oates, Ambrosia, America, and Pablo Cruise to name a few — all bands I still listen to regularly. He also introduced me to Tommy Bolin.

Ron drove a maroon Chevy Laguna. I always referred to it as the La Gwanna. My favorite memory of Ron was in a parking lot getting ready to head to a diving meet. A teammate and I were joking about the La Gwanna when Ron stopped us abruptly and said…

“Say La Gwanna again and I’ll shoot you both…”

I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it. Ron allowed me to use him as a job reference, right up until I joined the Coast Guard. We lost touch after that. When I asked if I could use him for a reference on my Coast Guard application, he said yes. He then told me he was proud of me and reminded me how far I had come. Yeah, I’m crying right now.

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb

This Week By The Numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 7

201 miles

9,100’ climbing

15.1 mph avg

11,372 calories

13 hours 19minutes seat time

Whether you ride a bike or not, thank you for taking the time to ride along with me today. If you haven’t already, please scroll up and subscribe. If you like what you read, give it a like and a share. If not, just keep scrollin’. Oh, and there’s this from Richard Hawley. Enjoy…

Jhciacb

Stay Put…

September 10th was World Suicide Awareness Day. People acknowledged and promoted it by posting and sharing the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800.273.8255 on their social media platforms.

The Internet was flooded with pictures of Robin Williams, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Junior Seau, and a handful of celebrities who ended their lives too soon. These of the popular faces of suicide.

On one hand, I get it. Relating suicide to famous people who struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and idiopathic sadness is a good reminder to all non-celebrities that those ailments don’t discriminate. A person can be worth millions of dollars, have fame and freedom, and still not want to complete the lives they are so fortunate to have.

Most people have been touched by suicide, peripherally. Many who will read this have friends, associates, and family members who have taken their own lives. That’s a heavy thought. What’s a heavier thought though, is that many people reading this will have friends, associates, and family members who will someday take their own lives, but who haven’t yet, and show no signs that they will. With that in mind, I believe the faces of suicide awareness shouldn’t be celebrities — they should be everyone we make eye contact with in a day’s time.

More people live with suicidal thoughts than most others realize. Some people experience suicidal thoughts on rare occasions while others may experience them more frequently. Some, myself included, live with them daily.

The great majority of people who experience suicidal thoughts, whether it’s occasionally or more frequently, hold them in for fear of being judged, cast out, or worse. Some, myself included as also, fear that being transparent about suicidal feelings might influence our ability to earn a living. Someone reading this and who also does business with me may choose not to going forward. That’s a risk I’m willing to take, today anyway.

I’ve dealt with suicidal thoughts for most of my life. They are intertwined with the depression, anxiety, and especially the sadness that I’ve also negotiated for much of my life. These feelings first surfaced with me first when I was in lower elementary school. Think about that — I began entertaining and subsequently working through the symptoms of depression and suicidal thoughts as a 9-year old. To see me on the surface though, people have no idea this takes place behind my façade of normalcy. 

I know I’m not alone.

I’m now in my late 50s. I can look back at my life, in part, as a series of successful and negotiations with myself on the importance and of staying put. If not for myself, I stay out for anyone who finds value in my life, especially on the days when I can’t. I’m proud of that — proud of my success in a 50-year struggle with the idea of living, or not.  

A part of that success is coming to understand that suicidal feelings always pass — they always pass. That in those critical moments when I think I might be better off dead, I recognize that I want to be dead for that moment, and not for forever. As odd as that sounds, framing it that way has helped me deal with it in ways medication never could.

I’m sharing these feelings today for two reasons:

1) So that anyone reading this who might experience similar feelings will know they’re not alone — that roughly 4% of the adult population in this country has experienced suicidal thoughts in the past year. That’s 12-million people.

2) That those who don’t or haven’t experienced such feelings, might be more aware of the 12-million people like me who have. Again, keep in mind most people struggling with suicidal thoughts look like anyone else on the surface.

As for World Suicide Awareness Day, perhaps in the future we might rebrand it, making it less about celebrities and more about the people next-door or the people down the hall. We could call it…

The World Day Of Staying Put

In addition to promoting suicide awareness, it could also be observed as a day of worldwide confession — a day to share one’s feelings safely, without fear of judgment or any consequences. It could be a day to celebrate those, like myself, who have successfully stood up to the dark and often overwhelming thoughts, and batted them far away, on behalf of those who care for and depend on us. 

As any of us look around today in a room full of people, whether it’s a restaurant, an ice rink, or our living rooms, let the faces of suicide awareness not be those of celebrities. Let the faces of suicide awareness be everyone we make eye contact with. Let’s strive to remember that behind every pair of eyes is a heart, a soul, and a life’s worth of experiences we know little about. Behind some of the happiest and most outgoing faces we see, there is often turmoil, depression, sadness, and anxiety. 

If you experience suicidal thoughts and don’t have anyone to speak with, please contact 800.273.8255. There are people there willing to listen, and without judgment.

This is what I think about when I ride. It’s also what I think about when I don’t ride… Jhciacb

This Week By The Numbers…

Bikes ridden: 6

199 miles

8,750’ climbing

15.3 mph avg

11,390 calories

13 hours 04 minutes seat time

Whether you ride a bike or not, thank you for taking the time to ride along with me today. If you haven’t already, please scroll up and subscribe. If you like what you read, give it a like and a share. If not, just keep scrollin’. Oh, and there is this from Dinosaur Jr. Enjoy…!


Jhciacb

No Science To Ignore…

I say this straight up, knowing I’ll offend more people than I could ever hope to enlighten, but to disparage, insult, or threaten anyone because their values and opinions are contrary to your own, is to contribute to the divisiveness and polarization that nearly everyone is complaining about today.

That’s not my opinion by the way, it’s been studied, peer reviewed, and published — multiple times by multiple groups and institutions. It’s based on experiment and observation, and supported with data. It’s inarguable, because it’s science.

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All the name-calling, hate speech, and threatening toward those we may disagree with contributes to the widening of, the heightening of, and the fortification of the walls that exist between two sides of any position, argument, or set of values. End of story.

I get it, it feels good to hate. It feels good to insult. It feels good to have the upper hand in argument. It feels good to belittle. It feels good to be right, and in many cases we can almost say that these behaviors are justified — except that they work against the values they’re supposed to support.

If one believe in the sciences — the science of physics, the science of climate change, the science that explains and cures disease, and the science that gets men to leave the earth and safely return, it should stand to reason that they should also believe in social sciences. If one accepts all other sciences, but denies this one, they are not science-minded, they are practicing scientism.
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Some excellent books that offer data to support what I’ve suggested include the following (I have read or listened to the audio version of each one, most more than once)…

It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (2012) by Thomas Mann

The Blank Slate (2009) by Steven Pinker.

Why We’re Polarized (2020) By Ezra Klein

How To Have Impossible Conversations (2019) Boghossian & Lindsay     

Nonzero (1999) by Robert Wright

The Righteous Mind (2012) Jonathan Haidt

The Ape Who Understood The Universe (2019) Steve Stewart-Williams

Though some of these books touch just briefly on the science and study of polarization, several of them are exclusively dedicated to it.

Bottom line for me: Insults, hate speech, and threats are significant building blocks in the construction of the walls which divide opposing factions of any kind. Those who offer the insults, hate speech, and threats are the cheap, plentiful, and unwitting labor that builds those walls so well.

I’m not talking about lampooning, cartooning, or making jokes. All of those have their place in political argument and beyond. The line between humor and hate-filled ignorance is a broad one though, and very distinguishable.

I’m certain most reading this, including some very close to me, will read it with a giant eye-roll. They’ll attempt to defend name-calling, insulting, and hate speech because it feels like it’s all they have left during tumultuous times. They’ll also deny that they’re a part of the problem. Denying that they’re part of the problem will also make them science deniers, which for many of them, will be an the ultimate irony.

Insults, hate speech, and threats send nothing good into to the world — nothing. I get it, it’s hard not to take the bait when nearly everything we see, hear, and breathe is made out of bait. As soon as one takes the bait though, they become part of the problem.

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb

This Week By The Numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 7

201 miles

8,850’ climbing

15.3 mph avg

11,500 calories

13 hours 06 minutes seat time

Whether you ride a bike or not, thank you for taking the time to ride along with me today. If you haven’t already, please scroll up and subscribe. If you like what you read, give it a like and a share. If not, just keep scrollin’. Oh, and there’s this from The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. Enjoy…