Jhciacb

Identity Crisis…

In a few weeks, it’ll be the 3rd anniversary of his blog. It began with a simple notion — that I have a love of cycling, smartphone photography, and writing. Since I practice each of those daily, it appealed to me to combine the three in a creative outlet.

The idea was that after each ride, I’d jot down a few thoughts I chewed on while riding, combine them with a picture or two I took along the road, and post it the following morning to the Spoke And Word page I created on Facebook. What actually happened though, is that each night for three years I’ve written a complete essay instead of a few passing thoughts. And for people who aren’t on Facebook, I created this platform so on Sundays I can select my favorite essay from the previous week and share it.

I often tell people that I write these in 20-minutes or less. That was true once, and still is occasionally, but usually these days I spend an hour or so working on them, reworking them, and getting them to flow and fit properly. Sometimes I do this before bed, but most often before the sun comes up — before my day job.

There’s also the time I spend cropping and editing photographs. I don’t edit pictures a great deal. I crop them according to proportion and symmetry, and I might adjust the light and contrast a little bit, but I rarely adjust the color or tint. That said, it still takes a few minutes to complete each photograph. 

Between writing and editing photographs, I probably spend 75 to 90 minutes on this each day. That, combined with roughly 2-hours on my bike, and that’s 3+ hours dedicated to this creative hobby — every single day. It can all be a little exhausting, considering I work full-time and am also a full-time caregiver.

The initial goal was to do this for one year. 

I had so much fun with it, and with my creative juices flowing, I continued into a second year. The second year came and went, and I noticed I had an extremely small but dedicated following. The whole thing started to become my identity. I’ve never had an identity before, other than being the eccentric old guy in the neighborhood that kids are told to avoid. I’ve enjoyed having this identity, even if I’m the only one that sees it. 

As I wind down my third year, catering to and preserving that identity has caused me to press a little more. I feel I have to get my rides in each day. I have to get a few good photographs each day. I have to think of something at least a little interesting or clever to write about. There’s almost a sense of obligation to that identity. 

The thought of beginning a fourth year next month is a little intimidating. I have this thing in me though, that if I start something, I have to see it through. If I go even one day into a fourth year, then I’ll need to complete it. I worry that all that pressing might actually be changing that identity — diluting it, weakening it, or causing it to veer off course. I dunno 🤷🏼‍♂️.

Riding, writing, and taking photographs — an identity I enjoy, but one I don’t want to do out of obligation or have come off the rails. Lots to think about in the coming weeks. I’ll keep you posted.

This is what I think about when it ride… Jhciacb

This week by the numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 6

Miles: 154

Climbing: 6,700’

Mph Avg: 16.0

Calories: 8,900

Seat Time: 09 hours 42 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 Spooky Tooth. Enjoy…

Jhciacb

The Influence Of Three…

When I was 12-years old I received the book Pumping Iron — a gift from my mom. Being reading challenged, and knowing I was already interested in bodybuilding, she thought it might pull me in to read more.

I’d keep that book within reach for the next five or six years — often looking through it daily. The photographs where my primary motivation to get into the weight room each night. By the age of 18 though, I still hadn’t read the book — not from beginning to end. I read the captions under the photographs, but that was it. 

When I was preparing to take my GED, and knew I needed to improve my reading comprehension, Pumping Iron was my starting point. I figured that reading about my primary interest would serve me better than picking up a book on physics or game theory. So I opened Pumping Iron and read it from beginning to end.

The book highlighted the the offbeat world of competitive bodybuilding, focusing on several local and international bodybuilding competitions in the early 70s. The true subject of the book though, was a compelling figure named Arnold Schwarzenegger and his preparation for the 1973 Mr. Olympia competition. 

I wouldn’t know it as a 12-year-old or even as an 18-year-old, but that book would influence me throughout my life, and for different reasons during different decades. Pumping Iron ultimately lead me far beyond the rusty iron plates and torn vinyl benches of the weight room. It was a three-tiered influence that helped forge the creative me. 

The first influence was that I wanted to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m still waiting for that to pan out, but don’t hold your breath. I skipped my workout last night to write this, and dinner was a half-dozen egg rolls soaked in sweet-and-sour sauce — but I did take my creatine. 

As a creative outlet, bodybuilding became front and center to my life. It’s fair to say I’ve built my entire life around the weight room. I may not have become the next Arnold, but bodybuilding has been my primary form of expression for 48-years. 

The second influence of Pumping Iron was writing. When I opened the book to actually read it, something changed in me. Charles Gaines is an artist with words. Every page include at least one phrase or sentence that was so clever that I wanted to keep reading until the next page — and the next page always led me to another. I wouldn’t realize it for a few more years, but Charles Gaines made me want to be a writer — every bit as much as Arnold inspired me to be a bodybuilder. To this day, a primary objective is to include at least one well-turned phrase in each essay. 

If Pumping Iron had a secret weapon though, it was the black-and-white photography of George Butler. For the photographs in the book, Butler used a vintage Leica camera and Tri-X film which he developed himself. There are only two (non-historic) photographs in the book not taken by Butler, both taken by Annie Liebowitz. Leibowitz, after the book’s publication, sent Butler a note apologizing for dumbing down the quality of the photography. Imagine that. 

When I started my business in Fallbrook in 2001, I built my own website, created my own marketing materials, and used only my own photography. Being true to Butler’s influence, I took only black-and-white photographs in my weight room, and only in natural light. To this day, whenever I take or edit a black-and-white photograph, I think of George Butler. 

I never created anything close to the physique of Arnold. I’m proud of my writing, but it’s amateurish at best. And my photography…? I’ve taken a few gems, but nothing worthy of any awards. That’s cool. 

George Butler passed away last week. When I was riding after learning of this, I got to thinking about the influence that he and his friend Charles Gaines, and the object of their creativity, Arnold Schwarzenegger have had on my life. And in truth, the influence Gaines, Butler, and Schwarzenegger have had on popular culture is far greater than one might see on the surface.

In reflection, I remind myself that creativity is like a message in a bottle — you throw it out there, but you never really know who’s going to open it and how it’s going to influence them. 

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb 

This week by the numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 7

Miles: 180

Climbing: 7,900’

Mph Avg: 15.3

Calories: 10,300

Seat Time: 11 hours 45 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 Coleman Williams. Enjoy…

Jhciacb

Brief Thoughts From The Road…

It’s been a busy few weeks in my Spoke And World. Still, I’ve managed to get on the road every day. Below are a handful of my shorter thought-chews from the last seven rides. I put these blurbs up on Facebook each Monday through Saturday mornings. If you enjoy them, please follow me there for daily updates. Trust me, it’s the best thing on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/SpokeAndWordJhciacb/ 

Daylight Dying Time: 

I’ve been obsessing on some remarkable statistics that I only recently learned. That each year, on the Monday after the spring time change, when we lose one hour of sleep, emergency room heart attacks increase by 24%. Conversely, on the Monday after each autumn time change, when we gain an hour of sleep, there’s a 21% decline in emergency room heart attacks. In the two states that don’t observe Daylight Savings Time, Arizona and Hawaii, emergency room heart attacks don’t spike in either direction. 

I have nothing to add to that. I just find it remarkable that we know this and do nothing about it. 

Gosh Yang It:

I just completed Andrew Yang‘s most recent book, Forward. Whatever your feelings might be for Yang, he sees the future in more realistic terms than any American politician — in my opinion. He recognizes that the world has changed more in the last 10-years than in the last 40-years combined. It’s time the rest of us acknowledge that too.

Yang understands that the bread and butter issues which have driven conversations, campaigns, and subsequently policy for decades are being overtaken today by issues which many politicians don’t even acknowledge — or are afraid to. Job loss due to automation, climate change, and expanding income inequity are among his top priorities. But that’s not what I want to talk about. 

The mid-chapters in Yang‘s book explore and tie together the impacts of social media, changes in journalism, technology manipulation such as deep fakes, bots, algorithms, and the impact that the mining and the sale of data and personal information all have on political campaigns — and he does it in a way that would be beneficial for everyone to read. I don’t care what your political slant is or what your values are, everyone can learn something from this book.

The Responsibility Of Curtness:

A few months back I released a client. She was good in the weight room — strong, generally focused, and capable. She was also passive-aggressive and a bit mouthy — often to a fault. When she entered my studio for what would be her final session, among the first thing she said to me that day was…

“I know I can be curt. So you have to tell me — you need to let me know when I overstep any professional boundaries…”

So far as I’ve ever been taught, that’s not how bad behavior works, and certainly not in a business environment. She had literally just put the onus of her own bad behavior on me. After the session I sent her a note letting her know I wouldn’t be renewing her sessions which had expired that day.

I’m normally able to let go of things like that, but this one’s still lingering. Anyway, it showed up a couple of times riding this week. 

Clear The Land — And The People: 

Transformed by years of drought, what was once the San Luis Rey River, is more or less the San Luis Rey Woodlands these days. The river still runs when it rains, and if there’s enough rain, it’ll run all winter, but only through a small swath of the once wide river bed. Through the last decade or so, each year a young forest springs up through the sands beneath the river that is no more. And the channel people once kayaked and canoed in, is now home to hundreds of homeless. 

This is the time of year when the county, in preparation for a possible rainy season, begins clearing that growth in the riverbed with bulldozers and heavy equipment. All of this, to allow the river to flow freely and minimize risk from flooding. However, in clearing the growth, they level dozens of shelters, tents, and barriers which protect the hundreds who call the riverbed home. 

This is a seasonal event, so I’m certain nobody was taken by surprise. And there’s still enough growth in the periphery of the riverbed that people can find shelter, put up tents, and be protected. It’s just my annual reminder of how fragile it is to be homeless. I wish them all well in their forced relocations. 

The Breezes Are Heaven:

Las Brisas is a Mexican restaurant I pass on my homestretch. It’s an institution in Fallbrook. I don’t eat there often due to limited vegan and vegetarian options, but I’ll say this…

Las Brisas is the best smelling restaurant on the planet. It sits between a BBQ restaurant and an Italian restaurant. Despite this, and as I ride past, all I can smell is Las Brisas. If heaven smells like steamed corn tortillas, I might have to straighten up my act — that I get in and get a good seat.

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb

This week by the numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 7

Miles: 180

Climbing: 7,300’

Mph Avg: 15.2

Calories: 10,200

Seat Time: 11 hours 49 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 Don Walker. Enjoy…

Jhciacb

Ed’s Last Flight…

Shortly before heading out the other day, I read that Ed Beauvais had passed away. He was 84. Beauvais was a giant in the aviation industry, and was a member of the Aviation Hall of Fame.

Beauvais was best known as the founder and CEO of America West Airlines. Prior to that, he had an extensive career as an aviation executive and consultant with Frontier Airlines (the original incarnation), Western Airlines, and Continental Airlines. However, in the 1980s and early 90s, Beauvais put Phoenix on the aviation map. 

I was fortunate to work for America West in the early days. I was hired as a security guard when the company had just 900 employees. Within a few years, the company grew to nearly 10,000. Because of that phenomenal growth, I was able to coax my way into an analyst position in the Pilot Planning department, despite my lack of experience, and I remained there for the next couple of years. My analyst gig was my first adult job after leaving the Coast Guard, and changed my life in many ways. But back to Ed…

The thing I remember most about Ed Beauvais, and something I still think of often, is that he was a people’s CEO — in the same way Tommy Lasorda was a player’s coach in major league baseball.

Every other Tuesday, unless he was legitimately unable to do it, Ed worked a 6-hour shift throwing bags on the ramp at Sky Harbor Airport. He wore the burgundy coveralls that all America West ramp employees wore. He wore steel toed boots. He wore ear protection. He threw bags. He rolled up his sleeves. He even ate crappy chicken salad sandwiches out of cellophane wrappers. And he kept up with the best of them. 

A part of my job was to run pilot scheduling information from my office to the ramp a couple times each day. Occasionally I’d see Ed cutting it up in the break room with other ramp employees. I might also see him standing under a 757 offloading bags and covered in sweat. 

Ed was the most passionate person I’ve ever known in a business environment, and was relentlessly positive. I have few memories of seeing him without a smile on his face. Ed was a visionary. He started the first in-house travel agency of a major airline — Ameriwest Vacations. He also created the concept of fully cross-trained and cross-utilized CSR (all ground personnel). As he used to say…

“There are only CSRs…”

Ticket agent

Baggage handler

Gate agent

Flight attendant

Reservation agent 

There were no specialists. Every person hired in at that level was cross-trained in all of those positions, and therefore could be utilized at any of them. People could bid their seniority — a senior employee who wanted to work in-flight could do that, but they had to take at least one rotation off per quarter and work a different job. The thing America West was most known for, was also Ed’s idea… free cocktails on all flights. No wonder America West took over Phoenix in just a few years.  

Ed Beauvais personally signed off on me, a low-level analyst with no aviation degree, to help start a crew-base in Honolulu, in preparation for regular service to Nagoya Japan. Shortly after I returned from that assignment, I left America West to return to Colorado. It was a bittersweet departure, because America West was the first corporate family I’d ever had — and Ed Beauvais was the patriarch. 

There’s a handful of business leaders who influenced my early adult life. Ed Beauvais is at the top of that list.

There’s something else though, something I couldn’t find in any of the obituaries and articles I read about him after he passed, but I can speak to it personally…

Ed Beauvais told a joke to somebody every day of his life — or at least he did during my time at America West. He believed that humor in the workplace was a gateway to better morale, and to this day, I believe that to be true. To underscore Beauvais’ sense of humor I’ll throw one more at you before I close this…

My partner in the Pilot Planning department and I spent so much time there during a particularly difficult phase, that we actually pitched a tent in the middle of the office — as a comical protest. We even hung out there in our downtime. One morning Beauvais walked past the tent, and without slowing or looking down, he dropped a paper bag at the tent door. It was a bag of marshmallows, some graham crackers, and a few Hershey bars — for making s’mores. 

Ed Beauvais got his final pair of wings this week. If he’s as true to his form in heaven as he was on earth, I’m certain he’ll try and start an airline there. 

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb

This week by the numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 7

Miles: 175

Climbing: 7,900’

Mph Avg: 15.1

Calories: 9,900

Seat Time: 11 hours 33 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 The Bellrays. Enjoy…

Jhciacb

Chasing Joe’s Musical Argument…

My friend Joe likes to stir up complicated discussions on Facebook — he’s a lawyer, so he’s pretty good at it. It’s usually politics and religion with Joe, but occasionally he’ll throw music into the mix. Just before I headed out for a ride the other day, I saw this on Joe’s feed…

I was just curious if any of my Facebook friends want to make a case that popular music is even close to what it was 30-years ago and before…

Occasionally, Joe swings and misses, but he has the ability to hit one out of the park. This particular discussion didn’t disappoint. It also got me thinking…

…Joe is 100% right on this one. I spent much of my riding time that day formulating why that’s the case. It’s a discussion I’ve had with my music friends many times over. This was my reply to Joe’s question…

The simple answer is this…

From the early 1950s through the mid-1990s, every genre of music evolved organically into its own — for the very first time. Every category of music was new. 

Sock-hop rock, British Invasion, bubble gum, British blues, psychedelic rock, country rock, disco, yacht rock, soul, funk, heavy metal, hair metal, punk, new wave, grunge, rap, hip-hop, gangsta rap — et all, had never been done before. 

What an extraordinary time in popular music. 

People took risks, tried new methods, participated in unlikely collaborations, took drugs that had never been taken before, evolved with ever-changing social norms, and through all of this, recording technology changed at an exponential rate. It was inarguably the most fertile time in popular music history.

The Big Bang of rock ‘n’ roll came in 1951, and it’s been expanding ever since. And like the Big Bang of the universe, the more it expands, the more complex it becomes. But the stuff that happened just after the Big Bang — those first 40 years of music, that’s when all the elements were formed. 

I let my answer with Joe end there, but I’ll expand on it a little bit more here…

The reason music from the 1950s through the 1990s is a cut above everything since, is because it was fresh. Notwithstanding there was less of it and there were fewer platforms to learn about it. We allowed ourselves to get more familiar with it. The playing field is theoretically better today — more artists, more music, and better platforms improve things for everyone. But with all the artists out there today, and all that music, we only become partially intimate with portions of it. 

I attempt to listen to new artists and new music, but the last time I discovered an artist who compelled me buy their entire catalog was probably 20-years ago. There’s just too much opportunity to jump around and try something else. We don’t just want to know what music is out there, we want to know what else is out there.

Though I missed the sock-hop stuff and the early British invasion, I’ve been around for everything since. My tastes have waxed and waned through the years. I’ve been a punk, a hick, a rocker, and from 1974 to 1978 I thought I was black. I rode the New Wave, couldn’t have been more excited to get the latest Pablo Cruise LP, and once walked 6-miles in the snow to see Molly Hatchet. Somewhere in-between I grew my hair out and got it permed so I’d look like Peter Frampton. I’d let a stranger into my house and walk away with all my bikes before I’d let him take my Steely Dan catalog.

It’s not that music isn’t good now. It’s that, in popular music anyway, it’s all been done before. The metaphor I’ll close with is this…

In 1977 if I recorded an album onto a cassette, it sounded good. But if I took that cassette and made a recording of it on another cassette, the sound was slightly diminished. And if I took the most recent cassette and recorded it onto another tape, it would be diminished that much more. Essentially that’s what’s been happening with popular music since the 1990s. Each time a genre gets copied, it gets diminished. It’s still music, but it’s not new — and there’s too much of it to get familiar with. That’s my take, and I’m stickin’ to it. 

This is what I think about when I ride… Jhciacb

This week by the numbers…

Bikes Ridden: 7

Miles: 178

Climbing: 7,900’

Mph Avg: 15.1

Calories: 10,100

Seat Time: 11 hours 51 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 Otis Rush. Enjoy…