Ride it like you stole it

that's the sort of image endorsed by Berkshire Bike and Blade. Racing through 6 (yes six) towns in 2 hours for a total of nearly 40 miles I did my first road ride. It wasn't as demanding as I thought it would be and I didn't have anything to eat before the ride and nothing to keep me powered up during it. Despite this, I was able to keep up and even helped some others out who were struggling a little toward the end by "pulling" in front.

We started at the bike shop in G.B. went through Alford to West Stockbridge (the same back route I took to BCC) and then we rode up 102 to Stockbridge. From Stockbridge we went by the Stockbridge Bowl and Tanglewood in Lenox and then rode to Housatonic via 183 and then back to the bikeshope via Vandeusenville road to 41.

The reason the ride wasn't as demanding as I feared it would be was because, one, the five days of sprinting to work and back conditioned me more than I realized and, secondly, I wasn't aware how much drafting improved performance. By following close behind the rider in front of you, you have to work much less in order to maintain speed as you are cutting through much less air. The real challenge is in keeping in line maintaining a constant speed. I kept going too fast and then falling behind, and then sprinting to catch up again, struggling to maintain a foot or two between me and the guy in front of me. Everyone was very forgiving of my amateurish riding and a certain flashy rider in pink trim coached me in the strategy and technique of the road ride (that would be of course the big bro, who by the end of the summer I intend to smoke). I found it most fun to tuck really low down hills and just coast by other people pedaling. Road riding is all about aerodynamics. Cutting down your drag coefficient. But it's also riding smart, conserving energy and riding as evenly and smoothly as possible. Well, I managed 1 out of 3... I got the aerodynamics part down but I am not efficient... struggling to maintain a uniform speed and sprinting a lot (it's just more fun)

I can't wait for the next ride. I couldn't believe I was maintaining speeds upwards of 20 miles per hour. At the end of the ride when leading two others I maintained an average of 23 to 24 miles per hour without the aid of dragging behind someone else. On some down hills we approached the 45mph speed limit. It was actually a pretty mellow ride but for someone who is new to road cycling the second half was pretty intense. (more VA Beach update coming soon)

VA Beach, Part I: 25 hour day

Vadim from work and I drove down to VA Beach for July 4th extended weekend.

We left late Tuesday night the third at 11pm and arrived at 7am. Then we went to the beach and frolicked in the waves. We went to bed at 12am. 25 hour day. It was a very long day.

7am at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Vadim showing the early signs of needing to get some sleep.


Sunrise over the Chesapeake. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel is the longest bridge tunnel in the world.



Just as we approach the end of the pier located near the VA Beach end of the bridge tunnel we see a man pull up a skate that inadvertently got caught on the hook.


The hook is removed and the skate is released back into the bay with a belly flop.


This concludes part one of our trip. Stay tuned for more coming soon.

Driving in Great Barrington

I was on my lunch break today and went around the castle street block after picking up the Instant Karma: Save Darfur CD at Tune Street which is a bunch of covers of John Lennon songs to raise money to stop the genocide in Darfur. I wanted something to listen to while painting the interior of Steffen's new bike shop location on State Rd. across from The Pizza House. Town was über-mobbed and coming out onto main street by Berkshire Bank the person two cars before me wasn't inching forward or anything--waiting for a magic traffic light to suddenly appear or something--so I got impatient and honked the guy in front of me and motioned for him to do something about the tentative driver in front of him but he didn't care to extend an encouraging honk to the girl in front of him, just looked at me dumbly as if to say "what am I supposed to do?" so I got of the car, covered in paint, paint in my hair, paint everywhere, and marched into traffic (the traffic was so bad the cars were only going 5-10mph) and put my hands up to stop both lanes of traffic and motioned the little lady to go. She smiled sheepishly and I ran back to my car (there were now cars behind me), giving the guy in front of me a passing glance. He got the picture and followed the girl in front of him into traffic. People's inability to look at a traffic situation and improvise accordingly--especially in overly congested Great Barrington--is a little irksome. I mean, I can't sit around all day and let bad drivers ruin my gas mileage, sheesh!

Trish doing a professional job of cutting in while painting Stoof's new, spiffy bike shop:

Bash Bish Falls after hard rain

If you remember this spring we had a little flood. Well, being the Intrepid Dr. Root that I am, I ventured to places where I thought the water would be impressive: Bash Bish Falls. Apparently I wasn't the only adventurous soul in search of ferocious water. I didn't bring my camera but I met a very nice man with his wife taking photos of the falls and he offered to send me copies of the photos. Few people will ever get the opportunity to see the falls the way they were on April 16th. You'll want to click on the images to see them in full size. Remember that in normal conditions, you can walk across the bottom of the falls where there is usually a pool lined with boulders that you can hop from one to another. But here you can see there is no longer even a pool, just a mad torrent of foaming water.





Getting to the falls was a bit of a challenge. I approached from the parking lot above and streams had sprung up everywhere. The creek feeding the bottom of the falls had swelled to a remarkable torrent and I was barely able to cross it by stepping along the metal fence that goes over it where it normally is passable by a small hop over the creek. This was a full on raging river and the bottoms of my feet were nearly being splashed by the rapids. Alas, no pics of the descent to the falls since I didn't have my cam.

The spray from the falls was so bad that you could not go down the steps to take a closer photo. You would be soaking wet in seconds from the tremendous spray pluming outwards with tremendous force.

Barbecue at Jake's

Nori in rare fashion complying to a photo shoot in Guy's Memorial. His birthday was last week.


If I'm the best root above ground, then Harbinder has to be the best Indian this side of... of India. Although it looks like Dan isn't so sure.


It was a beautiful afternoon for a barbecue. (sorry, I don't have photoshop to lighten the foreground)


Nori and Avi loving the spotlight of the camera.


If you would like to know why any pictures of me are conspicuously missing from this entry, perhaps a visit over to Dan's complementary blog is in order... Plus, there are some very nice pictures. Very impressive one of the sky. Wow.

In other news, Vadim and I went for a bike ride up that killer hill by Camp Eisner. Then we hiked up the Appalachian trail a ways and Vadim took 42 thousand pictures. I took a few but I was more interested in just being in the moment than capturing it on my camera for twice. (there was another time but it was a long time ago and I don't really remember when.) On the bike ride back I got up to 43mph. But this is on a mountain bike with knobby tires and my bike wouldn't go into my top gear. I think I will have to borrow a road bike from Berkshire Bike and Blade some time and see if I can't top 60mph.

Vadim clambers up the rocky face.


This wild flower on the trail caught my eye. Do you think it's pretty? I think it's lovely.


I like the halo around the sun in this rather lovely but typical sunset. I remember the sunsets in India. Particularly the ones in Kovalam in the south. Loverly, but the ones in the good ol' Berkshires are nice too.


Stay tuned for 42 thousand more pictures of Vadim and our little excursion coming soon.

Keep the paint where it belongs!

Okay? Don't put it on surfaces it doesn't belong. That is how you end up buying roofs and floors that you can't afford.

Doug walks the plank... (Vadim and my plot failed to get rid of the boss, alas.)


Vadim and Bret.


Doug shows how it's done


In other news...

Sold a couple shawls at the tag sale... but only AFTER I packed them away before the thunder storm came. Nina Thayer was very kind to mention my shawls in the advert for her and my mother's tag sale.


It's important to have a professional presentation when selling high value products.

8 hours of the sandpaper shimmy

and other adventures with paint and ladders coming soon!

For now we turn to some pre-season swimming.

A week or so ago we biked to the stream by Rowe Road.

Nora is pretty enthusiastic about being in the frigid spring water.


Jake is a little less excited.



Yep, this basically sums it up. That's about as far in as I was willing to go.


Nori did end up going all the way in. But I never went beyond my ankles.


Then Dan decided I should go in too.

News and other happenings

Sorry for the loooooooong lapse in blogging. The camera broke and recently got fixed. They'll be another update soon.

Spent a couple days in New york this passed week and it was a wee bit expensive. I parked the car in a bus lane and it got towed. I rode Vincentine's bike to the pound to retrieve the car but when I got there I realized I had forgotten the key. So I rode back, got the key and retrieved the car for $185. I then spent an hour stuck in traffic looking for a parking space to contest the $115 fine that went on top of the $185 impound fee. I finally found a space but had to go up 20 blocks. Good thing I took the seats out of the minivan for easy transport of the bike. They reduced the fine by $25 to $90. I then parked the car in a meter spot to see Damian at his bike shop in the village. But I couldn't find the car again because I forgot to note the streets I had parked at. When I finally got back to the car it had gotten another ticket good for $65.

I started painting houses for Doug Schmolze so I'll have money to pay all the fines. Joy! Had my first day on the job on Friday and it was surprisingly not so bad. Today was pretty okie dokie too. Stained a bunch of beam girder thingies--the thin pieces of wood that act as trim. Oh for a radio at work tho. Or an iPod. Music would make work wonderful. And now peekshures from the last few weeks.

My Mom is moving!She is moving to a quaint little house on Hulburt Road near Route 71 direclty across the cornfield facing the airport.

Four Generations. (if you include the pic of mom)

Something taboo about going in the left lane?
Ana Sophia came to help mom move.
Ana Sophia reaches up to grab at the big wide world.
Is Ana Sophia's aunt as cute as Ana Sophia?

We think not. Not all that glitters is gold. Aww, that was mean (if you can ascertain the reference)
Nora powers the canoe while I study
for last assignment for English
Uhh... last of the Mohecans?

G.B. in full bloom.

the Fight Club Philosophy

Paper I wrote for my Philosophy class of Self and Identity. They'll be a proper blog update soon... prolly before the weekend.






Struggling to find oneself in a pervasive culture of consumerism as seen through the lens of the film Fight Club


IN ANY GIVEN generation, in any given time period in human history, a study of the self, of who we are, of what we are, of how we define ourselves, of how our culture defines us, is always an interesting and fundamentally important study and will reveal something unique about ourselves. We may never get to the definitive truth, to concrete answers, but nevertheless, a deeper understanding that stimulates in us different perspectives of who we are. The current time in history is particularly interesting to look at in my generation with so many historically unprecedented factors influencing people. The bombardment of advertising, chiefly carried out by television, perpetuating a consumeristic Mr. Hyde mentality of gorging ourselves on stuff we’re told we want. The film Fight Club based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk offers a rather dire and sad way of looking at our lives; but one with some truth to it. How we buy into the corporate, consumer, slave to advertising culture of acquiring materialistic possessions that ultimately define who we are and keep us from truly living.

Tyler Durden: “An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives.”
Jack, though a 30 year old adult, struggles to come of age in a world of Ikea furniture and the meaningless, monotonous Dilbertesque routine of his white collar office job that leaves him feeling alone and isolated by a world that seems to have betrayed him. As a result, he suffers from insomnia and goes to support groups for people with life threatening illnesses that he has no business going to where he becomes addicted to unleashing his tears into various different people from different support groups such as a big boobed man named Bob. In a sort of post adolescence initiation into a quasi eastern form of enlightenment, he boldly breaks away from the half-sleep waking purgatory existence that is his life defined by material attachment. He does so with the help of his alter-ego, the counter-side of his psyche to his shadow self, a character that is actually a fabrication of his own mind: Tyler Durden, who is confident, capable, smart, good looking and already free from the prison of a society of people hypnotized by advertising, who identify themselves with brand names, and approaches life with the kind of fearless verve Jack wishes he possessed.

Before Jack meets Tyler, while he is still support group hopping, he meets a girl at one of the support groups doing the same thing he is because, like Jack, she has hit bottom. But he is reticent to open up to her despite what they share in common. He does manage to exchange phone numbers with her, though, but when she calls him he avoids talking to her, afraid to show her he is attracted to her. He deals with his lonely, isolated self by nurturing his “nesting instinct”: filling his house with Ikea furniture and the other materialistic junk he buys and identifies himself with. If he can satisfy his perfect ideal of his apartment, then he will be happy and satisfied, so he thinks. While I can relate to this a little, I was a bit surprised to learn to what extent some people actually do.

Tyler begins to show Jack how his life is holding him back. Jack comes home from a business trip one day to see his apartment has been bombed. “It wasn’t just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed. It was me!” he tells Tyler. Tyler tells Jack: “The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.” Jack slowly starts to switch how he identifies himself from the meaningless, lifeless connection he has to his material possessions that represents the epitome of the western mentality to liberating himself by a more eastern “zen” mentality of letting go of the wheel that is driving his life down a narrow, dead end road… and to approach life in a more… non-linear way. When Jack literally lets go of the steering wheel of the car and crashes, Tyler exalts: “we just had a near life experience, man!” Jack has to resort to letting go completely in order to sort of shock himself to waking life. The film and book are sort of symptomatic of a culture that is starving for something to meaningful to identify itself with—a way to break free from the cultural enslavement, from the limiting and limited materialistic meaning of their lives. Instead of leading spiritually fulfilling lives with meaningful human connections, the mass consumerism machine led by the constant bombardment of messages in the form of television and magazine ads blindsights us into thinking our happiness and fulfillment is to be found in the things we’re told to want, and the things we’re told to identify ourselves with; that these things will make us happy and complete. Tyler tells Jack: “What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with five hundred cannels and a designer name on my underwear.” These are not the things that should be defining how an entire generation shapes its view on who and how to be and live. These are not the things that should be shaping the future leaders of tomorrow who will only continue to perpetuate this spiritually bankrupt materialistic mentality.

I went into a Myspace group dedicated to the film and book of Fight Club to see what others thought about the film. Most of the members are teenagers and clearly can identify with the film’s premise. People with name’s like “Your Broken God”, “Zen Master” and “In Tyler We Trust.” While one person was willing to share their constructive insight into the film, most people’s form of communication is to verbally attack others with colorful language. If not attacking someone, judging something in a similar fashion. For example:
This IS the fight club group, do you expect normal people who are just going to be kind and nice to everyone, who will just give out happy opinions? this is life, it ain't about sunshine and rainbows, fight club was a great idea that I personally think is getting more lost every day by assholes like yourself, so quit crying, and why don't you do something with your life, and stop trying to bother people who've been in this group much longer then you have, because honestly, we all like them more then you.
I postulated some topics and questions to see how people who apparently identify with the film and book feel and think about it:

I'm asking fans of the film to give their opinions on what they liked about the film, what about the film (or book, but I haven't read the book) resonates with them. What things about it they identify with. What the author or the film director is trying to say. What do people think about the many notions postulated in the film? Do you agree that losing all hope equates to freedom? why? Do you agree with Tyler that you can't know very much about yourself until you've been in a fight? Has anyone tested this theory? Any thoughts from your own experiences? What do you think of the idea that "it wasn't just my stuff that was destroyed, it was me!"? Jack says this to Tyler shortly after his apartment gets destroyed. Can you relate to this statement?

One fifteen year old girl replied without berating me. I thought her response was rather perceptive and profound. I was surprised that a young girl would have such insightful things to say about being in a fight; reminding me of unconscious stereotypes in my mind like weeds needing to be uprooted.

I do believe that you learn more about yourself after you've been in a fight. It tests how you would react without really thinking about it. I've known people who thought they had everything in life figured out; then they got in a fight and didn't know who they were anymore. Being in a fight unleashes everything, and suddenly when you’re fighting someone you stop fighting them for whatever reason you started, and fight them for everything you haven't fought for in the past. After a while you think “If I kick this person’s ass all of those other problems will be solved.”

"It wasn't just my stuff that was destroyed, it was me!"
I sadly related to this. Earlier in the film at the bar with Tyler, Jack says "I was almost complete." I think that way all the time. I say to myself when I get my own house I'll fix it perfect and everything will be organized and right, and if my house, clothes, etc. is all perfect I will be perfect. I am my material possessions and if that was all destroyed I would be destroyed. I can't help but think that once I'm "complete" that "no matter what happens I'll have that couch problem handled." [Quote from the movie]

Honestly, this movie has made me curious about what I would learn about myself by getting into a fight. My older sister was telling me how in a class she took in school the professor would have the students watch classic pop-culture films such as “Pretty Woman” and ask how these films influence people. My sister then asked me if a film ever made me want to be like the people in the film or do things from the film. I couldn’t think of any examples and at first thought it was silly when she said Pretty Woman had a negative impact on young girls because it gave them the idea that being a prostitute could be an appealing thing in order to be saved by a nice, wealthy man. This sort of ties into a quote from Fight Club: “We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t.” But when I was watching Fight Club I found myself becoming curious about whether there was something to this fight club mentality—if being in a fight might challenge my fears—things I have been avoiding in life might rise up to the surface, and might bring to the surface of my consciousness latent interests and desires that have, in Tyler Durgen’s eyes, been suppressed and dumbed down by a consumer culture. Who knows, maybe it would wake me up to have a “near life experience.”

I’d like to close with a quote that basically sums up the film: “You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

THE END.

Mainely Mountains

At the end of March, Nori and I picked up Dan in Worcester and checked out Clark University where Nori and I had a rather... strange welcome upon setting foot on campus. What was it that the old lady said? Oh yeah: "Hello Martians. How's the motherfucking bloodsucking going?" And the library looked like those big robot things in the snowy part of Starwars: The Empire Strikes Back:




After the warm welcome at Clark University in Worcester, we drove up to Maine where we spent two days hiking non stop. At one point we had to hitchhike because we came out on the road so far away from the car.
Considering we were three, we got a ride fairly easily. There weren't too many people hiking for good reason. It was cold and the trails still had a lot of ice on them. I nearly broke my neck about two dozen times surfing down the ice. Having the mountains to ourselves was worth it though. And it wasn't as cold as it has been here the passed few days.



We decided this trail (yes, below all that ice somewhere is what is called "The Waterfall Trail") was not passable.






An ice chasm


Oh! Exclaims Dan. Suggest your best caption:


Champaigne on ice.




on top of the mountain


Nori pretending to mind being photographed.


Steve and Isabel join us on the last day.


Isabel is photographed from both sides as the sun burns red through the trees.


Brother and Sister at the top of Cadillac mountain.


A nice picture of the 3 of us, would't ya say?


Still frozen over.


All in all it was an extraordinarily nice time. Mostly because we had the trails and mountains to ourselves, but also the adventurous nature of slip sliding down the trails added to the fun. Unfortunately I forgot my camera cable and couldn't make more room for any videos. But if you wanna see more photos of the weekend, visit Dan's blog update: http://schmolze.com/scalpel/ His website is now password protected because the content of his blog is apparently a threat to the school and to Dan's future prospects as a doctor, so just email him for the password. There are some nice pics up there. dan@schmolze.com