Creativity

The problem with wanting to write creative works is when you can't find the words to say what you need to in a timely manner. so often I find myself stumped to tell the story I want to. My word choice isn't right, the sentence structure doesn't flow, and the story is choppy. I find myself trying to please to many people with one story, instead of trying to tell it to a single audience. This usually related to when I am writing about bikes. I want to inspire everyone to try riding a bike. EVERYONE. So instead of telling the story of how I came in 5th in the women's C category at the CX state champtionship to an audience that does CX, I end up explain it like I am telling the story to a classroom of five year-olds. You can't please everyone with what you write, and I should probably stop trying.

Fruita

The cold, gently breeze danced across my face for most of the night as the moon light beat into my eyes. I should have known better than to not bring a tent, but I never mind sleeping under the stars. I pulled the hood of my down jacket over my eyes and pulled the edges of my sleeping bag closer to my body.

Sleep was a vague memory by the time I figured out the morning light was no longer the full moon, casting a shadow of the juniper trees over my eyes. As the morning quickly began to break I realized this was the only time I would have alone that day. The rest of my time would be filled with navigating trails, and as it turns out, pulling an armada of cactus spikes from my right knee. I hurried and unzipped the bottom of my sleeping bag, shoving my feet into my green and black approach shoes. As I stood up remnants of the previous nights poor decisions tumbled around in my stomach. I bee-lined it for my Nuun tablets and a water bottle.

As two tablets of lemonade Nuun dissolved in my water bottle I parked myself on the bench of the picnic table, facing east to watch the sunrise. I came to the desert for this moment. To watch the sky change from shades of dark blue to azure, briefly settling on cyan with hints of coral pink against the white clouds before the sky burst with light. In the city I can watch the sun rise, but the sound is different. The sounds of nature are muted by the low growls of moving vehicles and a high pitched laughs of children walking to the elementary school across the street. I came here because I wanted to remember what mother nature sounds like when she wakes in the morning, and what it feels like to be pushed awake by her  gentle force.

As the sun began to rise higher in the sky my ride mates shook themselves free of their tents and hammocks, dressing in their ride clothes before we took to the trails before breakfast. The stillness of the morning broken by the sound of Chris King hubs and the whirling of our drivetrains.

Juxtipostitions

As I filled jars with homemade applesauce tonight I finally realized a few things about myself. Though I would love to expound on my self discovery, this numbered list will do for now.

1. I really enjoy canning my own food. No, I won't go crazy and can everything, but what I am doing now works for my life style.
2. Some days I want to spend my evenings working on my bikes, making sure they are in top condition for race day or for my commute to work, other nights I want to roast vegetables and enjoy a leisurely dinner while listening to beautiful music.
3. There is a difference between riding your bike fast and being fast on your bike. The former takes effort to achieve but makes you giddy when you realize you are fast.
4. Though I complain endlessly about having long hair, it has finally grown on me (pun intended?).
5. I thoroughly enjoy wearing an incredibly cute apron while cooking. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel sexy while making lentil soup.
6. When you surround yourself with good people good things happen in your life.
7. I will forever love riding my bike. No man, woman, or child will ever change the relationship I have with my two wheeled steeds.

On Good Taste and Success

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. 
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. 
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

As black beans simmer in the slow cooker in the kitchen and I write this, laying in my loft bed in my tiny one bedroom apartment, I have a million things that seem to all have the same ambition of leaving my brain at the same time and become genius works. This is not possible. Bike builds, recipes, true stories, fiction stories, interviews, photos that need to be edited. Amid the stress, Ira Glass made more sense than anything I wrote today.

Gina posted this article on facebook the other day about journalism majors. It made me think of why I majored in journalism and why it makes me so happy. I wouldn't be where I am today without majoring in journalism. It just wouldn't have happened. To anyone who tells you to "change your major because you are never going to make any money". Don't. Sure, there are going to be a few shitty years of making no money, doing crappy work, and asking yourself, "Is this worth it?" It is. It is worth every inverted pyramid you write, every blog post that sucks ass, and every shitty first draft you create.

Write Somthing

"Write something." He said to me.
I looked at him with scared eyes, trying to hide my fear.
"You will get it. Don't worry."

I stared at the keyboard, fingers perched on the home row. I waited for the words to come. Fishing around my brain for the right thing to say. I started to type and then stopped. I wanted this to be perfect the first time. The words had to be right, now. Nothing was coming to me. I went deeper into my mind, a jumbled mess of words desperate to bleed their way out of my brain, through my fingers and onto the digital page. A mess of time pieces, sunglasses, descriptive words for bike parts and nerves that wouldn't stop getting in the way.

All at once the flood gates opened. Like I couldn't contain the bile of words that had projectiled from  my body and into the screen in front of me. This are real. This is real. These words mean something?

It is the getting started that kills me some days. An arsenal of words waiting to escape in a gun fight of rhetoric. Don't let me hurt anyone.

Musings

My friend Gina Cairney recently gave my blog a shout out in a post on her blog. I have felt the obligation update ever since.

I should preface this post with, I write a lot, just not here. Most of my time is spent finding the latest bike stories in Salt Lake City and telling them on SaltCycle. It has been an eye opening and wonderful growing experience. I am reminded time and time again why I majored in journalism to begin with, to tell true stories. Doing interviews with people like Nate King, a local domestique and neo-pro,have shown me different sides of people and the capacity of the human body.  I have also learned that there are a lot of people who yearn for the knowledge of how to fix their bike, or where to ride their bike safely. No one inherently wants to be wrong.

There doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to ride my bike more than 20 miles, make lots of artisan bread, and brew batch after batch of Kombucha. For now I will settle for the few hours I get to relax, slow down, and think about life for a minute while I ride my bike the three miles to the van pool in the morning. These three miles are therapeutic for starting the day. My addiction to exercise before 9 am is what keeps me sane while I sit at a desk all day and write. Everyday I am reminded, in some small way, why I chose bicycles all that time ago.

Brother

Strains of The Dave Matthews Band can be heard over the whirl of the fan from the food dehydrator. We should have dried these apples days ago, but that is just the perfectionist in me coming out. I sit on the couch and act as his scribe, writing down the weight of every item we place on the kitchen scale, HAM radio- 7.2 lbs., cooking ware- 1.2 lbs. I interject my opinion, mostly out of worry, every few minutes as we sift through the mess of gear covering the floor. No, you don't need 15 batteries, take the lightest folding solar panel, don't forget your spices, you need quinoa to keep you healthy, leave the camping pillow here.
    As he rummages through gear, my mind is drawn back to our childhood, the family picture on the wall makes it easy to remember what his face looked like then. Me, the nagging little sister, always wanting to be apart of his adventure. Him, the history buff and artistic older brother who would spend more time drawing you than talking to you. I use to sneak into his room to look at all of his "cool" stuff while he was at school. We would fight like crazy, but if I needed him to sleep on my floor because I was scared, he would. Now he sleeps in the living room of our one bedroom apartment.
     I fill spice jars for him, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, cinnamon, vegeta, dried vegetable bouillon cubes, and explain the importance of each, reminding him to get the right nutrition so he doesn't get sick on the trail.
     The woman he loves is here to spend a few days with him before he leaves for five months. As she makes a cup of tea he embraces her from the back, his hand searching for her belly as they giggle about an  inside joke. It is hard to not fall in love with them falling in love. They are contagious.
     He reminds us of what time we need to be at the airport on Saturday and I try to hold back my tears. I won't see him for five months. I haven't gone more than four days without seeing him in the past year and a half. He is is hiking the Tao Araroa trail in New Zealand.
     As I fade into sleep, I look at the family picture on the wall. He is still the boy in the picture to me.