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. 

$125

I think of a lot of things I could do with $125. Buy that 700 fill down Rab jacket I have had my eye on, buy more bike parts, pay off more of my student loans. Spending a month living off of only $125 isn’t something I have contemplated, until now.
We as a people spend to much money on things that don’t matter. Eating out, buying useless clothing items because they are “new”, going out to movies we end up hating. I have decided to cut out the crap I don’t need to live and live simply with what I have.
$125 is the average amount of money given to people on food stamps. That evens out to about $30 a week for food only. What I am attempting to do is spend $125 on gas, food, entertainment, and clothing.
I loosely began this challenge three weeks ago but didn’t start taking it seriously till December started. I withdrew $140 from my bank account on Friday and have started the challenge. With this weeks grocery money already spent on Almond butter, soy milk, and fruit, this should be interesting. I will be posting recipes from this experiment on my other blog, but will keep regular updates going about the joys and struggles of this decision.
If you want to join in on the challenge, please do. I would like to see how other people do at this challenge.

Winter Bike

Winter is coming. At this point in the game there is no denying it. Skis come in by the dozens at the shop and I have moved from talking about tire options with customers to wax options and ski lengths.
Living a mile away from work now means I don't have to drive at all, though I find myself running late at least once a week and have to drive. :( The mile cruise down hill, through the Avenues neighborhood of Salt Lake makes for an easy morning commute. The mornings that I walk I some times stop by one of the three coffee shops I pass for a mug refill. Going home isn't always as enjoyable, though I do like it. A one mile hill climb with what feels like an 18 percent incline is what greats me on my way home. I live on A street and about 9th ave and work two blocks from I street and South Temple. The closer I get to A street going up hill, the steeper the the hills get. I use to wiggle my way through the aves to get home, up one block, over one block, till I realized I should really just grin, bare it, and get my ass in gear, literally, because hills aren't going to get easier any time soon. This way of thinking has actually been helpful. By the time I get to 9th ave I am usually over the fact that I am slightly sweaty, breathing heavy, and utter a small matra of success under my breath. The hills have gotten slightly easier the past few weeks. The more time I spend on the bike, the faster I seem to get. Funny how that happens.... (sarcasm intended)
As the months get colder I will cling to my bike a little harder. I just lost 10 lbs. You think I want those back? I'm not going out looking for them so for now I will stick to riding my bike during the cold months, don a pair of warm gloves, marino wool base layers, and good shell jacket with pit vents.
Dear winter,
I'm going to kick your ass.

-Punkin Pants

I'm back!...on two wheels

There is no string of sentences I can bring together that is going to explain my absence from the interweb the past few months. I will say this as my only disclaimer; I do all my best thinking on my bike and when you aren't able to ride your bike for three months because of a broken humerus, there isn't a whole lot of good thinking that happens.
But now I am back and making a goal to blog at least twice a week. For real. I am serious this time. Tuesdays and Thursday maybe? Who knows. But I am back with a vengeance and my veins pumped full of bicycle fueled words.
Lately bicycles have meant so much more to me than they have in the past. Perhaps my three months sabbatical is the cause of this. Even as the temperatures drop and we usher in yet another cold Utah winter, I can't get enough of the one mile hill climb to my house, the feeling of cold cheeks, and the ultimate feeling of untrammeled freedom I get from riding a bike. The feeling of my legs: hips, quads, knees, ankles, feet, all taking me where I want to go. My lungs, gasping for oxygen, feel so much better at the end of the day when I have strained them for air and asked them to be stronger. My mind feels clearer and my waist line is noticeably smaller. I currently don't fit into about half of my clothing because it is all to big. I have three pairs of pants that actually fit. One pair are Carhartts, the other are electric blue skinny jeans I bought during my quarter life crisis.
Regardless of my ill fitting clothing problem I am happy to be back on my bike and hope that with consistent updating I can inspire a few of you to get ahold of two wheels and enrich your lives.