Snapshots in my mind

That vacation was fabulous, but unfortunately now just a distant memory.  During that time I was, in my head, quite prolific, as I composed blog posts like a banshee, chortling at my incredible wittiness and ease at which I communicated the mundane banalities of life in such a way that the reader would say "Despite his tendency to use run-on sentences, he is quite brilliant".

Let's try that again.

Those posts are clanging around an empty room right now, as the immediacy of thinking I needed to write down all the events of my life is not so urgent anymore.  In fact it was what I needed, to just check out and enjoy relaxation for a week.  Next year we're planning on two weeks.  That will be a first.

Anywayzzz, work is work, and the summer is now over, and we enjoy the fall, with the routine of school, soccer games, Redskins, cyclocross, and maybe even a home renovation.  Mix in more time to hang with friends and family, and it's a certain recipe for good times.  Just think, we're not in New Orleans right now, nor are we trying to save our own hides in Georgia (not the Peach State, the other place halfway around the world).  Life is good, and we are lucky people.

Maybe I'm feeling this way now because I went to my first Bar Mitzvah ever today.  The emphasis on community, family, tradition, gathering, and all of that decent stuff just about cinches the thoughts that our collective lot in life right now is pretty damn good.  

Every time I go to a momentous family event I am glad that photographers are around to record these times for posterity, but I've found that there is a moment in the festivities that jars me into thinking (and it's a conscious thought) that I need to remember this image, burn it into my mind, and keep it my grey matter hard drive forever.  I've got a compendium of these snapshots in my mind, touchstones that don't relate to one another but compose the web of events in my head that become memories.  Kind of like the composite photo that is made up of hundreds of tiny photos that are pixels of the bigger picture--it's all there.

Vaaaaaacaaaaaaation

We're outta here.

Vacation finally starts tomorrow.  Another touchstone in the annual cycle, this one has a well established routine that invokes the simple pleasures of just doing a whole lot of nothing, a whole lot of eating and drinking, and a whole lot of enjoying those around us.  I read blogs written by people I don't know whose sole connection with me is the bicycle, and I'm thankful for what I've got and what I get to look forward to.  Like riding, writing becomes an outlet of a different sort, one that lets me filter some thoughts through the noggin, especially after a busy week laden with the pre-vacation noise that we need to get through to get to take our week or so off, kind of like the electric fences that some dogs run through, suffering the pain of that jolt of current before they break free.

Some random thoughts...

It's late, and we're leaving at 6AM so that we can have breakfast in Williamsburg VA at 9.

A friend of ours has cancer.  It doesn't look good.

The mom of a friend of ours has cancer.  It doesn't look good.

This guy (don't know him, but I know of him, due to the bikin' and the bloggin') had a heart scare.  Looks like he'll be OK. 

This guy (very faint acquaintance, due to the bikin' and the bloggin') has a great post on the sham that is this year's Olympics.

Spent an awesome weekend with some friends at Lake Holiday (northern tip of VA) last weekend.  Great riding up there.

Spent the week fretting about where our company is going to be in the short and long term, given the bleak house of cards that is our economy.

Spent the last two days managing expectations and realizing just how screwy communications and perceptions can be, even when you think you're getting a message across.  Time to spell things out.  While you're at it, put away the Blackberries.  We're in a meeting, fercryinoutloud.

Get to Frankenbike a friend's frame to create a cross bike in order to introduce her to the wonderful world of Hup Hup. Charm City is only 6 weeks away.

And I get to spend a week riding my bike around the flatlands of the Outer Banks.  Riding more than two days in a row...

The good things and the bad things.  What's not to like?