Direction/Tour de Bear Lake

This last weekend left me with mixed feelings.  Yes, part of that was because of a Utah State loss and a University of Utah win, but most of it was about how the rest of the weekend went.  The stark contrast between the me of Friday/Saturday, and the me of Sunday really helped put things into perspective.  Friday and Saturday I was admittedly at my worst.  It was the me I hate and the me I want to and had hoped to get rid of.  Unfortunately it is still there and I don't want to be that person.  Fortunately there was Sunday and a group of friends who were willing to put up with me for another day.

A hangover and embarrassment was not enough for me to back out of the plans to ride a bike around Bear Lake.  If anything it made it more important to do so.  To prove to myself I was more than my mistakes and maybe a chance to prove to my friends that I am not just a shit show.  So at 11:30, I made the long lonely drive to Bear Lake.  Dave ended up bringing more people than we thought so at least we had a support crew if something went wrong on the ride.  We headed out late (4:00) with a scary lack of preparation. To add to our troubles it was a windy day.  Mike and Dave looked like the real deal.  They had real bikes with real outfits and a combined 2 percent body fat.  Clint was on his single-speed, but had skinny slick tires, a light bike, bike shorts, and apparently the eye of the tiger.  Me.....  Well, I had the wrong bike for the job and just had a tank top a back-pack and some basketball shorts.  My bike has a suspension fork, nobby tires, and weighs over 30 pounds.  I didn't really fit in...

I was a little nervous when we headed out but for the first little bit I was feeling pretty comfortable.  My legs felt great, my wind was fine, and the road resistance wasn't too bad.  Then we hit the chipped road and it began to hit me that I was going to have to work my ass off to keep a pace of 20 mph.  We were also going into a 20ish mph wind.  It was brutal.  The conversations we had at the start were awesome and I was desperately trying to keep up if for nothing more than the entertainment, but no matter how i pushed my bike (or me) wasn't fast enough.  At one point Mike even passed me.... COASTING! and I was pedaling at a steady rate!  We stayed together for about one fifth the distance around the lake, but when I cleared the next hill they were already zooming around the corner probably a quarter mile away.  At this point I knew I was on my own for the rest of the trip.  I knew they wouldn't stop and wait and I didn't want them too.  There was no way I could keep up anyway.  So I hit the south side of the lake solo and that's when the wind decided to be a complete dick.  I seriously was ready to confiscate the first road bike I saw, without regard to the consequences.  At this point the fastest I could push myself was probably 8 mph.  I was getting frustrated.  I felt like I was pedaling so hard for so long but I just wasn't getting any speed out of it.  I finally hit the west side of the lake and things got instantly better.  The road got smoother and the wind died down just a little.  It was here I finally saw the crew again.  They were about two miles out in front of me!  Once I saw them it gave me some hope that if I really push it and never stop pedaling even for a second I can catch them.  It was a pipe dream but it gave me a goal.  I was in auto-mode and felt pretty good until I was about into town.  Then I hit another wall.  At this point I couldn't help but start thinking about the fact that I was just riding alone around a lake and my car was parked just a mile or so away.  I had plenty of reasonable excuses; I had the wrong bike, wrong clothes, was hungover, hungry, and I had been left behind.  I couldn't quit.  At the start I already decided that no matter what happened I was going around this lake under my own power, even if I had to do it after everyone else had left for bed.

So I just kept going and around each long corner the bikes in front got closer and closer.  At about the 80% point I was finally closing in on one of them and thought for sure I was about to catch Clint, but as I got closer and closer I realized it was Mike.  All I could think is that Clint either quit or is a total badass on his single speed.  I knew Clint wasn't a quitter so it had to be the latter.  Clint is a badass.  After about 10 miles, some cramping and severe glycogen ups/downs  (I had foolishly only eaten about 900 calories before the ride and I am sure Mike had about a half a peanut all week. Also it turns out drinking a bunch of beer the day before is not an affective form of "carb loading") Mike and I crossed the "finish line" together.  It was an amazing feeling.  I know it wasn't a marathon or a real race, but it still was 52 miles in 3.5 hours under far from ideal circumstances.  I had an easy out and still finished!  It was the farthest I had ever gone under my own power and I was proud of myself.  Something I couldn't have imagined feeling just 10 hours earlier.  It is becoming more and more clear the direction I need to go.

The American Dream

The events of 9-11-01 will never be forgotten.  In many ways it has defined our generation.  After all it is our generation searching for jobs in the crippled economy and our best and bravest fighting overseas.  We won't forget, because everyday of the rest of our lives has been changed.  Serving as a constant reminder.  Those attacks took thousands of lives and the subsequent retaliation has taken thousands more.  The loss of life and financial expense of maintaining two wars has been devastating, but as the years have ticked by the true cost of that day has become more and more apparent.  We are losing faith, we are losing hope.

"The American Dream is dead,"  You can hardly watch the news or explore the web without hearing this statement.  Many people feel disenfranchised by our government, the economy, and are upset that they didn't get that little white picket fence.  I understand that.  As a child I wanted to be a dinosaur.  Yet, still to this day I am merely a weak human.  I KNOW disappointment.  Luckily my dreams have changed since then, and maybe ours should to. Afterall, it is the American DREAM, not the American Guarantee.  A dream is something you have to chase.  Something you have to work for and something you may never obtain.  It is something you have to define for yourself.  That white picket fence, with a dishwasher, a steady factory job, and a tiny house was the gold standard for the 40's-70's.  That life honestly, makes me want to vomit a little bit.  For some though that is their dream, and I say go get it. 

My American dream?  My dream is always a moving target, my dream is found in the journey.  This means that I will never own it, but if I work hard enough, I will live it...  In reality the most all encompassing definition of the American Dream can be summarized by the age old phrase, "Hard work, pays off..."  That phrase is always true and the USA doesn't own the trademark.  It just has never been so evident as when the American people bought into that ideal.  We took it too a entirely new level.  Our dreams brought the world flight, electricity, light bulbs, television, the internet, and virtually every form of communication technology we all enjoy today.  We BROUGHT it!  Our government didn't give it to us.  It wasn't guaranteed, no one handed people these dreams, and certainly no one else made them realities... No one but themselves and those who also believed.  It was individuals who followed their dreams and changed the world and those individuals were American's.  They are the ones who made those dreams our own.   Everyone can dream, but American's did it so well that we had our own brand of dreaming, the "American Dream." 

Is accomplishing our dreams as easy as before 9/11?  Absolutely not...  But since when have we cared about what is hard?  We aren't entitled to an "American Dream" it is our debt.   Our debt to all those who died on this day 11 years ago.  Our debt to all those who have died ending the dreams of those who thought they could crush ours that day...  To all those who say the dream is dead.  Show some respect.  Stop expecting your dreams to come true and realize that as an American it is expected of you to earn it.  To all those who thought they could crush our dreams on 9-11-01, today is 9-11-12 and this American's dreams are very much alive.  I love this country, and as long as I and millions of others like me have a pulse,  you will never kill the American Dream.

Phoenix

I haven't been blogging.  Obviously.  But today I was like wait just a damn a minute, "You still live a pretty damn interesting life and people need you... Stop being selfish."  I know that I sometimes live through my facebook friends and their cute little babies and families.  And I know those people need me, too.  When that baby pukes on you...  When they just won't listen.  When your wife keeps saying, "listen.... listen..... listen..... listen.....listen....listen...." or "look at the baby... look at the baby.... Why aren't you looking at your baby? Is it because you think i look fat in these pants?  I HATE you..."  Or you may look at your husband from time to time and think, "Gosh, I'm bored."  When you wake up at 6 am and go to that job that you f*cking hate.  When you ask yourself when did it come to this?  I'll be there.  Carrying the torch of freedom.  Unshackled, unburdened, and keepin on.  Keepin on for all those who can't.

I admittedly have been down and out, lately...  Playing video games, working, stuffing my face with this new found abundance of food, and being basically the worst.  But upon reflection my last two weeks still have been pretty interesting even if I haven't been a complete nomad...

I was in a movie...  Ya, random I know.  Am I an actor?  Absolutely not.  Do I live a random life and know a lot of interesting people? Yes.  My friend Marcus from USU through an odd chain of events ended up helping produce a short film.  It was a western and they had two horses bail out last minute.  Insert me.  I happened to have a good horse available and I always say yes to an adventure, so last minute I loaded up Oppie and headed out to White Rocks, Skull Valley, UT.  I made it out there just before dark the night before the shoot.  It was a long damn ways.  First thing I see is a middle aged man just standing there in a breechclout.  Yes, I thought at first that it was a loincloth but this wasn't the last time we would all be treated with this sight and he explained the difference in detail the second time.  Thank you for that crazy old man.  He was under the canopy, with a bunch of other ordinarily clothed people and he was as comfortable as can be.  Gotta respect him for that.  He also had an awesome beard mustache combo and was overall best summed up as a half crazy badass.   There were 4 girls at the "encampment" and they might have been thee most annoying collection of people I have ever met.  Well, up to that point.  This would be outdone by just one person the next day.   This one guy was probably 30 and acted like a 14 year old and reminded everyone that he was mormon every five seconds...  We didn't get along so well, but our quarrels definitely made the more boring part of the day more interesting.  Plus I got to kick him to the ground.  It was incredibly rewarding.

I said a quick hello to my good buddy Marcus, ate a quick meal, went through introductions, and crawled into the back of the truck to sleep for the night.  Mind you this was the peak of me feeling sick.  I was not doing well.  My horse made sure that I did not sleep more than an hour that night.  He was whinnying all night, and just completely restless.  He is a dominant horse, and he wanted at the other horses brought by the crazy cowboy/indian guy.  So at 4:30 AM my day started.  My horse wouldn't be needed until 7 but I couldn't sleep and neither could he.  I was worried that he wouldn't act well around new horses and the way he was up to this point had me thinking that my horse was about to embarrass me.  Time to wear him down.  I saddled him up and as soon as it got light enough to see I started riding.  I ran him up and down the road and up to the other horses and away. Close and away. Close and away.  I repeated this time and time again until he quit throwing a big fit about leaving the other horses.  After about an hour he was automatic.  Maybe he won't embarrass me afterall.

The sun took longer too arrive then the director thought and the shoot was now over an hour behind schedule.  This is when I was asked if someone who has never been on a horse could ride my horse backwards.  Any of you with horses have to know how funny this proposition is.  For those who don't its basically the equivalent of someone asking if there 14 year old can take your car on the free way.  I don't know how much plot I can give away so I'll just say I stunt doubled for a 5'5 mexican guy.

I also had a role as a bandit.  Ya.  My face is on the big screen (provided any festivals pick this thing up)...  I always thought that if I ever had to act I would always just look at the camera.  But, it turns out that I am pretty decent.  Especially if I am playing a role I have played since infancy... A cowboy.  It came natural.  Almost too natural.  Ha the main character was a slow draw and as a bad guy I was destined to lose.  It was hard to draw slow...  As a gun enthusiast I have a pretty quick draw.  Everything in me wanted to win.  But I was scripted to lose.  So I did so.  And died valiantly.   I also had a part later in the movie.  Or earlier its tough to say they don't shoot these things chronologically.  But again I don't know how much I can say.  Anyway my horse outdoes me in appearances and he does awesome!!!  I mean he really steals the show in my unbiased opinion ;)

FYI when I make it big I won't forget all you little people out there ;)
Ryan Hibler
Bandit
Animal Handler
Stunt rider