i failed last night while riding home. i was first into the left hand turn lane as i was off to drive by a place jehn was thinking of getting, and as i stood there in the heat i noticed a large nail on the ground. i looked closer and there were 4 or 5 nails, all pointing along with traffic. i stood there thinking «hey, i really should pick those up. nobody likes to get a flat tire» but was quickly frozen with «aw, this will be goofy to unclip and dismount and pick up the nails with the drivers on all sides watching me.» i know i should have picked them up, but fear of others got to me. why? i haven’t the foggiest. next time i won’t be such a wuss and i’ll do what needs to be done.

•

i’ve got an awkward feeling in my gut that makes me wonder if i am truly following/experiencing God, or am i just running on some kind of muscle memory, working with what i remember. i don’t like this feeling, mostly as it turns my attention further inside myself and i may die from exposure from severe introspection, my insides laid out in the midday sun on the sidewalk. is this like a marriage where one day the spouse says «that is it, you never pay attention to me anymore» and it comes as a shock as they believe they have been paying attention? am i to be experiencing God differently as i continue to mutate? i want to say that i hear God rather clearly, but i wonder if i am just good at doing all the right moves. am i a glazed out kid on dance-dance-revolution, hitting what once where the correct steps and it still looks good.

i don’t believe i am, but things are different now. still i wonder, and i know i will continue to wonder. i don’t want to be out on my own as that would be pure foolishness.

••

life is crazy nuts. we came back from california with an extra dog and now we have 3 extra kids. i don’t know how sarah manages, but she is the only person i know that could. my parents grow rapidly weary of the chillins, and my sis & co... no. so we’ve got a house of plenty. on top of that work is crazy, evenings are crazy, and my yearly massive job for a conference [crunch time] is crunched into fewer days with vacations — we leave thursday for my grandmothers memorial in prescott.

all in all, i am too tired to think [aka, blog anything useful]

•••

the tour de france has been great this year — 11 lead changes so far? landis regained the yellow jersey yesterday but today, he lost it in grand fashion. cycling news put it this way in their play by play:

Landis is passed by Karpets and Vila, going backwards. He looks bad today, as bad as a David Hasselhoff music video. He's eight minutes down.

getting compared to a hasselhoff video — ouch.

july is looking to become a very low-blog month. live is just too crazy, and though i am still thinking, i don't have time to write it all down. i'm off for my grandmothers memorial the next two days with all kinds of family, so i guess i won’t be writing much until next monday [and i still have so much work to do]. can i post-date my thoughts to august?

on thursday morning, the day after landis lost his jersey, we left on vacation before the stage was complete. landis was on a mission, and he pulled it off. he is funny, like a redneck cyclist. no, he is cyclings patrick ewing [eg, he isn’t attractive by any stretch of the imagination]. i ended up having to prod my dad into getting a paper while we swam so that i could find out what happened. ’twas a great race.

even better was our vacation: 2 lakes [one that we canoed on], one super steep hill climb in a massive downpour, bowling, picnics, grilling, hikes around lakes, swimming, hiking up the boulder pile behind my uncles old house that we spent hours and hours on, hanging out around the old state capitol building in a picturesque town square — all with 10 other family members [not counting my own]. it was like old times, but this time we got to let our kids play on our old stomping grounds. prescott is far too busy now, but still a great jumping off point. we must head up north again.

we did this all when is was freakishly hot — as we drove through phoenix it was 116°F and their low was 97°. that just isn't right.

the first photo might be my favorite with both of us bowling — me and the little guy.

here is one of those thoughts where things from years and years of mulling over comes together, but the next day it looks like no big deal.

for years i’ve had people tell me that everything needs to begin with the bible [bible focused? biblecentric? bibliolatry!] and that is where we will find/experience God. this sounds all good and fine, but for some crazy reason i don’t think the bible is God [though people have sure tried to boot the Spirit out and put the bible in his place]. i’d say it is far easier to follow the bible versus following God because we get to wrap our heads around what we want. i’m sure people do experience God while reading about what he has done, but i would be a little more juiced about being a part of what he is doing right now. i’d listen to the Spirit far quicker than i would listen to my thoughts on the bible.

i think that might be it, that people that are biblio-centric have a fear for the messiness of following God. churchianity is far too outlined to follow, and what if what was valued in spirituality wasn’t how well we knew the bible or how we could argue things but other things, relational things. things like how good of a friend we are, how kind and compassionate and graceful we are, how we care for others and treat the poor and strangers. are we following God in a way that people say, «wow, what is up with them? that seems so... pleasant. i would like to be around them.» living out this good news could very easily change how we look at spirituality [and it will include the bible, but it won’t neccessarily be the core of how we live]. it sounds so refreshing, but that means the current scoring table gets turned upside down and that means people won’t be happy. i do believe what is happening is a fight for their value, but just give it up. God is far bigger than all this.

|•

that wasn’t as clear as the first time i wrote it [silly app crashed] but i must clarify for advil. this DOES NOT mean we just sit around and things are hunky dory and things just fall into place. following God is not by osmosis [or whatever it was that those «ha-ha» funny teachers would say]. it takes a great amount of energy and attentiveness to follow God. just like Jesus in his wandering days on earth, if you wanted to be close to him you had to keep on him, pushing through the crowds to be close enough to hear him. i think this is probably the greatest problem of our current culture — we have no idea where to find God. we don’t experience him, just a shadow that someone else set up before us years ago. so when someone says, «go and live out this good news» there are just blank stares.

how does an apprentice follow his master?

someone at work was cleaning out some drawers and found photos from 1995. 11 years and 40 pounds make a difference. yup, i'm dutch, but i also look sorta like ron howard.

|••

karl [aka KAK], markly and i were chatting last night and maybe it isn’t spiritual muscle memory that i think i am following [or God’s shadow]. what it may be is that long list of what makes one feel like they are being spiritual is now different [did i blog on this earlier this month? i believe so]. there is the standard set such as reading the bible daily [the infamous «quiet time»], attending church regularly, being nice to people, etc., which though all good, is often more about churchianity than being a God-follower. my list is different now [flaps? check. waterballoon launcher? check.] and that makes seeing what i am doing harder — there isn’t much of a check list, especially from a pragmatic viewpoint. there is more «being» than «doing», but the being bleeds out as doing. or, put another way, «doing» doesn’t make me «be» spiritual.

so what does it look like for me? very very peaceful. there is not much of a list, so i must look long term as well as see that i am not looking for a direct effect — i’m the conduit of sorts.

[yes, this needs to be rewritten. even i don’t follow what i am saying]

|•••

i am riding my death bike to work this week as there should be huge thunderstorms every evening. it is far easier to hose off. i think the rear tire is a little off balance so it jumps a bit but i still spun up to a pretty high cadence. my cadence monitor is broken but i can still see my maximum speed.

i had go to a calculation site to get it figured out, and i think i was spinning at 153rpms. normally people ride at 90-100, so i gained 50% speed in the same gear. that ability will come in great during track season and sprinting.

it finally rained in the evening, and it is wonderfully refreshing to go from hot and muggy to cool and refreshing in less than 10 minutes as the storm hits. i’m not sure what day this was, but it dropped 20°F. i’ve seen it drop 30°F in 10 minutes. the joy of the monsoon.

•+

maybe it has been our crazy weather that is making me dream crazily again [it was still 72°F past noon yesterday] and the midnight thunderstorms, or maybe it is that i’ve begun training this week so long [and hard] early morning workouts could be putting the fatigue into me, yet whatever the cause, they are great dreams.

[note: the max speed in the image to the left was very different on my ride into work yesterday. it was sprinkling and water was getting flicked up from my tires and got it wet. when i got home, my max speed was 134.1 mph — i rock!]

i was dreaming i was in a poorly lit old ymca/high school hall with lockers but it was also livable. there were hundreds of people lining the walls on couches and sitting on the floors, all a dim bluish-black with some light hitting the walls and faces. i started recognizing [okay, supposedly] people that olive knew as i wandered around. when it was time to leave it was dark and the few lights around gave off a dingy amber that left most objects in shadows. as the bus/van pulled out, the reflections of the people inside the vehicle mixed and merged oddly with the images outside and where they met up, the landscape and people were far different. still clothed for autumn weather, they were much more fit and ready for action, but all eyeing me with eyes that said «don’t worry, we’ve got it under control». there were also tents in the reflections with taught lines, more like canopies, and there was always a thin strip of light on top of the horizon, quickly turning into solid clouds of deep gray/black. nobody said anything, but riding along and watching the reflections change as i stared out the windows was mesmerizing — there was somthing more out there that i could only catch fleeting glimpses.

+

this isn’t personal, just something i came across. there is a video [for now] on youtube about it. a snippet from wikipedia about it:

Lake Peigneur is a 1,300 feet deep, salt-water, lake near New Iberia, Louisiana.... The lake was previously a three foot shallow fresh-water lake until an unusual man-made incident.... salt mine under the lake while a Texaco oil rig was drilling down from the surface of the lake....puncturing the roof of the salt mine...The lake then proceeded to drain into the hole...A resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and some of the surrounding terrain...enough to reverse the flow of the Delcambre canal that leads to the Gulf of Mexico

oh, such great stuff. the video is so-so, but what a whirlpool. here is a longer bit on it, too

+•

woohoo, ’tis the end of the month and it was a very long month indeed. i’m not sure if i like super busy months — i have less time to think about what is going on and have to «do» more than «be». it is like the rain this weekend — 2 inches on saturday and 2.25 inches this monday morning. most of it runs off as the soil can’t take it. i may post flood photos in august, but have i posted photos from san diego yet? no. i think there were other things i was going to post, but i haven't. ah well. i should try to post them before i forget [yes]. too much in one month.

we did go team bowling and sarah/germany/jehn and i were all mimes. we talked, so we weren'’t good mimes. i found a good ball and bowled a 189.

+••

it is odd how feelings will ebb and flow, even odder since i am far more of a thinker than a feeler. it is already july 11th as i write this, and trevor’s look above sums up how i feel so far. we just came back from 5 days in san diego. it wasn’t as fun as i would have hoped, far more stressful than anything else. the day of the drive home may have been the best day of the whole trip, which shouldn’t be right. lots of people and stress are not a good combination. now i am just glancing off to the side, not all that thrilled.

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