Jesus has startled me on more than once, but he likely maxed that out with “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” OK, no jokes about me making God’s job easier. The first pic shows me at 27, with a red tank top and a full head of hair. The second shows me this year, how I’ve “gained face” over the years. Yeah, the times they have changed me. And while I don’t doubt Jesus meant this literally, it also serves as a greater metaphor. A greater metaphor with two primary facets …
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Image from Motorcycle Philosophy
Adapt, Don't Quit
Somewhere on the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park lies an otherwise nondescript turnout, much like above. No monument marks it, tourists don’t drive by to gawk at a historical site, and honestly, few would care to see it even after this story. But asphalt can teach a lesson. I’ve known Jerry since high school daze; he’s one of my best friends and we regularly take long rides on the bikes each year. But his very short legs have led to…
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Walden Pond by Literary Hub
Risky Business
This hippie biker, shoulder length hair and a beard uncut for several months, pulled his semi-chopped Honda 750 with an Easy Rider paint scheme, into a parking spot at a Howard Johnson in Massachusetts,as a family with a dad and mom and 5 year old boy pulled alongside in a sedan. They struck up a conversation, intrigued by a trip with no set destination, just a desire to see America, so they asked me…
Read MoreA Bit Late
This week’s post will be delayed a bit. I spent the last week with my sister in Redding with her husband in the hospital, so the new one will arrive later today or Tuesday.
Holy Noticing
Mindfulness is a big deal in today’s culture. Businesses such as Apple, sports figures such as basketball player Kobe Bryant, and the popular press such as Time magazine have all given it their stamp of approval. Governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars researching it, and it has become a billion dollar a year business. In fact, Apple chose a mindfulness app as their app of the year for 2017. But…
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image by SnoCountry
Disoriented
I began skiing in my early twenties at the old Blue Ridge Ski area in SoCal, and then thought that our California Concrete—heavy, icy, and packed—was normal. Then I moved to Taos and discovered powder. Totally different than California Concrete: so dry you could hardly pack it into a snowball, so soft you’d sink a foot deep as your skis compressed the fluffy cotton. One night Taos got inundated with over four feet of snow so I grabbed my ski gear and headed up the mountain.I exulted in unweighting and making S turns, until…
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Tim Riter, age 45
Gear Up!
I’ve played a lot of football. Pickup tackle games in HS and college and later, wearing just T shirts and shorts. Intramural in college, even several seasons in a competitive flag league in my mid 50s. But the pic above depicts a different way to play football. In my mid 40s, Temecula had the Over the Hill Pigskin Shoot Out, where guys over 30 strapped on pads and played for charity. The pic above was the first game—and the first time I…
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“Water into Wine” by Leilani Strong Smith
Turbulent Transformations
A fellow teaching compatriot, Leilani Strong Smith, has crafted a new skill since we both left the school—painting. That’s her “Water into Wine” above. I easily saw the blue of water, at the top right, and the red of wine at the bottom left, and the turbulent mixing of the two in the center. But she neither intended nor noticed the …
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