Wednesday, July 13, 2011

For A Limited Time--A Running Offer



     The offer is simple. And for a limited time it is free. Well, free in the way that you won't have to pay me any money, but it will cost you. I love running and coaching. I am currently running, but not coaching. And I want lots of other people to love running too. I want to try something called distance coaching. What distance coaching is, is that you have a coach (Me), but you do not live in the same city as he/she lives. This "distance coach" trains you for a race that is where You live. So, I need people to coach. That is where you come in. And here are the details:

   1. I will train you for a 5K, which is a distance of 3.1 miles.
   2. The training will last 6-8 weeks.
   3. We can train as easy or has hard as you want.
   4. I can help you choose shoes, gear, a race, etc.
   5. I can find you a local running group who you can work with you if you would like.
   6. Answer any questions you have about ANYTHING related to running.
   7. All you will need to do is:

            a. let me know you want to be trained.
            b. walk/run a mile and time yourself. (It must be a full mile.)
            c. if you have participated in a 5K, I need to know your time.
            d. let me know what city you live in.

 Let me know as soon as possible, so we can get going. Who will be my first taker?

David

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

A Sad Story (A Minor Tragedy in Gardening).


     I am an amateur. Not in that neat, nostalgic, Bobby Jones kind of way. Well, a little of that, but mostly the kind that you look at, shake your head, and then walk on. Not the kind you ask to tell you what they know. You would never do that to my kind of amateur because I can tell you all I know about some things and you may ask yourself why you wasted 30 seconds.



    I know a little about gardening. I had a garden that I planted with my family when I was growing up. I learned a lot. We grew a lot of things. I loved doing it. I even come from farming stock. My granddad and granny could grow anything. So, could my other grandparents. My parents grow some great things. I even married into more farming stock when I got hitched to Mel. Both sides of her family form long ancestral lines that are attatched to the land. Then comes me. With all of this, I should be a great gardener, right?


     Mel and I have started gardening. Like I said, it is in our blood. Last year, we built one raised bed and we did okay. This year, we built two more and have done well with everything we have planted except our zucchini, squash, and corn. We had no power over the zucchini and squash. The bees let us down. It is really just that simple They are slacking or maybe its the economy. Who knows? I just know they didn't do their job of pollination and that I won't be eating homegrown squash casserole anytime soon. I've moved on. We'll try harder next year. Mel is even looking into getting our very own bee box. We may even plow the whole bottom yard next year, but who can tell. I can't.



     The corn is a different story. I tried to grow some last year. It was too sad even to really mention. I grew the saddest excuse for a corn crop and vowed to do much better. I would just grow myself a good corn crop the next year. I researched corn. I bought the right seeds. I mixed the soil. I was going to get a good crop. I planted the seeds. I watered them. I kept track of how long they'd been growing. Then my little corn crib house started to fall apart.



      They peaked at about three feet tall. They began to tassle. (Picture 2 for the other novices here besides me.) They formed several cobs. I moved them, so they could get more sun. I watered them more. I tried Miracle Grow. They just kept producing more cobs, but not getting taller or bigger. So yesterday, I was checking the garden and decided I was done with them. I was moving on. I picked the corn. I got six cobs. What a scam. I schucked the first cob and discovered one of the saddest cobs I have ever seen. (Picture 4) It was a disgrace. The saddest part is that it is about an inch larger than last years. All I could do to save face was give the cobs to our chickens. They loved them, but they eat worms and rotten apples. They don't care. Their palets don't demand the best. They don't check how many stars a restaurant has.





 So, here I am. An amatuer of gardening. And remember not the neat, nostolgic type that does it for the love of the subject. Just the kind that you shake your head at and suggest that he try something else and tell him that his gift package will be much better suited for....

Trying to get a green thumb,

David

Monday, July 11, 2011

For the Love of Music--4



   Phil Collins. I know. I can hear the ridicule now. Some of it even coming from myself. Some of it coming from the staff here at Hines Terrace Herald. Believe me, I know. However, this album is on my iPod and when I am riding in my car alone, I turn up the music. Loud. It is always a great shot of nostalgia.

   The reason that this album makes this list is this: when I was just 14, I had the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Madagascar. From the time we took off from Orlando en route to the east coast of Africa, I was mesmerized with every part of the trip. Every moment was like living inside a dream. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of that trip, even 18 years later. And this album was a big part of that trip.

    My team arrived in the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo, loaded our luggage and supplies, and boarded several open air buses and headed north for our 10 hour bus ride to where we would be spending the rest of our summer. The whole bus ride was like opening up a National Geographic magazine and getting to walk into the pictures; all the smells, lights, people, accents, emotions, food, etc became real and I was amongst all of it. Before we loaded the bus, a leader of mine purchased two cassettes: U2:Zooropa and Phil Collins: Both Sides of the Story; neither of which had been released in the USA yet. Ah', the beauty of the black market. We listened to U2 first and everyone felt a little weird about it. I pretended to know the U2 sound, but really only knew them from the Joshua Tree tape and not so well. This was way before I knew it was cool to listen to U2. I knew my older brother was much cooler than me and that he listened to U2. I just hoped that second hand listening counted in some one's book. We listened to the Zooropa tape multiple times and then night set in and most people went to sleep. We had been traveling for three days and through three continents. Everyone was exhausted. I was very, very tired, but couldn't sleep. I hadn't really slept since we left Orlando. It was all too much to take in. How could you sleep when you were sitting in Ireland, Paris, Cyprus, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Djibouti, Somalia? When would I ever see those places again? I just couldn't get enough of everything.
  
   The bus got very quiet as we continued to travel north past so many things that I had never seen before. Through mountains and past little villages further away from anything that had been normal to me. Fires burned in the distance and fewer traces of the 20th century could be seen. I climbed from my seat and into the window, so that the wind could blow through my hair and I could see better. It was a full moon and it felt like the whole sky was on display just for me. I hadn't ever seen the sky without refracted light. It seemed so clear that it seemed fake. It was just me and the sky. It was as if I were floating and the sky was encompassing me in all directions. And through all of this Phil Collins was playing in the background. It became the soundtrack to this moment. I rode for three or more hours like this; sitting in the window sill of the bus and holding onto the side of the roof and trying to see all that there was to see. I cannot see a full moon and not be drawn back to this moment. We arrived at our home for the summer and unloaded out things. We slept on the porch of the main house because it was four in the morning. I was greatly saddened because my brief moment had ended, but it was really just the beginning of a summer full of those moments. And Phil Collins was always playing in the background.

  The U2 tape became a favorite, but the Phil Collins tape became the tape we all requested. It wasn't that we just loved the songs or felt that the lyrics described how we were feeling, but it was the mood of the music itself. It was slow and sad, but also hopeful, but most of all it seemed to let us see what it feels like to be both happy and sad and beautiful all at the same time. It was one of the first times in life that I found out that you could be all of those at once. I hadn't known that. I am so glad that all of those emotions snuck up on me as a young boy riding on the side of a bus and looking out at the night sky. I have never been the same since then.

   I arrived back home two months later and about a month after the trip my family went to see Phil Collins in concert. I hadn't told them much about my experiences and how the tape had been playing in the background. Phil Collins is actually one of my dad's favorites. He partly likes him because he is short and bald and can still rock. I thought it was funny then and I still do. It is weird to see parts of your parents that you don't normally think about. You forget that they too were young once and they too had favorite songs and musicians. They too turned up the music loud and jammed out. The older I get the more I wished I had asked them about music. I could have learned a lot more. The concert was awesome. I don't mind saying that. Phil Collins played every instrument during the concert. It was truly incredible.

  However, this album will always be about a wide-eyed young boy sitting in the window and watching the world go by and living inside a dream.



David

Monday, July 4, 2011

Happy Fourth of July



     "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated."
 
                                                           --Thomas Paine
 


Happy 4th and remember true freedom is never free,

   David
 

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Throwing the Yellow Dodder--Snippet 9

* This is a continuation of a work of fiction.

...."You said it right there, Mrs. Lucy. You said it right there"

  "You know ole' Mister Columbus was really trying to find Asia when he landed his three ships in the Caribbean. Talk about a wrong left turn. Least he wasn't tryin' to go cussing some map or blame it on some road sign that only his two eyes are able to see in this world. I'd say he did blame a women whether she was there or not. I can just hear him know, blamin' Queen Isabel for somethin', can't you Mrs. Mable?"

  "Now Lucy, you better quit before we get taken in for men bashing or some man thinkin' we've lost it. I don't want us to focus too much on the following a lost man part, but the part about being a long way from home. I bet I know exactly how those gulls feel. Folks get nervous when the air smells different. I know when I'd leave home I wouldn't be happy until I could smell home again. I can't tell you how much I'd give someone for just one brief smell of the dirt from my home and that trail. Why, I'd just rub it all over my face until I could smell it good in my nostrils. Home ain't a place, Mrs. Lucy. It's smells and noises and when those are gone, it feels like there ain't nothin' left."

  "I know that's right, Mrs. Mable, but we got no time for bein' sad today. Primwillow is your new home and everybody here loves ya' here that knows you good."

  "I just don't think it will ever feel like home. Seems like more things is missing than is here. I know all that used to be isn't anymore, but it just seems like the world has gotten a little bigger and deeper and I don't know it anymore and it don't know me. We used to speak, but now he ain't listenin' and I ain't talkin'."

  "Maybe we should go back now, Mrs. Mable. That chill is getting a little bit stronger and I probably need to be headin' in to check on my other peoples. Its been a good walk for the both of us and this fresh air always does me wonders." Lucy said, but felt a little cheap and shallow for saying it. She knew exactly what Mable was missing and knew Mable could see it in her eyes. Her training had taught her to never, never get too personal with the residents. All of this seemed personal, very personal, but that's how this whole life seemed. Seemed that people had been telling her not to let things get to her or to not feel a certain way her whole life when those feelings were all someone who was really breathing could feel. People were always acting like you were some strange creature when you acted human. It was as if they wanted you to spend all your time pretending and she just couldn't do it. She knew her relationship with Mrs. Mable had always been over the line. It had always been personal. Mrs. Mable wouldn't have had it any other way because she had said they were friends and told her that friends ain't too prideful to look each other in the eye and know that they were both weakness and strength all in the same glance. And she knew that Mrs. Mable wasn't just friends with everybody. Lucy held it as an honor to know Mrs. Mable so well. She at once wished to take her words back. She knew why she had said them. It was always easier to leave than stay. It had been modeled by everyone she had ever surrounded herself with.

  "Now, you don't got to get worried, Mrs. Lucy. I'm not goin' off the deep end and begging you to join me. Heck, I'm not even talking about something tangible. It is something like when you're having the time of your life, but it all seems fake because you can't share it with the only one you care about. Ever since William has been gone, I wonder how to smile and lean back into my chair for a good laugh. When he was alive, I could always do that because I could look into his eyes while I was smiling and know that he knew deep down why I was smiling and it made me smile bigger. It was as if we had, had some special joke that only he and I shared. He knew why I ticked and why I was really smiling." Mable replied having completely ignored Lucy's comment, knowing she hadn't really meant it and Lucy was glad she had......


Snippet 10 coming sooner than later. The blog is about to become a little more updated again (little being the KEY word!)

  David