Archive for June, 2009

The view this morning outside my office window

Heavy clouds shroud the earth this morning. The world outside my window is dark, black & navy blue with just a hint of red. There was a time when I relished these cold, cloudy, sensual days. There is something in the darkness that stirs my soul. It’s the tense apprehension in the calm before the storm, the tightening pressure on the trigger before the audible “click”. It’s the final steps through the parking lot and the whoosh of the sliding doors as you arrive to get your test results. It’s  the rush in panic’s precursor, the ramping edge of “fight or flight”. The  sudden tension of an accidental touch of an unspoken crush.

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• running wordpress upgrades on 10,000 websites this morning. Fun!, Fun! 05:32:39
• wordpress 2.8 seems to load much faster than the previous versions… good thing.. 06:27:58
• The Well-Equipped, If Dumb, Kayaker – http://tinyurl.com/mzlgre 06:48:48
• Quix Blog – 400 – http://tinyurl.com/mmnzyw – 400 trail, wooden bears & the Doors… 06:50:17
• Capzise kayaker dies after being swept out to sea – http://digg.com/u16yRD 06:52:00
• RT @kayakinstructor: Great article in the Dever Post debunking Cdn Healthcare myths: http://tinyurl.com/nat55z 10:18:15
• You know you live in a small town when a squirrel taking out the power for an hour makes the paper! – http://digg.com/u16zcN 10:40:12

Yesterday we drove about 15 miles west to explore the 400 Trail. The 400 is an old train track that had been converted to a bike trail some years back. You can’t say the trail is marketed very well. The website is devoid of the facts I wanted to know more about. The woman at the chamber of commerce and trail head office seemed surprised I’d wanted to purchase passes at all. I found myself clarifying repeatedly that there was a fee and I needed to pay it. I doubt many do.  There were only about 4 cars in the lot on this particular  sunny Sunday. Which I guess was just fine. We had it mostly to ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »

• off to explore the 400 trail today – http://www.400statetrail.org 07:38:32
• in la valle getting ice cream along the 400 trail 11:54:04

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.”
– George Bernard Shaw

I’m still catching up on photos from the last couple weeks.   I’ve just uploaded a gallery of images from Kayak Week in Two Rivers.   I’m sure you know by now my eye gets drawn into the strangest places sometimes.  On the way up we were detoured through this little town with the most dramatic of little cemeteries.  The Wind farm in the background just made it seem all the more surreal.  And then there was the “World’s Biggest 6 pack”.. Distractions, distractions!!! In addition to our gallery, check out the gallery at the NE Wisconsin Kayaker’s website as well.  Now oddly enough we are heading back up to Two Rivers this Saturday…. to find a cemetery.. Strange.

* Just a note on the gallery. You’ll see a little box at the very right of the slideshow gallery tool bar. Click it to go full screen.

So you see, all these kayaks are forming a great big “350″ as part of a world wide climate action project. Scientists say that 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit. Currently we are around 390 PPM. So as part of the 350 project the kayaks of the Inland Sea Kayaking Symposium formed a big 350 which was photographed from the air. Cool huh? While this was all going on I had a short conversation with a friend who came down on the other side of the climate issue. In the end we both agreed that it does no good to be polarizing in your actions or stubborn in your opinions. We also agreed that in the end it can’t hurt either way to clean up some of the messes we’ve made.

Black and blue
And who knows which is which and who is who.
Up and down.
But in the end it’s only round and round.
-floyd

Funny thing, that question about, “Why do you always wear black?”. Sometimes I want to respond..”Why don’t YOU always wear black?” To me, wearing black is like having a closet full of identical suits. I don’t have to think about it. Black is black. It all works.  Black is a background color. It doesn’t stand out. I should say, it doesn’t stand out other than in paddling where we’re all expected to look like life sized bag of skittles.  I’ve never asked why blue, orange, red & yellow with flowers & stripes go together either. I imagine it depends on which side of the looking glass your on.