Typical

Oh its only been four months, give or take since my last post. Anyone who has spent any length of time with me will understand that such results are pretty typical for me. When I start out working on something new I quickly dive into a new project, gobbling up as much information as I can about the subject, experiment with it for a time, and then quickly get bored. So you should find it as no suprise that our blog hasn't been touched in months. However, I guess I'm changing because I'm updating the page, because something in me has recently changed. Not a life changing (well maybe I should reserve that qualification for later) but nonetheless a change.

Recently, I've wanted to start recording my thoughts. Not so much because I have something earth shattering for the world to read, but because its important to me that I record my thoughts for others to read. Now I'll warn you some of my ramblings will be a very mixed bag, as you will see soon. But isn't that me? A mixed bag?

For my loved ones. Some things that I'm going to write may make you wonder if I'm OK, and I think I am for the most part, I just think it will be 'interesting' to explore some of these thoughts...pardon me that I do so publicly.

Now it won't be enough that I record my thoughts on a blog to share, though I hope you will enjoy them, my real goal is to keep a print or electronic version...seeing that websites are about as enduring as glow sticks.

So without further adieu. (I love that word)

My First Bike (a.k.a. A Tribute to My Parents)

Sometime the year before I started Kindergarten we lived in a small apartment in the Midwest. In that apartment complex I had a friend that had a new dirt bike of his very own (well considering the circumstances of the day it was more likely "new to him"). I can't remember my friend's name but I remember him graciously letting me use his bike to teach myself how to ride. In one of my few acts of all out determination I decided that I was going to learn how to ride...that very day, without training wheels mind you, or work to exhaustion trying.

I spent hours on a small patch of lawn in front of our apartment getting up and falling down, over and over and over again...until near dark I finally was able to ride that bike. I was so excited that I ran into the house and shouted to my parents of my triumph. I could ride a bike, without training wheels or anything! I drug them back outside to show them my new found skill, and of course now that I knew how to ride a bike I wanted one of my very own.

It wasn't but a couple days later that my dad had a surprise to show me. I was excited, if not a bit disappointed, at the bike he brought home for me. Instead of being a cool dirt bike like my friends it was a little boys road bike made back in the 60's. I remember its odd blue color and the big wide white seat it had...not sleek and black like my friends. The chain guard, that was completely absent on my friend's bike was rickety and barely attached to the frame. I'm sure my Dad could see the look of partial disappointment on my face, but to his credit he didn't say a word, when he could have rightly scolded me for being ungrateful and completely oblivious to the sacrafice that he and Mom had made to get me a bike of my own out of the blue.

Now you might mistakenly be thinking that this story is about a bike, and you would barely be correct. You see this story is really about my parents. At the time they were still pretty young, in their mid 20's, trying to raise a family of four on the kind of meager income that was common to the Midwest in the latter part of the 70's.

Today I was out raking up the lawn from hundreds of small twigs that fall of this grand old tree in our front yard every spring. As I was raking up the lawn Puddy came out on her plastic toddler tricycle and started riding it down the driveway. As she turned around and tried to peddle back up the other way against a moderate incline I was thinking to myself that she really needed a "big girl" bike with training wheels and that we could probably come up with an extra seventy or eighty bucks on payday to get her a new bike. As I thought about that I was reminded of my experience of learning how to ride a bike, and how even though my parents could barely afford it they scraped together what they could for the unexpected expense of giving their son a bike of his very own.

I love you Mom and Dad.