I am a master of efficiency.  I’ve put enormous amounts of effort into the perfection of the process; through trial and error, through studying the details, through reading lifehacker.com – which is an awesome website by the way – I have perfected the art.  Why?  Answer: to get through the often times undesirable but necessary, as deemed by personal and societal motives, parts of my life as quickly and painlessly as possible in an underlying effort to preserve more time to allocate to the things I enjoy.  Certain parts of my education, hygiene, professional development – all of this falls into my vacuum of efficiency.  

Writing; cycling; my relationships; operating without a set schedule, thus allowing me the opportunity to take the longest and most inefficient path to my destinations; music; anthropology; people; my family; giving to others – all of these things, and many more of course, make up my worldly loves.  The list always evolving of course, but I’ve also put much effort into determining the contents of this list; and it too is finally developing into a state of simplistic perfection.  I desperately try to spend as little time as possible crossing off the items on my list of dislikes, so I have the maximum amount of time to devote to the things I love.  Simple.

Why?  Answer: because the ability to accomplish the things I love is the deciding contributor towards my ultimate goal – happiness.  From my observations I’ve found that the ultimate goal of others is often times similar, but the problem evidentially lies in the interpretation of ultimate.  Ultimate is thought to correspond to, time and time again, some distant focal point in the future.  Everybody’s always working for the future – an unasserted and imaginary entity pushed onto us by an overbearing and misinformed society; which, in all reality, exists only in our minds.  Why do people insist on structuring their lives around this; resulting over and over again in a miserable existence in their present day world?  

My ultimate goal of happiness is accomplished the moment I fall asleep at night; and working towards my ultimate goal begins when I awake each morning.  We lose grasp of the fact that none of us are guaranteed the gift of living each day…  
“Live each day to the fullest…”  For many, this is a simple motto pushed to the back of their minds…  For me, it’s the way I choose to structure my life.  You should try it sometime…

So my parents are in the process of moving, and today they happened to find this old picture… This was taken at The Hotter n’ Hell bike race in 1995; guess who the little guy on the far left is. Next to me, sporting the blue sleeveless jersey, is my brother; on the far right, in the stylish aviators, is my dad; and the rest of the folks in that picture are people my dad used to work with. We did the 25 mile route, and, believe me, for a 9 year old that was quite the feat. I remember the group of guys kept calling me “pace-setter” because I was out front the whole ride; and then near the end Terry Young, the guy standing next to my dad, and I dropped the rest of bunch and finished together. Good times… Somehow, I think I always knew I’d come back to cycling eventually…
Thanks Mom and Dad…

she’s so cute…☺

What a weekend, full of friends, bikes, sunshine, music, and high quality entertainment; without a doubt the perfect assortment.

I’ll start with Friday afternoon. As my schedule dictates, my weekend officially started at noon. This week flew by, and trust me by noon I was glad it was over with… So after class, I jumped on my bike and weaved down Congress (the heart of downtown Austin) on my way to Jack & Adam’s Bicycles to get some bike stuff. I absolutely love riding downtown; the pace, the traffic, and the little explosions of activity shortly halted by glowing orbs of red light. Awesome. And on a day like Friday, with absolutely perfect weather, it has to be one of my favorite activities. Anyways, I went to Jack & Adams to buy some cycling related items; most notably Clif Bars and a “under the seat storage device” (I’m sure it has a technical term, but USSD is going to have to work for now). I really wanted a USSD, seeing how my jersey pocket space was suddenly conquered by the addition of a cell phone; and the Clif Bars were for Saturday’s torture… Following my trip downtown I went for a longer bike ride, this time in Lycra, with some folks from the cycling club. My legs were feeling good, and I ended up winning the second sprint with a solo breakaway; although it was really only a sprint of the inexperienced, because if a few of the stronger riders wanted to I’m sure they could have taken it. I went to bed early Friday night.

Saturday…crazy… Saturday morning, around 9:00am, I met up with six other guys from the cycling club and went to go ride in the hill country surrounding Dripping Springs, TX. Our initial plans had us doing a seventy mile loop, but that was adjusted slightly as the ride progressed. The six riders consisted of five cat A/B riders and one other cat C. I didn’t have the chance to eat a proper breakfast in the morning, which is always a bad idea; so breakfast for me consisted of a Clif Bar. Those were all important details for the rest of the story… So we pack up and drive to Dripping Springs; stopping at Dripping Springs’ finest gas station for food, drinks, and a big ass Popeye’s chicken sandwich for James…breakfast of champions. I don’t know how he did it; I know if I’d had ate like that right before a ride there’d be chicken sandwich all over the road and the rider behind me ten miles into the ride. After unloading the bikes we head out; with a slight head wind and some beautiful sunshine. Unexpected by most of us, we started off at a rather quick pace; and even more unexpected we continued at that rather quick pace for most of the ride. I’m impatient and I like going fast, so I didn’t really have a problem with it… Out in the middle of nowhere, we had some minor difficulties with our route plan; all in good humor, at least for me, we turned around and found a different path. Thirty miles into the ride, we collectively decided that our initial route plan was going to be difficult; so we turned around and headed back. Like I said, the pace really didn’t let up at all, but I was still going strong as the distance meter passed fifty miles. Unfortunately for me the in the last ten miles the combination of a lack of water and my poor breakfast decisions finally caught up with me. It was a tough final stretch, but all in all a very good day of riding. Total miles: 60.3. Average speed: ~18mph. Tan line definition: elevated. Saturday night I went out with Vanessa and a few other “assorted cycling people”. We had a good time; and I got the chance to meet a few really interesting people. Needless to say, I was worn out after the day’s previous excursion on the bike; but the party was laid back and it was a great way to unwind after a long day. Vanessa and I left early so we’d be able to ride the next morning…

Today wasn’t filled with too much excitement; I was up early with the anticipation of a bike ride, but my legs told me otherwise. Turns out Vanessa didn’t go either; so I had a good laugh and didn’t feel bad for not showing up. I ended up getting a lot a work done today; lots of reading and some more reading after that. The weather was perfect again and I spent a few hours in the grass in front of the LBJ library with my book. Sometimes I think people around here significantly under-appreciate being outside; personally, when the weather’s nice I can’t get enough of it. I watched some of the Super Bowl with the guys, but only stayed until the third quarter. Come July there’s going to be some kick-ass Tour de France parties, and I’ll definitely be sticking around for the end of those…

This is from the ride today, during one of the sprints; but 217 is the highest I’ve seen. We’ll see what I can do tomorrow in Blanco; I’m shooting for a new max in the hills…