Big dog

There dogs came into the store. Enormous! I want some. You could till land with these puppies!

Sheep riding at oregon state fair.

Skyline

For the past two days I've ridden my bike up Lovejoy and along Skyline road for a few miles. The trees crowd in on each side of you for the entire assent. You start breathing really heavily about three miles in and by mile five you are huffing and puffing like a wolf with a pig problem. The trees keep shadows on you and the hot sun is less than it should be. Finally, at the steepest point of the climb, you see a sign that says Skyline Road, and the wonderful relative flatness it promises is a mere 500 feet away. You are now so tired that you are in the absolute lowest gear that your bike goes and if you look down at the road on either side, you see slugs inching along faster than you.

Then you break out onto Skyline. The trees part on either side and there is a view of the valley stretching on and on and on and you suddenly realize why all of the rich and elite have chosen to build their mansions up here on the winding hills. The world looks manageable from this high up. As you cruise along, with the miles peeling off, your breathing returns to normal. You pass bikers here and there on the road and you wave to each other. You all look ridiculous in your spandex and helmets, but you all feel phenomenal.

Then you are done and you rip back down the hills fast enough to peel your face off.

Progress

Well, I went over to James' house last night and we hammered out some of the details for www.scawymonstur.com and the site should be up in the next couple of weeks. You should all check it out. It is going to be some of the best stuff around.

Finished Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain was on to something.

The Good Life

Hot coffee. Warm rain. Can't do much worse than that.

So SCAWY

The SCAWYMONSTUR is born. It will sweep the world soon.

Airport

So I took my girlfriend to the airport before five in the morning. I had all sorts of waking up blues. My joints felt like two pieces of sand paper rubbing together. My back was all bunched up and there was this pesky mosquito bite on my forearm. As we were pulling out of the parking spot I saw two people bringing some bags out to the curb.

"Need a ride?" I asked.

"Airport?"

"Yeah."

"How much?"

"Free."

"Really!"

"Yep."

"OK."

And that is how Tiffany and I met two Russian exchange students. One of them was getting his masters in teaching and the other was finishing up a internship. We got to the terminal and the girl put her thumbs up super high.

"You are so cool."

"Thanks."

Then I strapped Tiffany's bag on her back (double her size) and went home to go back to sleep.

My Best Me

I woke up this morning and did my best Huck Finn. I roasted up the biggest slices of bacon that I’d ever seen with potatoes on the side all over a blazing campfire. I drank black coffee and squatted on my hams. I thought to myself, so this is what it was like before people were rushing all about. Back when sailing down the river meant reinventing yourself anew at a neighboring shore.

I can imagine at least.

I wake up some days and can’t really decide what it is I want most in the world.

I rode to Pacific City with my dad yesterday and as we were cruising along with old red barns and rusted-out trucks stringing the side of the road like Christmas lights, I started thinking about what it would be like to be a doctor. What if, from the very get-go of things, I had said I wanted to be a doctor? Well, right about now, 25 years down the road, I’d be just in the thick of things doing my clinical. I’d have my whole life mapped out.

So, for a while there as I pedaled along, I did my best doctor. I thought about how it’d feel to walk around in a white lab coat, talk to my mom about interesting ER stories and introduce myself at parties as Dr Lane. It felt pretty good to play doctor.

Damn, why didn’t I choose to go into medicine?

Most everyone’s greatest fear, well at least one of the bigger ones, is to be tried and tested and found to be wanting – not good enough. (Unless you’re my friend Chuck, who for all intent and purpose seems to be afraid of nothing.)
I have enough rejection letters from magazines and publishers to wallpaper a spare room. Not a living room or a master bathroom, though, I’m not that kind of pathetic yet. However I could paper a spare bedroom. I know this because I did it one summer to give myself motivation.

All it did was to make it hard to get up every morning like every teacher who’d ever given me a poor grade was standing above me and wagging their finger no.

So I wonder sometimes: am I good enough for this?

I happen to be a bizarre mix of things. I can be incredibly insensitive to others and incredibly sensitive myself. I think that can be boiled down to two words: self-centered. It’s a hard line to walk because I’m either feeling sorry for something flippant I said to someone else, or I am feeling sorry for myself, or maybe just indifferent.

Don’t feel bad for me though – that would just feed the cycle.

I’ve got a friend who I don’t hear from in years and then I run into him at a bookstore randomly. He is usually walking along in this casually hurrying sort of way that would be absolutely impossible for anyone to pull of but he does it like most people put on or take off a hat. Anyway, his life is just sort of working at whatever sort of job he can get, selling clothes or something, with his English degree in his back pocket, and then he cruises off for months at a time to backpack and wrestle bears in Alaska.

Sometimes he seems happier in every moment than I have been in my entire life.

The guy drips confidence like Oregon precipitation and is the definition for what cool will be five years down the road. At which point he’ll be a professional surfer in Brazil.

After I saw him I did my best impression. I thought about camping up and down the coast and working jobs where I’d find them. I’d meet cool friends with names like Shoeless and Jaxon Love. I’d become non-boastingly good at the guitar and once in a while I’d send a post card to a friend.

It would be a good life, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be me.

I need to figure out how to do my best me…

Disaster

On grey hound to eugene. Fires for several miles along north bound I-5. Saw a semi truck completely engulfed in flames. Seemed straight from action movie. One of the strangest things i have ever seen. Just south of salem. Anyone know anything?

PDA

Magic dude

The magic guy asked for a crazy guy. Danny was the perfect fit.

Tiny house

This house is only 44000. It is so little. Guess you get what you pay for.

Surfs up

Back to surfing my beloved oregon coast. Oh how i missed thee.

Morning doubt

Writing is ok once you can get through the morning funk.

A Bike Ride and Other Ramblings

I am so excited to go camping with my family. I remember way back when it used to be the highlight of my year. It still is, but this time it is the highlight of two years as I didn’t go last year.

James and Dan decided to go on the “Hottest Day of the Year” bike ride. When they woke up the sky was overcast and there was a slow drizzle hanging from the cloud-cover. They showed up an hour early. On the first climb of the 15-mile ride, people got off their bikes and started to walk them. They took turns listening to music on James’ iphone. Dan and James left the course half-way through to go to Fire on the Mountain and eat chicken wings and beer. At the end of the ride there is supposed to be a bit water gun fight but they came home instead because they were just too cold.

Way to go, boys.

Well, a few days into this whole devoting-my-life-to-writing thing I have been both stoked on the possibilities and disheartened by the obstacles. Oh well…

In related notes, Powell’s book store is awesome.

Poems are a better medium than I thought.

Dan Caccavano is a saint. (He lends me his computer until I can buy my own).

Here We Go

OK, I have dropped out of school.

Well, I guess you could call it taking a year off...

Either way, I am not going back to the University of Portland in the Fall. I have decided to take a year and devote it to writing. Full on. Nothing else. Just me and writing. My friends have already given me the nickname of "Flunkie," or "Droppy." Well, actually only Dan calls me "Droppy," and I am almost certain that is not going to stick. It is all in good fun.

I am going to dive in. Splash in. Jump in. Whatever I want to call it, I am going for it.

My rational is this: I am a big fan of dreams. As corny as that sounds, I think that everyone should go for theirs. Later on, when I want to be a father, I know that I am going to tell my kids, "hey little tykes, you can do anything that you can put your mind to," and I will not be able to legitimately say that to my little guys if I know that I cannot say that I didn't give it an honest shot myself.

I have a few ideas of how I am going to try and get this done...

1. Write. (Sounds simple, I know, but sometimes I think that this can be the toughest part).

2. Read. (It has recently come to my attention that I don't take enough time to read literary magazines. Apparently I feel comfortable to send my stories off to places that I have never read. I need to change that).

3. Talk to other writers. (I need to know what is working for them, what is not working for them, and everything in between. I want to help people out when I enjoy their work, just like I would hope they'd help me.)

That is where I am going to start. Those three main avenues. We will see how this goes. I woke up giddy this morning.