life

Four variables

My life is a rather simple zero-sum equation with four variables.

I play with my family.
I work.
I ride or fix my bicycles.
I sleep about seven hours.

That's it. Family, work, bicycles, sleep; repeat. If I do anything else I have to triangulate: what's gonna get shorted? Family, work, bicycles or sleep?

I'm hopelessly out of the pop culture universe. I catch a few minutes of American Idol before the "sleep" dimension. There's no time for "Mad Men" or "30 Rock" or "Dr. Who" or "[insert cool TV show here]." Those things take a serious time commitment which would cut into family, work, bicycles, or sleep. But 20 minutes of American Idol twice a week is just enough to know exactly what's happening on American Idol. For example: the kid with the awesome country voice and good attitude is still in. The girl with the deep pipes and surprising stylistic range is out.

I see about two movies a year. That includes DVDs. A movie is two whole hours away from family, work, bicycles, or sleep.

Music, I can catch a little while I work. Which means lots of instrumental post-rock, lots of bebop, lots of Bach. Anything catchy is death to productvity.

Live music, ha! Are you kidding? They don't even START playing until like 10pm. That means shorting family, sleep AND work the next day.

I started feeling pretty bad for the dog (he was part of this equation until last summer), so I'm stealing an hour from "sleep" every morning to take him for walks. There was a time when he got THREE walks a day. Can you imagine? I can't, any more.

The beautiful thing about "bicycles" is that I can squeeze them in around the other stuff, so they feel like a variable that ADDS time. Instead of a boring old commute I have "fun bike time." Jenny and Orion love Sundays at the Cross Crusade, that's a twofer (family+bicycles) right there. Kids are napping? Time to fix the bikes!

I hit the gym, so to speak, about once a week. That's a calculation against "work" because on those days I leave at 4:30.

My diet is somehow, improbably, nothing but leftovers. Usually pasta. Where do these leftovers come from? At some point there must have been some original source of food. Jenny does the cooking -- funny how Ozzy and Harriet you get in a one-paycheck household -- but it seems like dinner is usually leftovers too. Every time I sit down to eat it feels a little like the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

Gardening, home improvement, spiritual betterment, skiing, yardwork, arts-and-crafts, videogames, homebrewing, gastronomy...my God how do people with kids do these things? (well, with ONE kid, maybe...)

Please don't think I'm complaining here. Well, I am, but not too much. I love how beautifullly focused my life is now.

Tags:

Obsess less, ride more

So I did something really extreme. I took all the cyclometers off my bikes. Lemme ’splain.

I’ve been going a little nuts lately. Like “sudden flashes of violent emotion” nuts. Waiting for our little girl to hurry up and get born is making me crazy. Not just the waiting but a kind of mounting pressure that I will shortly be the sole breadwinner for a family of four.

But I can’t entirely blame that, although I certainly feel a little buried by my life lately.

I have dozens of “projects” hanging around: bike “training” of dubious necessity; bicycle improvement projects; web stuff I want to build & learn; work projects that have no ROI but enormous future-proofing potential; home improvement stuff; landscaping stuff. Projects. But I’m not 24 any more, hell I’m not 34 any more. My energy for “projects” is nil.

But it isn’t entirely a lack-of-energy thing either, although I sleep never and have free time less. (By way of illustration: I have more time to take showers at work than at home.)

The thing of it is, I have goals and hopes and aspirations. Lots of them: big (“new backyard”), small (“paint backdoor“), vague (“learn more Django”), specific (“ride bike 100mi/wk.”). When I have a hope or a goal: I’m stretching to attain. There’s a gap between the state I’m in and the state I wish I were in. It’s this gap that’s really driving me nuts; it has always driven me nuts. Difference is, when I was 24 (or 34!) I could turn that nuts energy into action, and get stuff done. When I was 24 it drove me to learn and build web things. When I was 34 it drove me (us, rather) to move to China and learn Chinese.

That I never actually finished these projects is immaterial. It felt good to have them going, to make progress, to aspire to something. But these days the weight of obligation — a wife and dog and kids and mortgage to feed — pretty much nullifies the energy overage I could always tap for projects.

The Buddha’s second noble truth is that suffering arises from craving. We suffer in proportion to the amount we desire. I always knew but never understood this; because I desired so little, and because I had surplus ego. Before 2008 or so, my life was pretty much entirely about me. But now I am (and, by extension, my projects are) the least important thing in my life. Ego is now in seriously short supply.

And, to add to the suffering, one of my longtime desires is for a simpler life. But living an uncomplicated life without furniture or a credit score is just capital NOT going to happen (see: wife, kids, dog, mortgage). Think how perverse this is: what I want is nothing and what I have is abundance. Thus I suffer.

Which brings me back to the cyclometers.

Last week I checked out a cyclist’s training manual. I’ve been shopping for GPS/heart-rate monitors. It worried me that some of my mileage is “off the books” — because does a mile count if a cyclometer doesn’t register it? And then there’s the 70 or so bicycle-related blogs and Twitter accounts I read every day. My bike love was finding expression in numbers. This weekend I had a beautiful ride over Parrett Mountain and the Chehelem hills; but I was stressed that it was “short miles” (only 43!) and I was too slow (only 15.9mph!). I had let the desire for attainment overwhelm the joy of riding. If I’m ever going to let go of all that desire, the bikes are a good place to start. Because it should be possible to experience joy (“whee, I’m on a bike!”) without desire (“...but I’m only going 15.9mph!”). Quit counting. Be here now. Obsess less, ride more.

Tags:

bicycles

luckyguy

life

The Champ

1990 Honda Civic, Runs, Sort of - $250 (SW Portland)

Reply to: anon-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-07-24, 6:47PM PDT

This is a Champagne (transl: “Gold”) 1990 Honda Civic 3-door STD model. Yes, the model number is actually “STD,” which apparently means “standard.” This is the most basic Honda you can buy. When I purchased it, it didn’t even have an AM radio. It runs, with a caveat: you have to get it started. See Issues, below.

I bought the Champ in 1997 with about 140,000 miles on it. It performed like a champ for 5 years, which is why I call it The Champ. Actually, I call it the Champ because of the color. But still, it does run like a champ. The Champ moved me to and from Montana and Southern California. It has about 186,000 miles on it now. I did about $2000 of work on it, almost all maintenance: new timing belt, two new batteries, new tires, work with the radiator and suspension. The Champ only gave me trouble twice, both times related to half-assed maintenance attempts by my first wife’s extra-marital boyfriend. It was a very “modern” marriage. I can’t blame the boyfriend entirely, the whole thing was precipitated by Oil Can Henry, who put antifreeze in the battery, and I was the first one to step out of the marriage. Don’t worry, all these issues were sorted out years ago.

Retirement

The very day my first wife and I went to court to finalize our divorce (November 13, 2002), the arm that supports the driver’s side seatback cracked. The seatback flopped into the backseat. There’s some symbolism here somewhere I’m sure. Regardless, the Champ pretty much went into retirement after that. I was riding my bike everywhere anyway. It still ran, but the driver’s seat is held in place by a milk crate wedged between the back seat and the seatback. The divorce was finalized two weeks later on my ex-wife’s 30th birthday. More symbolism, I’m sure. I hate even to write about my first wife as “my first wife.” It was like a pretend marriage.

After my Real Wife and I moved in together in 2003, the Champ became our Emergency Backup Vehicle. Mostly it served to ferry the dog to puppy daycare. My Real Wife did use it to learn to drive a standard transmission. What was it Winston Churchill said about second marriages: “the triumph of hope over experience?” What that guy didn’t know. I’m constantly falling in love with my wife. We just got married last month, and it feels great. Anyway, we bought a new car last summer, which pretty much rendered the Champ superfluous. Sorry, guy. Since then it’s been haunting the garage. I don’t think we tried to start it for upwards of six months. See Issues, below, for more information about the Champ’s current health.

Features

What can I say? This is the Standard model. There aren’t many features.

1.5 liter engine with good compression
4-Speed manual transmission
Rawking AM/FM/cassette stereo (after market)
Reasonably new battery and tires
A way-cool NSF Antarctic Program bumper sticker.
Outstanding gas mileage. Like 30 mpg. No fooling.
Really good paint and body for a 16-year-old car. Wait a minute. Is that true? Someone born in 1990, when I was in college, can legally drive a car? Eek.

Issues

If you’ve ever owned a Honda, you know what to expect. The engine is always the last thing to go. And for a 16-year-old Honda, there’s not much wrong with the Champ. I am certain that, with a little love, the Champ has plenty of service left in it. Even if it doesn’t, it has plenty of good parts left. That said, the Champ has issues.

It doesn’t start. This is a big one, I know, but I’m confident it’s no big deal. There’s spark but no fire. So it’s either air or fuel. Could be as simple as a new air filter -- the Champ has been sitting in a dusty garage for the better part of a year. But who knows? Well, you, if you buy the Champ.
Driver’s side seatback is held up by a milk crate.
Hatchback doesn’t stay up.

Own the Champ

You can own the champ for $250. Yes I’ll negotiate. No I won’t tow it to your house. Send me an email and own the champ today.

Update: 8/31/05

I was literally overwhelmed by the response I had to the Champ. You know how when some people say “literally” they mean “figuratively?” Well, here I mean “literally.” I had maybe 50 emails and couldn’t respond to them all. Jenny and I pushed the Champ out into the street, and after charging the battery up from the Subaru, the Champ, true to form, started. After that, I figured it had to be worth more than $250 but of the dozen or so respondants to whom I offered to sell the car (for more than $250), exactly zero of them would pay. OK, so I didn’t ask everyone, I’m sure someone would have ponied up $500, but after six or eight angry responses I decided to stop trying. I hope these people aren’t buying houses in Oregon right now.

Anyway, I donated the Champ to the Humane Society. They sold it a few weeks later at auction for $400. That’s a dealer auction, guys. You can probably find the Champ on a really run down used car lot for $1000 or $1200 now.

$400 buys a lot of dog food.

Tags:

cars

luckyguy

life

You are here

1990 Honda Civic, Runs, Sort of - $250 (SW Portland)

Retirement

Features

Issues

Own the Champ

Update: 8/31/05