Fall

A week ago my old Norco Sasquatch helped me make up my mind to buy a new bike by delivering to me flats, both front and rear, three miles from home. In the rain. Bugger!!! and the decision was made.

I went into Local Ride in Maple Ridge and bought a new Giant Seek 2 hybrid bike. About $730 all in. When out of work, it is never the right time to have that chunky an expense. Oh well, whats done is done.

All of the reviews on this bike are good, excepting one flaw. The tires are shit! No money to pick up good ones, so...

My riding from Monday thru Thursday was wonderful. Narrow 700 series tires that roll so easily. Gears that shift properly and a chain that doesn't regularly slip off the sprockets, worth every penny.

And then came Thursday evening and I was riding to church. Back flat! Oh well, I thought, I'll just walk it this short mile to the gas station and patch and inflate and still be on time. Except...the tires have skinny valve stems and no adaptors to use a gas station pump. I chained it to a post and bussed to church. Thankfully the bike was still there when Vera took me to pick it up with her van. Friday I started to fix the tube and found that it had nine holes in it. Most not a result of glass, but a consequence of them being arguably the cheapest bike tubes ever. Very grumpy!!!

So, today I'm off to the library by bus and tomorrow to church same way and on Monday I'll shell out one hundred and thirty dollars for a pair of Continental Gator Skins, which hopefully keep me flat free.

I did think of putting the cash into a cheap car, but felt that someone poor like me shouldn't be taking on two fifty a month in insurance and gas/maintenance costs.

Off to the library.

Letting go

I bused downtown yesterday and spent most of the trip reflecting on how ubiquitous the use of electronic devices has become. Of the fifteen other riders on the bus, all but two were listening to music or texting or talking on their phones. The two not so engaged were South Asian women in their late sixties.

I cancelled my cell phone about two months ago and have not missed it at all. Mind you, I have had much grief from my daughter, Alley, who carries on at great length about the dangers that being cell less opens me up to. What if you are hit by a car, dad, and they don't stop? What if someone robs you? What if you get lost? Good Grief!!! hmm, I'm only fifty-nine and not yet senile, darling. Sometimes I wonder how are children really do see us.

I have an i-pod with several thousand songs on it and half a dozen university level courses and a couple of books and the bible. In the summer when I lie on the deck at my townhouse and soak up the sun I enjoy listening to bits and pieces of the materiel on it. Otherwise, I don't use it much. Playing voyeur on a bus is much more entertaining than listening to stuff that I have already heard on my i-pod.

When I bike I enjoy the, sort of, silence of the wheels running over the road. And of course, the road is a dangerous place for cyclists, and music devices don't make that less so.

I do wonder, at times, if I am cutting my self off from life. Or, perhaps, just letting go...

Fall is coming

It is a cold and rainy day in Pitt Meadows. I know that we will probably have another six weeks or so of fine fall weather, but walking up to the bus stop this morning and getting about town in this drizzle left me feeling as though winter was in the offing.

Yesterday was Jessie's 22nd birthday. Where, oh where, does the time go?

Yesterday was also a full eight months since I had my last cigarette. I still have cravings, especially in graphic dreams about having a smoke and early in the morning. I am very much looking forward to the 30th of December, which will mark one year without.

Biking continues. I am averaging about 25 miles a day. Feel pretty good, though I suspect the rainy season will put a real damper on my enthusiasm.

Well, enough for now.

Almost halfway through August...where does the time go?

It has been six weeks now that I have been off work and I am enjoying the slow pace of my days. The anti-depressants seem to be working, though there are residual symptoms of my depression that have persisted beyond the pills kicking in. Mostly manageable, though I am wondering, when the time comes to return to working, how well I will manage...

I have managed to keep to my schedule of biking twenty-five to thirty miles every day. The ache in my thighs has diminished and my breathing is good, but I am not certain that I will be able to get up to the average of one hundred and twenty miles a day, three times a week, that I figure will let me know that I can seriously plan to bike down to Nova Scotia next year to visit Jessie.

It is interesting to me that when I think of this 7000 plus kilometer trip, I think of it as a pilgrimage of sorts. Getting away from the daily noise of my life, entering into the solitude of the road and journeying, all hint of a promise of more than a physical effort. I do wonder if I am strong enough, mentally and spiritually, for such an effort.

Well, enough for now...

Taking up bike riding

It is now eleven days since I have become a bike person. In the Pitt Meadows/Maple Ridge area the appellation, "bike person," is quite negative. Not surprisingly a good number of our poor residents ride bikes and they have gotten hung with a bum rap in terms of being seen as undesirables. It is fairly easy to differentiate between urban riders and poor folks: most of the former are wearing spandex riding gear and helmets and most of the latter aren't. My observations are that while there is a certain amount of drug dealing and such going on from the backs of bikes, most of the folks who are riding them in our community are doing so out of necessity and as a byproduct of that are displaying a desirable element of the diversity within our society.

I have managed to keep to the twenty or twenty-five kilometers a day goal that I set for myself when I started riding. My butt is no longer suffering, but my thighs are pretty sore. Over all I am feeling pretty good. Next week I will try to go 30 K every second day.

Almost the end of July and much has happened since my last post. I am halfway through eight weeks off on medical EI. Thank God for Canada's Employment Insurance program! The first three weeks were pretty much waiting for my increased medication to kick in. Finally happened and i slept well for the first time this year. Mind you, that sleeping well involved eight hours each night and then a roll-over and another three or four hours. Well, after a week of that I settled into about seven hours a night.

I had been using Dick's van until the 19th, when he decided that his nephew from Alberta needed it more than I did. Talk about having to bite the bullet as far as being poor goes. NO CAR!!!! Wow, first time without one since I was nineteen.

So, I dragged out the ten year old, never ridden more than a total of twenty kilometers by me, 5 years used when I got it, mountain bike. And I have ridden. I think that I am averaging about twenty-five kilometers a day and apart from a sore butt and the amount of sweat I'm pouring out there are no ill effects.

I hate to admit it, but I am now starting to have Bicycle Fantasies. Yes, Virginia, there are such things. Mostly they revolve around the thought of biking down to visit Jessie next summer. Eight thousand kilometers must surely equal fantasy. On the other hand, I have gotten a couple of books out of the library that were written by folks who have done the trip, and I've cruised the MEC catalogue looking at stuff....hmm.

Well enough of this for now. Must ride off to the library.

back again

Here it is, almost halfway through June. Whew! where does the time go?

There has been so much rain over the past four weeks that the cranberries are coming on really slow. I suspect we will get a less than great crop this year.

My efforts of addressing reality through the use of anti-depressants is not succeeding. The quack put me on 25mg of paxil, as opposed to the 37.5 last time. The net effect seems to be no significant relief from the lack of sleep or the rather bleak outlook.

My friend, Robert, went into the hospital for a checkup on persistent headaches a few days ago and is now facing surgery to remove a tumour growing on his brain. We never know what is coming around the next corner.

Life, or such...

Back to work, finally!!! I've really enjoyed having the winter off, but getting up in the AM and toodling off to the farm is a real joy.

Things are tight at Sandhill this year, so I am dealing with their stuff on the side as a favour to Dick and am working full time for the neighbour, Hank, at Cloudburst.

Today marks eighty-one days without a cigarette. Should be sailing in the clear by now, but find myself having days where the urge to smoke just rolls on and on.

The not smoking, being on EI, not having the girls living here anymore and trying to adjust to being bankrupt have all led to a return of depression. Ah yes, my old friend!

I first encountered depression in 1999, when work was adding up to about ten hours a day, six days a week, when I was considering filing for bankruptcy for the first time, when Patty and I were separated and moving towards divorce and when she was diagnosed with cancer. A difficult time but six months on Paxil seemed to put things right.

In 2004, the job at the Union was going to hell, I had managed to alienate most of the staff and was awaiting the results of hearings held by the Union and the Public Review Board into charges laid against me by some members my staff. Depression came roaring back into my life and kicked me on my ass for a couple of months before I visited the quack and got some pharmaceutical relief. I had the sense to stay on the pills for a couple of years, but getting fired cost me my health and welfare plan and unemployed people cannot afford the luxury of anti-depressants...so, I weaned off them.

As it turned out, the days at the farm seemed to act as a tonic for whatever ailed me and I suffered no great consequence for coming off the pills.

Now, here I am again. It seems that the evidence of the past ten years is that my psyche is just fine unless confronted with layers of troubles. I suppose that is a lament that a good number of depressed people could hum.

I can't help but wonder where the dividing line is between the depression that I seem to carry as a defining feature of my personality and depression that is worthy of treatment.

It is not such a simple question.

I ordinarily am reserved and something of a loner. My entertainments are reading and TV. I immerse myself in things to do with the Church, but not especially on a social/group scale. I like to hike/walk some and enjoy getting out alone in the canoe. When gas money is there I enjoy nothing as much as getting in the car and driving two or five hundred miles...just for the pleasure of feeling the miles roll by and the scenery unfold. I'm well-read and fairly intelligent, but am insecure in the face of formal education in others and in any event seldom put what I know to good use, it seems. Over and under it all there drifts a light fog of inadequacy and of fear. Depression? Perhaps the matrix within which depression most readily coalesces.

Whatever, I've got a small prescription for a sleeping aid and if that doesn't cure the most troubling of my current symptoms, I guess I'll be back on the most recent brand of pill therapy.

Bugger!!!

a curious thing...

What a curious thing...to be surfing the web and to find that a not so distant past lover has married. We had ended our time-truth is it was our fifth or sixth time together, dotted randomly over the past fourteen years-on a very bad footing. No reason, really, to imagine that there might be a sixth or seventh time...and yet......imagine I have.

Having been seen off with rather stern words, I did not for a moment think to weasel my way back into her affections. Rather I pledged to myself that I would work on those parts of me that could so completely poison a relationship that was, to me, to her and to all who witnessed it, informed by love.

And work I have.

I haven't wasted much time over the past year plus trying to build anything that might replace the relationship that was done in, knowing that the insecurities that bedevilled me then were still about. Yet as I have worked in my life on those areas that so completely wrecked that relationship, I have occasionally indulged in thoughts of a next chance.

Humph.

Well, it is not as though what I intended in taking on this task was contingent on reconciliation as a reward...

But there is this curious thing, this knowing that what should have been, and that until now might still have been, won't be. There is this hurt.

I will pray that marriage brings you all that the best of loves can foster in it, Adriana. Blessings

Accepting the good

One month into a new year and I have passed through it blessed with many opportunities to reflect on years past and hopes for those which may come.

I marked the beginning of this year by quitting smoking. And am happy to say that I am still quit. I cannot count the number of times that I have given up the weed over the years, but feel quite confident that this time the beast is beaten.

EfM resumed after the Christmas break and is enlivening my Christian experience in ever changing ways. What a wonderful thing, to be mentoring others and in doing so to be learning more and more myself.

I am still laid off from the farm and don't expect to be recalled until April. For all that, I go in on a regular basis and keep those things going that must be kept going.

Sheila passed away a couple of weeks ago and Dick is doing well, all things considered, but understandably is not much focused on the day to day of cranberries.

The new reality that came after both of the girls moved out in 2009 is something that has proved quite hard to come to terms with. I am happy that they are out in the world making lives for themselves. Boy though, has their going ever left a hole in my life. I suppose that a good part of not thinking much about dating after my last effort crashed last spring was tied up in doing stuff with the girls or perhaps in focusing on being the center around which their lives revolved. Hmm, that's not right. I was the anchor to which they returned when they needed to be grounded. Now? well, now we do weekly telephone calls and e-mail messaging and such.

The Diocese of New Westminster's, Vision 2018, in which I had a small part is now being implemented. I must say that the excitement that went with building the Plan has been replaced by the slow grind of enacting it. I am beginning to think that the structures of the past may be the greatest impediment to us achieving the future we have mapped out. Hopefully not. Bishop Michael Ingham has some extraordinary talents when it comes to steering a path along rocky and potholed roads. I have great faith in his ability to manage the conflicting needs that we have and to get us to where we say we want to go.

In all of the above I remind myself that there is good. Bemoaning the difficult parts does little good. Accepting the good on the other hand empowers the present and builds foundations for a strong future.

Looking south into the Pitt Polder from Pitt Lake.