Manai'a Explorations
HC SVNT DRACONES

Fun things to do when sick in bed: Boston Terrier Smack Down.

At Full Resolution.

I always strive to be elegant and graceful. My riding technique is velvety smooth like Roy's voice.

Behind my house, before work one morning. My first images with my new GoPro HD HERO video camera mounted to my handlebars. Recording the video is fun and easy. Editing the video is a nightmare. It seems that if you want to edit video, you need a Mac, and a powerful one at that. I am doing it on my PC with Adobe Premiere Pro, but it is not an elegant solution. The camera recorded at 1280x960p, but this little web video is only 320x240, very compressed.

I finally put my digital field recorder to good use. Photos are from Bosque del Apache a year or so ago. Sound is from Whitewater Draw yesterday.

Went to Phoenix yesterday to watch Ironman Arizona . My college triathlon buddy, Chris Torregino, was there as a spectator cheering on his wife, Angie, in her first Ironman. It was great to see Chris after so many years - he looks great and is still as sweet as can be - and Angie had a great race. Particularly inspiring was an amazing young man named Rudy Garcia: The experience was so inspiring, I signed up for Ironman Arizona 2010 today. My goals are: Finish Ironman Arizona 2010 under 12 hours 30 minutes (my 2007 time). Finish Ironman Arizona 2011 in around 10 hours and qualify for Kona. Race Kona in 2012.

The problem with Christians . But we should be grateful they give us such opportunities for humor . Thanks to Andrea for sharing the laughter.

Thanks for the emails. It’s not so much that I want to drop out. I want to change the rules of the game. Some friends and I used to work together for a large corporation. One fellow did really well and will, no doubt, soon be running the place. The rest of us did not do so well and have moved on. The successful fellow immediately understood and accepted the rules of the game and very skillfully played his hand. The rest of us thought the game was folly (it was) and the rules did not apply to us (they did). Obama is a very clever and shrewd fellow. He is very pragmatic. He has his ideals, but is willing to compromise. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just better. I detest ideologues and fundamentalists, people blinded to reality by faith or belief. But it is a fine thing to have ideals. So I guess it comes down to: 1. I have ideals. 2. I think the game, the system, is folly. 3. I recognize that the rules do apply to me. 4. I struggle to skillfully play the game to move...

I had a very frustrating conversation a few weeks ago with a priest. Mental masturbation I would call it. Silly semantics. But it led me to this idea: Take the whole of human experience – everything we are capable of experiencing (for if it is outside our ability to experience, what relevance could it possibly have for us?) – and split it into two categories: Category 1: I stand in my backyard at night and look up into the sky. Gazillions of light-years away, hydrogen atoms fuse, a star burns, and photons zing across the universe at 3 x 10 8 m/s. Some of those photons strike my retinas and I see a star twinkle in the sky. Now I’m sure plenty of philosophers and theologians would debate what I am about to assert, but humor me and go with the flow. It seems reasonable to me that if there were no human consciousness to see the stars twinkling in the sky, the stars would continue to burn and eject photons, that is, they would continue to twinkle. So category 1 is this: All the things wi...

Our booth at the largest solar trade show in the world:

Happy Halloween.

Meditation on a morning run: 1. Name/define the goal/dream. 2. Desire. 3. Confidence or Courage. 4. Discipline. Sent from the field.

When I was a young man, I had the svelte body of an athlete ... and I had a lot more hair ... and I took pretty girls on dangerous adventures to wild, remote places (where there were no toilets) ... and my vehicle of exploration was the most fantastic Toyota 4x4 pickup truck. From the desert beaches of Bahia San Luis Gonzaga, Baja California Sur, to the hang glider launch at King Mountain, Idaho, my beloved truck carried me to my most precious memories. I have been accurately diagnosed as a puer aeternus, a man with difficulty letting go of the paradise of childhood, Antoine de Saint Exupéry's "Little Prince." Venturing forth in my truck to explore some uncivilized place, to climb a remote granite upheaval, to fling myself off a mountain in my hang glider, to kayak around an island in the Sea of Cortez, was the adrenaline that made my bourgeois professional life bearable, and my truck was integral to my lifestyle, my very identity. In 93, my poor little truck was very tir...

This may explain my propensity for drinking and fighting.

Being good and being close to God are very separate experiences. There are many good people who obey all the rules and follow all the laws, and yet they are far from God. And there must be profligate sinners that are in intense, intimate relationship with God. So what is ultimately important? Being good? Or being in relationship with God? And is this simply dramatic vocabulary for a choice between serving the collective (being good) and serving the self (being close to God)? Because what is "being in relationship with God" if not "realizing one's true self"? Sent from the field.

Bosque de los BTs. La barda. Garage-a-saurus. View from the street. Entry columns. Make me want to beat my neighbors with a bone. (I've recently come to realize that my humor is too sophisticated, at least, that's the excuse I'm using to explain why no one laughs at my jokes. So beating neighbors with a bone is a reference to the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith, ... If you still don't get it, try this:

I heard this myth this weekend and thought it brilliant. Lying with the Heavenly Woman is an African myth, where the heavenly anima and the mother archetype are often indistinguishable. This story portrays the double anima. A father warns his young son that one night the heavenly woman will appear and ask to lie beside him. If the son agrees, warns the father, he will be dead the next morning. In order to keep this from happening, the father moves the family to another village. The heavenly woman comes to the son in the new village and he lets her lie with him. The next morning he is dead. The heavenly woman is horrified because she had no intention of harming the boy. She persuades an old shaman to build a fire and toss a lizard into the hottest part of it, proclaiming that anyone who loves the youth enough to retrieve the lizard from the fire will restore his youth to him. Three people try and fail – the heavenly woman, the mother and the father. Following that, a plain girl who secr...

A solo drive from Salt Lake City to Elko, NV this morning. Stunning, wide-open, empty spaces; big blue sky, Monet-esque reflections of the mountains in the heat shimmering above the salt flats. Memories of Mandy and LAG, the SPY kids on their mission trip to Mexico, of hang gliding and the enthusiasm of younger days. The MP3 player plugged into the car stereo; Cold Play, Joe Satriani, my beloved disco, ethereal meditations . And the acknowledgement that we really do create our lives, that taking responsibility and consciously creating my future is scary, because the dream is perfectly beautiful and uncompromised, and exciting, because I almost have the faith to risk creating my bliss. And gratitude, that even though I have thus far unconsciously created my life, and in spite of my neurotic fear, anxiety and insecurity, I have been incredibly affirmed and validated. I am a lucky man. The future looks bright.

Thanks to Angela for remembering this. I might slightly edit it to make it fit into Scott's World. Heaven is Where: The Police are British The Chefs are Italian The Mechanics are German The Lovers are French and it's all organized by the Swiss. Hell is Where: The Police are German The Chefs are British The Mechanics are French The Lovers are Swiss and it's all organized by the Italians.

Free climbing in Colorado.

We do not think ourselves into a new way of living, we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. Fr. Richard Rohr

For the time being one is doing this or that, but whether it is a woman or a job, it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about.... The one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatever. - Marie Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus Rereading my essay On Karma , the part about following my bliss sent me to one of my favorite books where I rediscovered this quote.

Bones - a reflection on John 6:1-21 William Loader Dust on her muddy feet, still smeared from the wet and now blue with cold, hands stretched out in a meaningless pose of begging; for UN relief supplies reach the camp only late in the afternoon. Drawn faced children with bulging bellies, listless, some sleeping, many dying. Time.. time to live and time to die. Time to think - if only, but too tired, too undernourished, time but no strength to be profound, to reflect, to meditate; makes the dying easier, the pain less revolutionary. So don't ask me to think. Why do you want to tell me stories about food? Why torment me with your miracles of plenty? Where have the bread breakers gone? If only there were such multipliers of loaves and fish. We'll give them the fish. We'll offer the loaves. But these are your fantasies, romantic images of antiquity, best left to their glint and passed by. They never were a model for future followers. At most they are remnants of propaganda, stu...

“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” – Matthew 12:35 Several years ago, my shrink gave me a brilliant little book titled “Reaching Out” by Fr. Henri Nouwen. The gist of the book is this: There are 2 ways of being in the world: A positive way wherein you are confident, secure, and full of faith A negative way wherein you are insecure, fearful, and anxious Your way of being, positive or negative, determines how you relate to: Your Self Others God If you are at peace internally, you will create a beautiful life. If you are riddled with self-doubt and insecurity, if you are fearful and anxious, you will tragically avoid life. Great, I thought after reading the book. All I have to do is be confident and secure. But the reality is that everyone is riddled with varying degrees of insecurity and self doubt, even the most beautiful, popular, successful people. When we ...

“Shariputra, all things are essentially empty” – The Great Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra “In the beginning was Logos” – John 1:1 The monsoon had blown itself out in the afternoon. A cool damp breeze carried the smell of wet desert and the sound of celebratory bird songs across my back porch. I settled into my lawn chair, a tall glass of lemonade at my side. The sun dropped below the mountains (or did the mountains rise above the sun?) and the bottoms of the clouds began to glow an intense orange and then a soft pink. My body still, my mind at peace, my heart rate slowed and I slipped into an accidental meditation. The colors that I saw across the sky; where did they come from - the sun, the clouds, my retinas? Venus, the evening star, which is no star at all, appeared between the clouds and slowly glowed brighter (or did the sky slowly darken?). Stars twinkled, dusk settled into night, water condensed and dripped down the side of my glass making a puddle on the porch, and the fatigue of ...

Mom has published her reflections on her trip to Turkey .

Sunday's bike ride: Distance: 23.4 miles up + 23.4 miles down Elevation Gain: 6,404 ft Estimated Calories Burned: 2,858 C

We acquire our perspective, our point of view, from our culture. It becomes so fundamental, it is (almost) impossible to perceive anything without looking through our distorted lenses. The Buddhist understand that everything is essentially empty and we get to create meaning and significance, but even with that recognition, what we are capable of imagining is still quite finite. Our egocentricity gave us the illusion of dominion over all of creation - we have souls but the animals are for us to exploit. Anyone who suggests that humans and animals are not so different is accused of anthropomorphizing. I hope someday to dream a human song like brother whale .

April just brought a dead quail into the house. I don't know if she killed it or found it dead in the back yard. She's quite the hunter. Sent from the field.

The White Man's Burden Rudyard Kipling 1899 Take up the White Man's burden- Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. Take up the White Man's burden— No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper— The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead. Tak...

Left to right: Aunt Nancy, Dad's sister Aunt Joan, Dad's sister Uncle Ron, Joan's husband The fantastically handsome fellow is me Uncle Henry, Dad's brother Mom Dad took the picture.

Since learning how to properly serve Raki, I've taken to getting schnockered every evening while watching the monsoon sunset, sitting next to a fire in the back yard. Sent from the field.

What do you say when your dog proudly brings you a dead lizard she has stalked and killed? I think I said, "Oh dear." And then, when she made sure the lizard was good and dead by violently shaking it, I said, "No more kisses for you." What can I do? It's her instinct.

One of the most moving experiences on the Turkey adventure was having the Imam of the Green Mosque sing the Call-To-Prayer for us.

I'm not going to explain how we got in this situation or what happened, but I will say, it is good to get out into the world and experience what life brings.

Remember these pictures from 1963? See the handrail that Dad is holding on to? Well here it is today: The apartment building Mom and Dad lived in: Address: Kabaalioglu (1403), Apartment #3, Penthouse The building entry: The back of the building showing the roof where the 1963 photos were taken: The front of the building: At the front door of their apartment. Dad wanted to knock. Mom did not want to disturb the school teacher who now lives there. Another front view. And then we met Mom's friend Jacqueline and her children for lunch. Mom and Jacqueline had not seen each other for 47 years. Mom and Jacqueline. Me on the left, Dad, Mom, Jacqueline, Sandra, Guido. Izmir.