San Francisco street riding 1986 and 2017

I consider San Francisco the city where BMX street riding was born.  Dave Vanderspek and his Curb Dogs really pushed the skateboard idea that the whole urban world was a skatepark waiting to be sessioned.  Street skating pioneer Tommy Guerrero was one of the Curb Dogs, after all.  I know riders back to Bob Haro and the early BMX racers jumped curbs and did kick turns on banks.  But the Curb Dogs and the Golden Gate Park riders really pushed street riding to becoming its own genre.  The San Diego riders quickly joined the cause, pushing street knowledge even further.

In this clip above, about halfway through, you see Curb Dog Maurice Meyer doing what he did every day, riding the San Diego hills and jumping those curb cuts to big air down the hills.  Drob rode a coaster brake, too.  It amazed me seeing him, Vander and a few others blasting five foot high tabletops off curbs.

In this clip below, we see new school trials and street rider Danny MacCaskill doing the exact same thing on the crazy terrain of the city by the bay.  The progression continues.

Pump tracks look so fun

Inverness Pump Track in Scotland.

The thing about riding a BMX bike when I was young, is that I still cruise around town and banks, jumps, and street ledges still catch my attention.  And I'm 51 years old now and over 300 pounds.  The sumo-sized weight gain came during my taxi driving.  Too much sitting and fast food.  But the weight loss is going well.  I've lost 48 pounds, but I realize it'll be a long, long time before I can ride a 20 inch well again.  Larger bikes seem to be the way to go when I can afford a decent one.

I've got my eye on the SE Bikes Fat Ripper.  It looks like the right match for me for a while.  I've been watching bike videos on You Tube, and let's face it, mountain bikes have surpassed BMX bikes in the huge jump and downhill areas.  But I'm not going to be doing anything crazy.  I keep coming back to pump track videos.  These things, like the one above, just look like so much fun.  I may be buying a shovel before I buy a bike, and building one of these babies somewhere.

Transmutation: The Quest of the Alchemists

Checking out Facebook this morning, there was a post by old school BMX freestyler Maurice "Drob" Meyer.  He wrote a bit about how he's begun writing about moving to the hood as a kid, and all the crazy shit that happened there.  He mentioned that he has written quite a few pages, and hasn't even made it to the stuff that most of us know him best for.

His post comes a couple days after a guy in a car drove into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virgina, then backed up hitting more.  An act of hatred by any definition of the word, and an act of terrorism in the eyes of many.  Except this guy was an American, and likely had Nazi leanings.  He killed one person and injured 19 or so.

Looking for something positive, like Drob's writing about crazy experiences, I found the skate clip above of Richie Jackson, a skater I'd never heard of.  I watched this video twice, and it put a smile on my face.

Many years ago, in my search for what life is all about, and why we all have to deal with so much pain and suffering, I dug into the stories of the Medieval alchemists.  With crazy little laboratories, they mixed metals, and powders, and chemicals as part of a quest.  Their quest was to find the Philosopher's Stone, the magic substance that could turn base metals like lead into gold.  I know most of you, think of the Philosopher's Stone as what was in vault 713 at Gringott's.  But for hundreds of years, men working in secret sought the real thing. 

The process of turning lead in gold is called "transmutation."  While the real life alchemists added to our knowledge of chemistry and mathematics, the true transmutation is something else.  It's the act of turning our negative energy into something positive in everyday life.  The driver of that car in Charlottesville was most likely enraged, and gave in to that negative energy, causing a horrific tragedy. 

But Maurice Meyer writing the lessons from the dark times of his childhood is an act of transmutation, finding the positive in the negative things that happened back then.  Richie Jackson, and every skater or biker out there, channeling his negative thoughts into this clip of totally original tricks is another act of transmutation.  He turned the physical pain of crashing and the fear of getting hurt, along with whatever other negative energy he had, into an amazing, and downright funny and amazing video clip. 

In every moment, you have the choice between acting out of negative energy, or transmuting the negative into something fun, creative, and beneficial.  It's up to you. 

I'm stoked to have drawings for sale at Eashot Music

This clip is about six years old, but it shows you the inside of Earshot Music in Winston Salem.  My drawings, one of Johnny Cash and one of The Ramones, are on both sides of the black, vertical chalkboard you see in the background here.  Both are for sale for about $150 (with frames).  I'm totally stoked to have my drawings up in public after only a couple of months back in Winston-Salem.  Earshot Music is in a shopping center at 3254 Silas Creek Parkway, the shopping center with A.C. Moore, Toys-R-Us, and Marshall's, on the corner of Silas Creek and Hanes Mall Blvd.  It's right across the street from Hanes Mall.  Next time in the area, stop by and check out Earshot, and tell 'em The White Bear sent you.  #shadowsandsharpies

Ideas for the small towns and rural areas struggling right now

Adult Big Wheel drifting track.  Just one of the many things you could build in a small town to have some fun and create new jobs.

Instead of sitting around complaining and sucking up our tax dollars by scamming disability payments, do something cool in your town.

-Farm trophy bass.
-Rent powered hydrofoil surfboards on a local lake.
-Build a high quality outdoor mountain bike course.
-Build a high quality indoor mountain bike course.
-Build a mud bog race course.
-Build a film/video studio in an old building, then rent it out.
-Start a high intensity vegetable farm.
-Build a mushroom farm. 
-Start a goat yoga class.

You get the idea?  There are tons of different things you can do to make money in the post-Industrial Age economy.  Get creative.

Why rural and small town Americans need to put up or shut up

Looking into the poverty and lack of jobs in rural parts of the country, I ran across this video by the Washington Post, published in June of this year.  I won't make fun of The South like I do a bit too much, I'm going back to Ohio, where I was born and lived through 8th grade.  In first and second grade, I lived about 60 miles away from where these interviews took place.

It was a different world back then, the factories were still going strong.  Of course, the Cuyahoga river in Cleveland caught fire once back then.  I'm serious, the freakin' river caught on fire.  I digress.

But the factory jobs have mostly gone, either to a factory somewhere cheaper or to a factory filled with robotics and other technology.  I first remember hearing about factories moving in the late 70's.  Old men were bitching about it.  But the jobs weren't going to Mexico or China then, they were going to the American South, where there was cheaper labor.  People have forgotten that.

So... the higher paying jobs in the Ashtabula area have gone.  They blame Obama for that.  I hate to tell you folks, but thousands of people have been working towards cleaner energy for decades.  They've been doing that because the environment matters.  You can eat the perch and walleye from Lake Erie, in part, because of environmental regulations. Obama just signed his name a few times.

Here's what I don't see in this clip.  I don't see one person even talking about creating new jobs themselves.  It's not Obama's fault that you have mostly low wage jobs.  It's YOUR fault.  Read a fucking book about technology.  Get on the internet.  Learn the computer skills of the century you're actually living in.  Then, either move, or start creating jobs where you live.  In this clip I see a bunch of fucking lazy people blaming everyone else for their problems.

This is one of the worst relics of the Industrial Age that is fading away, the idea that somebody else is responsible for creating your job.  If the companies leave... then either move to where the good work is, or figure out a way to create some new jobs in your area.  What kind?  Any kind.

 I'll give you a great example out of rural Ohio itself.  The Amish Country.  Amish are as rural as rural gets, many drive horse and buggies everywhere they go.  The Ohio Amish country around Millersburg and Silver Creek gets about 4 million tourists a year.  Really, they get more visitors than Cedar Point, the main northern Ohio amusement park.  Why do the Amish get so many tourists?  Because they make all kinds of handmade food, crafts, furniture, and stuff you can't get anywhere else.  They've been doing this for years, and lots of people are willing to travel there to check it out and buy unique stuff.

You don't have to make handmade furniture, but you do have to start using your imagination to come up with something fairy unique to Ashtabula (and every other small town and rural area in the U.S.), and you have to start creating jobs.  CREATING JOBS IN DYING TOWNS IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE RESIDENTS THERE.  Stop waiting for Prince Charming to show up and bail your asses out.

There used to be a thing known as "American Ingenuity."  That was the idea that Americans were great a figuring new things out, coming up with new products, and new ideas to get things going.  Americans excelled at finding answers to tough problems.  Let's bring that concept back.   If you're just going to sit around and hope the most incompetent president ever put in office will perform a miracle, then you might as well put heroin in your water, kill everyone off, and let someone with some ideas take over your town.

Three letters people: D.I.Y.  Do It Yourself.

Oh, and I love how Brenda at 6:05, the one on disability, is bitching about illegal immigrants.  Will everyone who lives more than 1,000 miles from the Mexican border stop bitching about immigrants?  I've lived in New Mexico and California.  Most Latino immigrants are better Americans than you are.  They work hard. They go to church. They are very family oriented.  And if that isn't enough, THEY INVENTED GUACAMOLE.  What did you invent?

A whole lot of facts about poverty in rural America

Why did this webinar by Professor Thiede of Penn State University only have 203 views when I watched it?  One reason is that it's full of facts, and a large chunk of our population doesn't care much about facts these days.  For example, if you go to about 24:07, you'll find that a much larger percentage of rural Americans get Social Security Disability than urban Americans.  So, the Democratic spots of the country are literally supporting a huge, non-working chunk of the rural population.  So the facts show that the areas of the country that voted for Donald Trump are also the areas where the highest percentage of people are living off free government money.  Funny, I don't remember Trump mentioning that in any of his speeches.  Before you start trolling, I'm an independent, I vote for the people I think are most likely to improve their area. 

All political crap aside, rural poverty and the rural working poor are a huge issue for the whole country.  How do we come up with good paying, meaningful work for people in rural areas (and small cities and towns)?  It's something we need to work on in a big way, for a bunch of different reasons. 

I listened to this whole webinar, but not all the questions.  There's a lot in here if you're interested in this issue.

Finding the Present Moment

Here's a scene from Dan Millman's Way of the Peaceful Warrior movie.  If this blog post interests you, I highly recommend reading Dan's book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and all of his later books.

An old zen story

There was once a samurai warrior walking through the wilderness.  He heard a noise behind him, and looked back to see a lion creeping up on him.  The samurai looked around, and ran to a cliff he saw nearby, climbing up as fast as he could to escape the lion.  As he got about halfway up, he looked down to see the lion jumping up, and clawing just below his feet.  The samurai caught his breath, and then began to climb to the top of the small cliff to escape the lion. 

Just then he heard a noise above him.  He looked up to see a bear looking down from the top of the cliff.  The bear had heard the commotion below, and swung its massive paw down to get the samurai, just missing his head.  The samurai hung there on the side of the cliff, with the lion jumping up from below, trying to get him, and the bear swatting at him from above. 

The samurai took a deep breath, centered himself, and looked around.  There, growing from a crevice in the rock next to him was a strawberry plant.  There was a big, perfectly ripe, strawberry hanging from the plant.  The samurai picked the strawberry, ate it, and said, "Aaaahhh, delicious."

So what's the point of this little story?

The lion chasing the samurai represents thoughts of the past, trying to stay in the samurai's attention.  The bear on top of the cliff represents thoughts about the future, also trying to stay in the samurai's mind.  By stopping, taking a deep breath, and focusing on the center of his body, the samurai was able to stop thinking about the lion of the past and the bear of the future, and become aware of the present moment.  By paying attention to what was happening right at that very moment, the samurai was able to see the strawberry and enjoy eating it.

In our everyday lives, we spend most of our time either thinking about something that happened in the past, usually something we wish we could have done differently.  Or we are thinking about something the MIGHT happen in the future, usually something we're worried about.  By bringing ourselves back to the present moment on purpose, we can escape the thoughts that often hold us back from being our best selves.

How do you do this?

Personally, it helps me to touch something near me.  I'll touch the table in front of me, the chair I'm sitting on, or maybe the nearest wall.  It also helps to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.  I'll pay attention to the sights, sounds, textures, and what's going on right at that instant.  You can also focus on the center of your body, a point an inch or so below your belly button (called centering).  When you're paying attention to what's happening as it's happening in the present moment, you escape the thoughts of the past or the thoughts of the future.  If you're depressed, panicking, or feeling serious stress or anxiety, you can CHOOSE to think about something else.  Or you can just ask yourself, "How are things right now?"  Most of the time, things aren't that bad at all, but it was your thoughts that were freaking you out. 

If you practice bringing yourself back to the present moment when things are going OK, then you are more likely to remember to bring yourself back to the present moment when you get stressed, depressed, or are feeling anxiety.  This practice is called "mindfulness" in the Buddhist tradition.  But this isn't a Buddhist practice, it's a human practice, the Buddhists just see the benefit of it, and it has become a big part of their religion.

I've personally been using this practice for over 20 years, but not as much as I should.  Shortly after I first heard the story of the samurai above, I was working as a furniture mover.  We had a job where three of us had to get a 550 pound, antique, player piano up a flight of 26 steps.  Yes, 26 steps in a row.  One guy was pulling the handles of the dolly from above, and two of us were literally under the piano, pushing from below.  We'd all go, "1-2-3 aaauuuuugh" and get the piano up one step.  Then we'd catch our breath and do it again.  And again.  It sucked.

But I remembered the story of the samurai, and I started saying to myself, "Strawberry.  strawberry.  stay in the present and find the fucking strawberry."  We had the piano about halfway up the steps, and I caught my breath after the push, and looked around at was happening around me.  Suddenly I saw an amazing, bright orange dragonfly zipping around nearby.  It just hovered there for a couple of minutes.  It was the coolest dragonfly I'd ever seen.  I'd never seen one that brightly colored before.

Moving that heavy piano was one of the more dangerous things I've done in my life.  If any one of the three of us had slipped, the piano would have rolled out of control and crushed the two of us below it.  That would definitely have put us in the hospital, and could easily have killed one or both of us.  But by focusing on the present moment, I got myself away from the thoughts of "Fuck, this sucks.  Fuck, this sucks," that were racing through my head.  I pushed when I needed to push, and I watched the dragonfly, and then the nearby flowers as we caught our breath.  It taught me just how much this simple practice could help in a really gnarly situation.  But it can also give each of us a break from the stress of everyday life, at any time. 

Bring yourself to the present moment right NOW.  Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.  What's around you?  What is the texture of things you're touching?  What can you hear?  What can you see?  What can you smell?  Are things pretty tolerable right now?  Can you handle this moment right now? 

Now you know how to do this.  If you practice doing this when you're not in crisis, you'll be much more able to do it when you actually are in a crisis.