Today is Memorial Day — a remembrance of those who have fallen, and of those who serve or have served in the service of our country. Aside from the sales, BBQs, and auto racing that comes with this weekend, we should all take a moment to pause and remember those who’ve made those sales, BBQs and auto racing a reality of the freedom we enjoy here.

Yesterday in church, Charles had all the veterans in the pews stand, and receive the applause of the remainder of the congregation. While I mention my time in the Air Force — usually spinning yarns about my time there — I don’t really think of myself as a veteran the way I perceive the word. I was on that caretaker shift, in that long spell (relatively speaking) between the end of Vietnam and the beginning of the first Gulf War. I served during the Cold War, part of the mutually assured destruction tenet. And, of us who served then, who could’ve believed that the world could’ve gotten so safe, seeing the USSR dissolve and the nuclear terror I’d had nightmares about since I was a teen all but disappear overnight.

And who would’ve thought that out of the giddy era, the world would change in an instant, and we would find ourselves and our country in a constant effort of war, almost 1984-esque in its scope of effort, secrecy and intrusion. A war with no real end in sight, no tangible endgame, and no way out.

So, yes, I’m still uncomfortable when asked to stand in church as a veteran, not because I’m ashamed of my time — I’d like to think that the time I spent minding the store helped lay the foundation for a decade of truly golden times — but because I don’t think my time means as much as those who served before me and those who are serving now. They are the heroes, putting life and limb on the line so some yahoo in middle of the country can pound on his keyboard on a Monday away from work.

I salute them.

I’d been eyeing the 30th anniverary release of Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle since I first saw it in Best Buy a month or two ago. As a kid, this was one of my favorite pieces of music, and I wore the grooves off the vinyl I’d received as part of my six-for-a-penny intro offer from one of the mail-order record clubs. When I saw the 30th anniversary release, I figured it was time to put it back in my collection.

I popped it in Smokey’s CD player, and was transformed back 30 years… man what a piece of music! The powers-that-be did a great job remastering it — I’d never heard it sound so clear. The best was yet to come though…

Along with the remastered CD was a DVD containing a 5.1 mix of the album. I plunked it in, sat in the center the room, cranked it up, and was immersed in the most incredible re-run from my childhood that I’ve ever experienced. It was like being wrapped up in the music, it swirling all around me. What a fabulous treat!

16.4mi

Tonight’s ride was really a big ol’ reminder of last year’s rides. The first few miles were horrid, full of self-doubt and a huge desire to turn tail and head for home. But, just like last year, I broke through the 3-4mi wall, and found the rest of the ride to be pleasant.

Along with a good ride though, I also got to see a bunch of snakes on the trail. I’ve seen more snakes this month on the trail than I did all of last year. I dunno if that’s because the water’s so high, or from some other kind of natural influence.

So, I haven’t entirely identified what I’ve seen. The state has a site showing the snakes of Missouri, and I’ve been trying to do some comparisons.

I know I saw a rough green snake tonight, along with an osage copperhead (poisonous). The big black one might’ve been a western cottonmouth (water moccasin), but I haven’t been able to tell from the single photo on the site. Another site makes my coiled up mystery snake appear to be a cottonmouth, but it’s still hard to tell. And I think the big black wavy snake is yet another species, but I can’t tell for sure.

Any ideas?

I just stumbled on a really thought-provoking website called FutureMe. Apparently, these guys have been getting press for a while, but since, by most accounts, I live under a rock, I’d never heard of them. Here’s the premise.

Basically, you write an e-mail to yourself (or someone else), to be delivered at some date in the future… a month, a year, a decade away. You can also mark your e-mail as public/anonymous, and it’ll be out there for anyone to see. With over 400,000 e-mails captured, and approximately 15% of them marked public/anonymous (per the site), there’s a lot to read.

So what would you say to yourself? Would you beg penance for a sin in the present? Perhaps a challenge from the past to encourage you to face something, or to continue chasing a dream? Maybe a future apology for something heinous in the present?

I gotta tell ya, I’m intrigued. And yeah, I’ll probably send me an e-mail for some future me to read. Seems only fair that I should badger myself for something later on….

So, on my way home from work today, I turned on my trusty XM radio and started listening. However, as I made my way home, the signal would drop… under bridges, even under trees. I checked my connections, unplugged and replugged all my cables, and just drove home, dealing with the occassional outages.

When I got home, I brought my headunit in, and tried it in the house. Same deal — apparently, there was something going on that was making the satellite signal lower than normal. So I started looking around on the XM site for any note of trouble. Nada.

However, Google came to the rescue, with loads of articles indicating a massive outage hits XM Radio. Apparently, one of their birds is down for mysterious performance reasons, and all of us are suffering from poor to no XM radio.

From some of the fora I’ve been perusing, there’s a lot of Sirius folks that are loving this — apparently, it’s been unaffected. And, of course, there are folks out there predicting alien invasion, just like in Independence Day.

So…. invasion? Dead bird? The merger between XM and Sirius ticking off…. someone? Well, maybe. I’m keeping my options open on which theory I’ll subscribe to!

20.7mi

Beck and I took a little ride from Weldon to Defiance today. This was the first time she’d been on the trail, and I picked an easy route that included a stop at the Katy Trail Bike Shop for a slurpie. Now that’s riding!

After we got back to Weldon, I decided to ride one-way up to St. Charles, and have Beck pick me up. As it ends up, I only went to the 364 bridge — there was a big festival up there, and I figured we wouldn’t be able to find each other, much less get her parked close to the trail! So, to the bridge complex I went, and got myself picked up by Beck.

I hadn’t realized how liberating it would be to ride without having to keep the return ride in mind. It was wonderful not to worry about the distance I had left in the tank! Really cool ride.

And I ran across one of my little friends on the trail — apparently a timber rattlesnake. Man, there’s some serious snakage going on this year!

Photographer’s Journey ran a piece addressing a Nikon ad campaign which claims that anyone could take a great picture with the new D40. To that end, Nikon delivered a bunch of D40s to the residents of a small town in South Carolina, and let them play with the new cameras for a while to see what they’d come up with.

What appalls me is the arrogance of the piece. There’s an implication from one line in the piece that if you didn’t learn and practice using film and a darkroom before moving to digital, you just somehow can’t become a real photographer (my interpretation). What a pretentious view! If that’s the case, in about 30-40 years, there will be no real photographers, as there won’t have been film and darkrooms with which they could hone their craft before moving to digital.

What was also interesting was the the author’s contention that the photos these novices shot were no better than point-and-shoot images shot at a family function. These folks (may) have no training, no fancy lighting or lenses, and went out into their lives and bared it all for the world to see. That’s cool and transcends the criticisms of this article. Nikon’s approach is art in and of itself, but even beyond that, the images are good. Sure, there’s some that are better than others, but even no pro hits a home run with every photo. If that was the case, they wouldn’t be buying larger storage cards for their cameras, and cameras with faster and faster shutter frame rates, and would rely on catching a moment with only a single click of the shutter.

Is it fair to assume that putting a nice piece of gear in your hands is gonna make someone a great photographer? No — no more than putting a driver in a NASCAR ride is gonna make them a great driver. But what it will do is instantly give them an edge. Digital photography is the ultimate in instant gratification, self-taught learning, and a fast-track to learning photography if someone wants to learn. If they just wanna shoot photos of the kids, that’s cool too, and is no less important than the pro photographer who is shooting the latest thing — fashion, war, crime, party, wedding. They’re both telling a story with their images, and preserving a bit history. That’s the point after all; everything else is just so much fluff.

16.39mi

I visited my friend, the Katy Trail, tonight. After a couple of rides on the Al Wilson trail this week, I decided it was time for me and friend Katy to see each other. That trail’s a jealous mistress!

I decided to head toward the bridge from Weldon, and started pedalling. As I observed last year, the first 3-5 miles were horrible. But once I got to the bridge, I decided to head on up to Pitman Hill Road. I hadn’t been there this year, and my legs felt like they still had some “go” in them.

That’s when I ran over the first snake — a tiny little green snake. I doubt I hurt him, but I still didn’t like the fact I put a couple of tires across him. A mile or so later, I encountered the other snake.

This guy was about two feet long, as thick as my thumb, and coiled in the middle of the trail. I later discovered he was a Red Milk Snake. His colorings are similar to those of the Coral Snake, but this little dude is non-poisonous, and is really pretty. I stopped and took some photos of him… he didn’t seem to mind.

I looped back at Pitman Hill, and neither of the two snakes were around. I guess they got tired of us cyclists, and went home. For me, I went home after a very satisfying ride!

And it has been. A week or so of nothing but all-work-and-no-play.

I’ve been out on the bike some, trying to get ready for the MS150 come September. I just can’t get enough cycling in, and the weather hasn’t helped much. A lot of rain, along with some real severe stuff this week. It’s much, much cooler now though, and the riding is fantastic!

I’ve also been getting pieces ready for my show in July at Framations. The pieces are getting cranked out, one by one. I’m figuring I need 20-30 large pieces for the show, so I still have a good little ways to go before I’m done with that.

And work is work. I’m getting deeeeeeply immersed in my new job, and that is taking a ton of energy from me. I’m enjoying it though, and that’s the key!

I just noticed that the small thumbnail photos for each day are missing. Dunno if I busted something with the move to the new server hardware, or if it was the new version of WordPress that nuked ‘em. Bummer….. They’ll return, trust me!