Dreaming of a Life Less Ordinary

  Saturday May 2, 2026: It was probably the most nerve-racking drive to a WW meeting I’ve ever had. I’ve made that trip in the late ’80s, again in the ’90s, the 2000s, the 2010s—and now the 2020s—but I don’t think I’ve ever felt nervous.  I was not nervous when I went in August of last year for the first time in a long time, I said I was going and I went.   I kept telling myself that it didn't matter, it was just a number.  I kept telling myself that my self worth wouldn't change regardless of the out come.  It didn't and it hasn't.  However, even as I told myself it was just a number on a scale and weight was a fickle thing that can hinge of so many things besides just what you eat.  We are talking sleep, mood, what you drink, when you drank it, restroom breaks and regularity, it all goes into the end result.  There was a nervous tension in my car and no matter how much I tried to lose myself in the podcast I was playing, my mind was thinkin...

Sunday April 26, 2nd Voyage   Maiden Voyage on a Ship of Fools....  I can hear it in my head crisp and clear, well as crisp and clear as a Jerry recording could be on any given night at a Grateful Dead Show, and the lyrics just kept pumping through my head on Friday afternoon as I was out on Phantom for her Maiden Voyage: " Ship of fools sail away from me It was later than I thought when I first believed you But now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools" It didn't start that way, but it sure became the way really fast.  Rule number 1 of riding a bike with electronic gears.  Make sure your gears are charged.  Crazy we have come to a world where it is hard to be smarter than the bike you ride.   The gearing is quite sophisticated these days and power is required to make them work.  I was lucky, I was doing a thirty minute easy ride, and that I was doing low power, low HR, and high cadence and my bike was stuck in the granny gear.   F...

Bikes.... I missed my weekly Weight Watchers Meeting because, I went to Kentucky for a bike ride.  If Kentucky ranked 50 out of 50 on my state list before I went there, doing a bike ride in the Bike Capital of Kentucky didn't do the state any favors.  If I hate Kentucky it is because of a girl, it always is, isn't it?  That though is a different story.  The truth is when I am honest, I don't hate Kentucky, I just like to act like I hate Kentucky. Hating on Kentucky is what Hoosiers do. Three days post ride, I can honestly say it was not as terrible as I thought, but a few bad experiences leave scars, like the pitbull that chased me and ran me off the road.  Thank goodness I was not hurt and the dog wasn't hurt.  Kentucky is hilly.  More hilly that I would have ever thought.  I mean the ups and downs of that bike ride were a lot.  I broke after the dog incident and got a tow from the bottom to the top of biggest climb, I am not proud of that, ...

  Several times I have sat in the Weight Watchers meeting and just listened to other peoples stories.  So many of these stories I can relate to.  So many are mirrors reflections of your own self.  The ones that always hit closest to home and sent me off into deep thought are the fast food incidents.  I hear most people refer to these are lapses or failures, but that is not how I look at them, I look at them more as bad programing.  Eating fast food isn't a failure.  Sometimes it is just what is a available and what you have to have.  What is a failure is beating yourself up over a lapse or a  misstep .  I think it happens because we’re conditioned by a billion-dollar industry to see things in black and white, even though most things actually live in the gray.   Then there is the judgement.  How many times have we been told fast food bad, such and such good.  How much time do we spend in judgement of what is a goo...

  Synchronicity or the meaningful coincidences that we tend see in our existence of everyday things that seem to have no connection but feel like they really do.     Well, that is what some people might call it anyway, but I call it “Ka”.     Of course, I do after all I am a disciple of The Dark Tower, and the Tower is held together by Ka.   The pattern of the number 50 kept showing up in my life this week.  At the age of 50, I am progressing on losing 50+ pounds.  This has been achieved by good eating, cycling, and workouts.  The workouts with weights have gotten more intense, which lead me to ordering two 25-pound plates, which of course adds up to 50.  I also ordered extenders from power blocks of 40 pounds but with all the packing on that box it weighed 50 lbs.  Then, I did the math this week and I am 50 pounds from my goal weight.  That is what we call KA, or the Synchronicity of 50.  So,...

  The Drawing of 3     (Spoilers ahead)   Back again and what a title! You probably don’t know but “The Drawing of Three” is one of the most important Stephen King Novels to me. I bought it in 1997, I held onto it for years, I picked it up and tried to read it, but the protagonist, or one of them, was a junky, and I found him irredeemable. I put the book down. Then at some point in Sunnyvale, California, I made the decision that I had to press on, I had to find out more about the Gunslinger, his Ka-get, and the Dark Tower that had haunted me since I was 14 years old.    Funny how the world works, now at 50, I’ll read anything King I can get my hands on, and it’s all because of that heroin junky, that made me out the Drawing down. To me Eddie Dean’s redemption arc became so important to me. His comical balance to the Gunslingers unapologetic sternness and lack of imagination. I cried when Eddie died years later in Campbell when I read about his passing. Howe...