Me in the woods at San Felasco mid September 2010

So it’s been a while since I got around to blogging! However, I am happy to report I am still doing very well! I know I have been neglecting my cyberworld, other than the occasional rant on facebook (or rants about how facebook sucks! (perhaps I will blog more about that later?)). If you notice, I have still been updating my bike totals (to the right) I’m still on pace for 10,000 mile year! So obviously, I have been doing a lot of riding, including the Santa Fe, Horsefarm 100 & Horrible 100 century rides (& several solo 100 mile rides too including one today). My love life has also been great the last 4 months, but you’ll have to catch me in person if you want to hear about that! So between work, biking & social life, I have not found much time to blog, but I do still have many things to say. However, I think the sad state of the political/economic situation in the US is not worth the energy right now, so hopefully I can keep those opinions to my self!

Yes, Biking is still my obsession! I’m also still keeping the weight off, but holding fairly steady the last few months (after dropping over 50 lbs between March & September). One biking highlight was riding back to back Century rides (Santa Fe & Horsefarm) during the Gainesville Cycle Fest in October! I rode a fairly mellow pace with friends on the Santa Fe Century the first day, but managed to keep a 20.1 mph average speed for 100 miles the second day on the Horsefarm 100. I rode behind the pace car with the lead peloton for the first 30 miles. It was a little crazy for me as we were riding tire to tire between 25-30 mph at times. The Horrible 100 in November was another highlight for sure! I last rode this ride 17 years ago (on my mountain bike with road tires). My old friends Jere & Jorge who rode with me 17 years ago joined me on the ride again (along with 3 of their buds). It was a pretty good challenge with over 45oo foot vertical gain. The worst hills were in the last 20 miles! At one point I thought my legs were going to cramp, but I stopped, ate a few peanuts & managed to avoid serious cramps. I kept a pretty strong 18.5 mph pace for that ride! I thought that was pretty good, considering the hills & a bit of a head wind at times.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of me biking. I’ll also try to post some photos of my numerous venomous snake encounters this season soon!

(on Cedar Rock, Pisgah Nat. Forest, 5/10/2010)

Once again thinking I need to blog. For those who know me, we (Hezzie, Heidi & myself) are doing quite well! You may notice I lost a bit of hair! Also working on losing some pounds! I’ve been biking pretty regular & avoiding beer, so that helps.

I hope to be able to add something to the internet world again. I will try to avoid cynicism, but that can be difficult for me at times.

I am trying to change & focus not just on thoughts, but connecting to who I really am. Hopefully I can be more authentic & that will be reflected in my posts!

Stay tuned!

PS. You may notice a new theme (appearance) for this blog (I use wordpress). This is because I switched my web host. In the process, I lost my database for my blog & cannot recover my old theme. However, I did back up the posts & comments, so most everything is the same. I switched to ipage.com for hosting. They claim to be carbon neutral & to be honest, they were cheap too. Had a few bumps along the way, but think everything is set back to normal in my domain (taroman.com). I am certainly glad to be departed from GoDaddy (embarrassed to say I ever signed up with them)! I had a 2 year contract with them & they sucked so bad for hosting. They don’t even have a toll free number for support. Every experience with them was painful, corporate hell! Ipage.com has been much more friendly, even when they didn’t really know what they were saying!

I realize that I do need an outlet for thoughts, but I don’t have the motivation to really become one of the blogger types. I am not that much into reading other people’s blogs & commenting on a regular basis, so why would I expect someone to be interested in my blog? Likely it will mostly be people who know me & find it through my web page. Anyway, I am still here and receive comments through the blog, so please feel free to encourage/discourage me or say what you think (don’t worry, not that many folks will see it anyway!)

So, I will try to write more soon!

Peace, Love & Happiness to anyone out there in the cyberworld reading this!

Perhaps the most liberating books I have read on this subject were the works of Sinclair Lewis. I found ‘Babbitt’ & ‘Main Street” to be an amazing depiction of the societal forces that suppress thinking outside of the box (I have yet to read his prophetic ‘It Can’t Happen Here’). The fact that these books were written in the 1920s allowed me to see that my thoughts were not crazy, but were more part of a natural reaction to a society that is out of balance. In my opinion, his books are more relevant now than ever.

The recently overheard candid comment of Jesse Jackson shows the power of political systems to reign in self expression. While his comments were crude, they clearly expressed the frustrations with the direction of the Obama campaign. It was very sad to see the way he had to humbly admonish himself likely realizing that he had just ruined any relevance he will have in Obama’s campaign. Much like Reverend Wright, he will be discarded for daring to express the pent up feelings of being black in the US. There is no place for such expression in a two party political system.

I was also struck by the reaction to the recent death of Jesse Helms. In an NPR interview right after his death, John Edwards (also a former Senator from North Carolina) was asked about Jesse Helms. I thought he did a pretty good job of acknowledging that he was diametrically opposed to Helms and he also knew that he had to acknowledge that he apparently could be nice at a personal level. Of course there is humanity in everyone, but what he couldn’t say was that Helms built a career on prejudice and hatred. He could not openly condemn the man for the damage he had done to the nation and his home state of North Carolina. We did see such a condemnation from L.F. Eason III, who gave up his job as Secretary of Agriculture in North Carolina, rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. While he obviously overstepped his authority and was probably ready to leave his job anyway after 29 years, I found it to be an amazingly inspiring act of self expression. I feel I can relate to his frustration, though 3 years ago, I chose to quietly leave a 10-year job working for a dysfunctional state regulatory agency (more on that later).

Luckily, as I have aged, I have had the opportunity to learn that self expression is a necessary part of good mental health. That it is important to maintain balance by encouraging self expression. Sure, I can still consider the effect that expression has on others. I can also know that people who truly care about me will see the positive effects healthy self expression has on my personal well being. I still struggle very much with concerns for how my words and actions affect others and hope that this blog will be therapeutic for me! If anyone is reading this blog, please feel free to call me out when you notice that I am not saying what I think. Also, feel free to respond with your own forms of self expression.

I decided I needed an outlet for my thoughts, feelings & general ramblings about life. Who knows, if I die this may be all that is left of those thoughts as everything else is in my computer under password protection. I doubt anyone would bother to try to access those files?

I am in school and working, so this may be a slow start. Also, I have no idea if anyone will find this unless I specifically tell them.

Anyway, Hello to whoever happens to read this!