Selfies

Selfie Week 11: Driving

Okay, I’m using a throwback selfie this week. How far back is that? October 30th, 2009. Winnie – he’s the handsomer of the two of us – was literally a young pup of almost-three. And that shirt was exactly ten years old. I think I still have that hat, though these days I wear it the other way around (“The kangaroo goes in BACK, son!” the random old man in New Orleans told me earlier THAT SAME YEAR! (though right at the beginning of the year).

I didn’t pick this selfie because of the handsome dog or the kangaroo the wrong way around. No, I took it because we were driving. Heck, I don’t even remember where we were going, but we were moving forward, and usually that’s good enough for me.

True story: just today at my dayjob I was helping a gentleman at BMW Mottorad in Germany and I thanked him for my bike – not that he had anything to do with it other than working at the company in general. He asked where I’d ridden it. I told him from Death Valley to the tip of Washington. Saying that made me think two things simultaneously: one, I really need to head east more. But, two, I was pretty impressed with it myself.

When the Powerball lottery climbs high enough – and at $420 million it’s high enough – Fern and I fantasize about the epic road trip we’d take if we won. We’d set out with no particular destination in mind. On the grid, off the grid, doesn’t matter – we’d have some sort of awesome overland rig funded by our lottery haul – like this Earth Roamer (a guy’s gotta dream, right?). There are so many places I’d go if money and time weren’t critically monitored resources – how about an on- and off-road trip from Mexico to Canada via the Rockies? Or that bucket-listed Four Corners trip where you visit San Ysidro, CA, Blain, WA, Madawaska, ME, and Key West, FL for no other reason than, I don’t know, pick up a tourist coffee mug in each city.

The urge to drive, to travel, to journey, it used to frighten me. I used to think it meant I was running away from my problems. And, yeah, if I’m totally honest there’s something to that, but more than that these days my loved ones are so cast to the wind – family in Anacortes, Washington, Pasadena, California, Cape Cod… friends up and down the west coast and scattered across the country like jewels in a field… And I’m here. Don’t get me wrong, I love my space here in Guerneville. But as I’m getting older the urge to touch base face to face, and to embrace in a real physical hug… it’s becoming more and more precious and priceless.

“But, Jordy,” you say, “Why not just fly?” Well, I don’t mind flying, but it’s expensive and has always seemed a little disorienting to me. I mean, really, door closes in San Francisco and opens again and I’m… in Seattle? Yes, I understand how it works, but there’s a part of my lizard-brain that is suspicious of putting so much space between me and the ground.

Last year, I managed two major road trips – the ride through Shasta, Truckee, and Yosemite, and then Christmas when Fern and I tag-teamed on a straight-through drive to Anacortes – nether were planned too far in advance, which isn’t ideal, sure, but sitting here in March 2018, I’m taking some solace in those two because right now I don’t have any significant road trips planned for this year. When the snow melts, I need to get up to see my uncle in Auburn. I’d love to visit my sisters up in Washington again, but, I don’t know how realistic that is. I definitely need to go visit my brothers who are much closer at hand… We’ll see what the year brings. I’m confident there’s a proper road trip ahead this year. It will come up, certainly.

And when it does I’ll promise you a more updated road selfie than the above picture. Newer shirt, kangaroo in the back, and Winnie and I are both older and wiser.

Well, at least Winston is.

Selfie Week 10: My Winter Olympic take-away and The “Jordy is Awesome” Game

We’re a few weeks beyond the closing ceremonies of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and I confess I had a middling interest in the games. Part of it stems from sad memories associated with the last time the Winter Olympics came around, and part of it comes from being a coastal dweller — the last time I was on skis was during the Clinton administration, and I haven’t been on ice skates since about five years before that. There’s curiosity, sure, but I was more curious about whether the Warriors were going to pull out of their mid-season malaise than I was on whether Nathan Chan would land his quads.

But the story that has stuck with me and that I’m trying to draw solace from is what happened nearly a half hour after Dario Cologna of Switzerland crossed the finish line of the Men’s 15km Cross-Country skiing. First, I don’t know if you’ve ever cross country skied. It’s ridiculously difficult and utterly exhausting. We’re talking over 9 miles of up and down snowy hills — and mind you, downhill on cross country skis is no picnic, either. So, fast forward past the podium finishers. In 111th place, came 40-year-old Samir Azzimani of Morocco (think about how much snow there is in Morocco). Seven minutes later, 38-year-old Kequyen Lam of Portugal crossed the finish line, just two minutes ahead of the unforgettable 34-year-old Pita Taufatoria from Tonga — if you don’t remember him from the Summer Games two years ago, you must have seen him shirtless in the 20 degree Opening Ceremonies this winter).

Yeah, this guy

A minute and a half after that, 42-year-old Sebastian Uprimny of Colombia crossed the line. And then all four of them stood together at the finish line, utterly spent, but cheering on the last man struggling towards the finish line. As 43-year-old German Madrazo of Mexico crossed the finish line almost 25 minutes after the first-place Swiss, these last-place finishers celebrated like the standings were inverted. They hoisted Madrazo on their shoulders because he finished — they all finished!

I woke up in the midst of a panic attack towards the end of last week. The laundry-list of missed-[self-imposed]-deadlines combined with other external pressures, and I just lost it. Fern, bless her heart, was there and managed to calm be down. I’m still not totally right — the weekend where I would hope to catch up evaporated in a bartending gig down in Carmel — but I’m also not completely freaking out. And in the greater scheme of things, that laundry list is not nearly as significant as my fomenting brain made it out to be. But in the middle of it, trying to talk that kind of reason into myself is futile. As my dad was wont to say, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember you’re there to drain the swamp.”
Mind you, I’m the first person to offer the advice about “how to eat an elephant” (one bite at a time). Taking my own advice? Yeah, not really good at that myself. It comes from being my own worst critic, and a very self-deprecating one at that. If I say something bad about myself — and it’s a deliberate effort not to — and Fern overhears, she makes me say at least three nice things about myself. She calls it the “Jordy Is Awesome Game” and it’s the hardest thing in the world to say something, anything nice about myself. And coming up with more than three nice things if I’ve been particularly vicious about myself (and I can be vicious; as Neko Case sings, “Did someone make a fool of me/ Before I could show ’em how it’s done?”) is a Herculean effort.
But I’m trying to do better — that’s all we can hope for. I’m no Dario Cologna crossing first. Heck, I’m not even Samil Azzimani, or Kequyen Lam. I sure as hell don’t look anything like the Tongan god, Pita Taufatoria. But putting one ski in front of the other, I’ll keep struggling forward. It’s not worth focusing on the fact that I’m not a podium finisher. In the end, it’s enough to know I’m at the Olympics, damnit, even if just in my mind. Keep my eyes on the finish line, and when I do cross, I know all you other bottom-finishers will be there to help celebrate with me.
This was the initial article in the Washington Post I read about the 15km Cross Country finishers

Selfie Week 9: Everything New is New Again

This is me ready to record! Record what? Well a new podcast, of course.
This may come as a shock, but I really enjoy writing. I know, I know, that’s a surprise – sorry to spring it on you like that. Writing, of course, takes time, but so does reading. And we all have super busy schedules with kids, and pets, and work, and sending the kids and pets to work (that’s a thing now, right?) and it’s often the case that we lack the time to sit down and read things we legitimately intend to read – I just have to look at the ever-growing stack of magazines I’ve been meaning to get to for proof of that.
But by virtue of the fact that you’re here you may have an interest in reading what I’m writing on a now-regular basis. To that end, I’m going to start a podcast where I read these posts – probably these selfie posts and definitely the stories – each week. If you’re new to listening to podcasts, I can help. But if you’ve got a laundry list of podcasts you subscribe to and listen to on the regular, I hope you’ll consider adding mine to your list.
This isn’t my first foray into podcasting, but it’s the first time I’ve done any recording in quite some time. Get in the time machine, and set the dials back to 2006: my best friends Mark and Owen had scattered with their families to disparate parts of California and we looked for a way to get together and talk about common interests, if only virtually. From that idea we started “Three Guys, Twelve Songs”. I don’t know if any of those episodes are floating around the internet (nothing truly dies on the internet, right?), but I don’t have an active link for them. It’s been some time since I’ve listened to an episode, but I remember them as roundtable-style, rambling discourses on each of our four songs we brought to the table. We’ve always had different tastes in music, but they all had some intersections and it was fun to touch base with the guys and see if what was tickling my fancy found any purchase for them. While finding songs and things to say about them never seemed an issue, setting a time that worked for all three of us to meet up was never simple, it got progressively more difficult with the demands of family and work and the podcast eventually fell into a permanent hiatus – the term nowadays is “podfade”.
Somewhere in the middle of that run, Anna and I started up a much sillier podcast of the same genre. It was called “Mousse and Sqrrrl” (the three “r”s was important). Listening back to those absolutely feels like a view into a long ago time. There’s a lot tied up in just about everything we did back in those days and I’m not ready to try to sort it all out here, but suffice it to say I look back on those podcasts with fondness while also cringing. A different life. A different life.
But my microphones have been largely dormant since then – geez, it’s been at least six years, maybe more? But it’s like the great sage Dr. Dre said, “Now you wanna run around talking bout guns like I ain’t got none / What you think I sold ’em all?”. Over the weekend, I dug out a mic and an XLR cable, updated my drivers, dusted off my copy of Cubase, and… realized how much I’ve forgotten.
Isn’t that the way? Sure, there’s a particular skill you were good at. Recording, or maybe throwing a perfect spiral, or pulling a wicked ollie – whatever it is, you try to go back and… that cruel beast, Time, serves to make us remember we were once really good at something even though we’ve lost the memory (muscle memory, gray matter, or a combination of both) and we realize we’re a parody of our former selves. We intend to go through perfect routes, or drop into a half-pipe, or whatnot, but could we now? Really?
I’ve been meaning to record a podcast for the last couple years – it’ll be music, sure, but just me (for now). I’ve got the idea, the URL, the material… I just didn’t want to see how much I’d forgotten. And that fear kept me from even getting as far as I did this weekend. Part of my brain lamented that if it’s not fantastic, don’t do it. And, yes, I’ve read the articles about how “Perfect is the Enemy of Good”. Or more specifically, the “Nirvana Fallacy” where you know the actual thing will fall short of the idealized, so why bother? That’s where I’ve languished.
But Saturday night while Fern sat in the other room watching anime, I closed the door to the tiny office, cued up one of my stories, hit record, and I started to read… And then I stopped – it was a proof of concept thing. But it worked! It was my voice. I was reading my words that I’ve grown pretty proud of. I took a step beyond the idealized, and I’m going to keep walking.
To that end, let me tell you what you’re not going to get: you’re not going to get perfectly produced content that sounds like Ira Glass. You’re probably not going to get melodic interludes that sonically illustrate breaks in the text, nor are you going to get memorable lead-in and lead-out music. You’re not going to get well-executed gating effects that make my echo-y office sound more like a recording booth. And though I feel better I still sound a little nasal-y, so you’re not even going to get Jordy sounding at his finest.
But you’re going to get something.
And something is better than nothing!