Its been some time

Hi there.

Phew! Finally. With all those awkward plesantries out of the way, i think its time to get down to what i like to call "brass tax." In my absence from this part of my little life away from my life on the interweb, i have really learned nothing that can benifit you in any general way, only in very very specific situations have i become a "ninja" or otherwise specifically skilled person. All of these situations have some relation to the fact that you are a 24-year-old cyclist that lives with his parents. So in specific review, your a 24-year-old cyclist who finished his degree and has generally no plans in utalizing said degree aside from a hefty deduction from his bank account each month reminding him in a not so subtle way of how posh his college experiance was.

Situation 1:
You just went to the fridge, and theres nothing in it remotely edible without significant effort.... and the cereal is stale because you left it open overnight.... and moms at work.... and your sick of bananas.... and your feeling more worthless than normal...

SOLUTION: Minute rice. Which, really, from turning the stove on to putting rice in mouth is like ten minutes, its still better than hour rice. And lets face it, time is not really something you are "pressed for" at this point.

Situation 2:
You take particular issue to the fact that mom enjoys half and half coffee each morning, and its getting hard to hammer twice as much coffee than usual to meet your already unhealthy caffine requirements each morning.

SOLUTION: Alterra coffee. Being 2 blocks away it feeds your need to be worthless by driving your car there, which takes longer than walking. You also feel like your somehow saving money by getting your card punched working towards that "13th cup is free" level of excellence.

Situation 3:
Mom takes away the video game you bought because its too violent... !

SOLUTION: Dont play videogames anymore, because that was the only game you could afford. Sportscenter reruns it is! Gotta love scott van pelt. This happened. A free rent is a tough rent.

Situation 4:
Car smokes and will cost more to fix than you paid for it.

SOLUTION: Do not, by any means, fix car. Drive it into the ground. Purchase $50 gas mask to prevent fumes from doing long term damage to brain.

Situation 5:
Your in the shower, and you forgot to replenish your shampoo supply, and youve been forgetting to replace the body wash you ran out of last week, but your wet already and in a bit of a pinch.

SOLUTION: Bar soap, this time in the hair as well. Youve been making due with that bar of soap that sits in the corner unused by everyone, but keeps its place in the shower because everyone thinks someone else must be using it, and soap usage is very rarely discussed in any household. One time we put a couch we didnt want sophomore year into an unoccupied room before its future residents moved in. At semester we walked by and saw the couch in use and were like "holy cow! they used it!" Turns out, one roommate thought the other roommate brought the couch, and vice versa... one day about a month into the semester one roommate says to the other while both sitting on the couch "hey thanks for bringing the couch dude!" to which the other roommate replied "i thought you brought it"
Awesome. Its just like that soap. Noone is using it, your not even sure how it got there in the first place. some things are better left unquestioned, and therefore unanswered.

Situation 6: Out of gas.

Solution: Park self in, and then helpfully suggest "oh dont worry about moving your car out for me, i will just take yours, its no big deal, really." I am especially proud of this.

Situaiton 7: Out of gas and alone.

SOLUTION: Blog.

So there you have it folks. My seven tips to being a 24-year-old cyclist living at home with his parents.

Hopefully this resurfacing in the blog world will be a common occurance. I move to Arizona in november and will have a reasonable amount of free time, so expect more at least then. In the meantime, i have alot to catch up on in your blogs... very excited.

Talk to you soon

James. James Daniel.

every once in a while you hit a creative dead zone, where you cant imagine what it was that you used to think about to write a blog post, let alone imagine something new to publish. Your dismal creative outlook becomes contagous to other parts of your psyche and you self-centered-ly begin to believe that the entire world is creatively defficent.... and then this happens:

Oh my. Someone, somewhere, is being awesome, and its refreshing. I wonder how he got all these people to come to the beach and associate with eachother long enough to get this picture. this is a concept familiar to my siblings and myself. we know that when we are all together and there is a camera and a mom present, at any moment, we may be tricked into next year's christmas card. so we spread out, pick fights, and continue to give our parents inaccurate computer lessons pretaining to the digital age, specifically in "memory card data transfer." This is called preventative action, and its the backup for when we get caught off guard talking with eachother in matching school clothes, my mom yells at us to turn around, throws the dog at us, and takes the picture the second after we catch it and smile that we saved its life. Its happened more than once. This is a legitamate war we are in here.

What was your first bike? Was it awesome? I bet it was. My first bike (aside from the trike thing that i used more as a scooter/death machine on downhills to terrify my mother) was a huffy single speed with the coaster break and the front shield. Girls had the baskets and doylie thingies off the handlebars, boys had the shield. I remember once a rock flew up and hit the thing and i am pretty sure that was the only time that the thing even got put to alittle use in real life, but in my imagination it was essential to most of the bike chase scenes i got myself into. It was a big deal to ride around the block all by myself, and i kind of want to go ride there now with my newer, way less cool, bike. Simply because it does not have the coaster break.

The coaster break was the single coolest invention of all time!!! all you have to do is pedal backwards and no questions asked, your doing a skid. This was the primary ingredient to most chase scenes that i was the star of; the 180 skid. You know you spent hours doing it in the driveway before dad got home to just this huge black J in 100 different places all over the white driveway, i know i did, and i know that is how i broke my first bike.

Speaking of epic chase scenes on the old trusty steed:

My name is James, James Daniel. It was crazy, I was being chased by just about every bike bad-guy concievable to a kid, bullets wizzing by singing off the front of the shield in every direction, me helplessly shooting behind me to no avail forced to do something to save the world. Speeding around the corner he spots his base (the house, garage specifically) and knows that if he can just get there maybe he will be able to save his true love and evade the bad guys and press that button that is wired to the fate of the world, consequently saving the world and therefore solidifying to my love that i am totally awesome and she should swoon. Speeding up and taking bullets in all the places that couldnt kill me, just hurt me alittle, i sprint to the half open garage with gradiose plans of getting under the door before it closes (it wasnt even moving, i dont know why it was half open.... i dont know why i was loosing the fight in my own imagination, freudians out there eat your heart out). Go! Duck! ....bang.

God has a great job. Omnicence must be fantastic, because for each hilarious thing that is caught on camera, there are 6 ka-zillion that go un-documented. (Get pumped). So say your in the garage talking on the phone with, i dont know, condi. And your sitting on the step and hear a nearing sound of bike tires (and someone seemingly singing the raiders of the lost ark theme song really really loud) and suddenly BANG!!! a single speed huffy with a shield rolls rider-less into the garage, moments later your child (no longer singing the theme to raiders of the lost ark) slides down the garage door and hits the driveway outside the garage, no longer manning the bike. If you were this person, your name would likely be Jim's Mom.

I lived.

Now, i thought i had blogged this story before, but it turns out i have not. Its one that must be blogged and documented, because it was a highlight. It may be even why i feel that God likes me, because that was really hilarious for him to see. he was like "i like this kid, lets keep him around and see what else he will do."

well, i walked into my room an hour ago and said to myself "ok you will go to bed and get a good night of sleep" and i have completly failed.

so goodnight, and i would love to hear a good story from your first bike.

The trip. California via bike and backpack

Hello folks. Recently i traveled to san diego and biked up to lompoc and back (i got the pronounciation from the locals drilled into my head now, let me tell you, they are serious about that) for 7 days with my little backpack. I took pictures and hopefully you can see the captions that i added. It was an awesome trip and i have tons of great stories from it that i would love to share. But for now, the tons and tons of pictures will have to do. Enjoy! and dont feel bad if you dont get through it, its kind of alot of pictures, but you get bored when you spend 9 days by yourself. I reccomend it.

Here it is.

or here;
http://picasaweb.google.com/jim.stemper/California?authkey=Gv1sRgCOeD3N-Uucn32AE

talk to you soon.
jim