“One day you’ll no longer feel the winter wind biting you,” passed through my mind a few times last week. It was a sad thought. One day, we all stop experiencing this life. At 50, I find myself trying to drink as much in as possible, appreciating even the physically uncomfortable moments, knowing there’ll be a last time.

Home. Ill with flu. Just a matter of days after meeting a psychiatrist, addressing a loss of motivation and creativity.

And home today, felt like watching Step into Liquid. The first surfing doc I’ve felt like watching in over a decade. I’m not a surfer. I don’t even care the much for the ocean.

An ongoing goal of the Luddite Odyssey Project is to read more. Casey Johnston’s latest post included a few pointers, most I’d already worked into daily life. Reading material is scattered around the house—magazines and small books in the living room, a few books next to bed, and a book in my work satchel.

Magazines on the coffee table have helped. It becomes an easy choice to pick one up, read an article, while drinking coffee after work, reinforcing the habit of reading. It makes it just a little easier to pick up a book.

And that’s resulted in me finally finishing Dan Barbarisi’s Chasing the Thrill. Think I only started it two, maybe three, years ago. It wasn’t a story I was 100% in to, but it was interesting. I’d heard about Forest Fenn’s treasure from an Outside article, and listened to Peter Frick-Wright’s Missed Fortune.

As a person who routinely gets out into the wilderness, it was interesting reading about the adventures of people who don’t. Searchers venturing out without maps, proper gear, or even an understanding that Nature can kill—I found myself shaking my head often. Much of the book is the opposite of competence porn, people obsessed with an outcome and sure of their solutions.

But this isn’t a book report, just documenting a book read.

Books still being read:

• Bring the War Home
• The Right of the People
• Sourdough School
• This Life

Yeah, that’s a hefty list. Gonna have to add a little fiction.

It’s the day after the second “No King” protest. I’m at a dog show in Salem, Virginia. We stood for the anthem. I stared at the flag, sang the words with feeling and belief—the same words friends would drunkly sing at parties in our 20s.

“Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” aren’t just words. It isn’t a slogan or a meme. When some asshole like JD Vance says America isn’t a set of ideas but a people, all I can say is bullshit. Outside the dog show is a statue of Revolutionary War General Andrew Lewis. He’s about to fire a canon. He was an Irishman fighting for the idea of Freedom not some collective culture of… what??? English colonists? Virginians?

No, he literally was being brave, risking his life, all to stick hid middle finger in the King’s face. That’s what America is—a giant middle finger to anyone who would make humans subjects. All the Americans pouring into the streets, waving the Stars & Stripes, holding signs with slogans, dancing in frog costumes, were carrying on the American tradition of putting a big middle finger in the face of power and saying “fuck you, won’t do what you tell me.”

Had a moment of relief and elation on my run. I pulled out my phone and saw a text from an old boss/mentor. He had sent a pic of the letter I wrote twenty years ago thanking him for accepting me as a intern at his bakery.

It reminded me off all the years pushing myself and my staff to do better—not in a autocratic way, but in a “hey, we did good yesterday, let’s see if we can do even better today.” Aiming a little higher than you think is possible, because even failing to meet that is doing well.

So around mile 3, I decided that if I was under a certain pace at a fork in the road, I’d go left, adding some extra miles and hills.

It’s been a few years of being complacent. The world seems to have decided being mid is just fine. Hopefully with a little careful stoking, the embers that used to be fire in my belly can reignite.

I was never stylish but I used to have a style. Thanks to a post from Derek Guy I’ve decided to begin the long process of remedying that, of beginning to dress like an adult.

It won’t be to the extreme my spouse takes it. They have STYLE and aesthetics. But I want to start suggesting I care—not that I’ve thought too hard, but that I’ve at least thought about it.

Where to start?

I love seersucker. It’s appropriate for the climate, it looks casual, but it says something. It shows you went out of your way for it.

Then back to jeans. Good jeans. Probably just Levi’s. The 501 button fly is a classic.

Finding good belts.

Thinking about shoes.

Tucking my fucking shirt in, even it’s just a black tee and jeans.

FIRST? First? First though is just getting hair cuts on a regular basis.

It’s July 4th. Independence Day. My nation has fallen quickly into authoritarianism. ICE is abducting people. We’ve bombed Iran. They might denaturalize an opposition candidate. And I’m sitting on my porch, watching a wasp fly blades of glass to its nest in the ceiling.

In the back of my mind is Freedom. What it means. How to balance my Freedom with someone else’s and the constraints of Society.

But for now, I’m atching a wasp. Minds need rest. Minds need to wander. My greatest loss has been freetime and a wandering mind. It is a luxury and a privilege, but it also used to be rote and mundane.

The elimination of boredom… That is as pernicious as the modern ability to be lazy. We don’t have to walk, and we don’t have to be alone with our thoughts. We’re alread a few generations into a lazy world and experiencing the consequences. I believe we’re seeing what happnes when our minds don’t get rest. Funny how us humans avoid occupying the body while seeking to forever stimulate the mind.

So, I’m sitting here, watching a wasp. No screen to search the internert and figure out what it’s doing or why. Enjoying the not knowing, appreciating the moment, and letting my mind wander off, enjoying it’s natural state.

Week 07/12 of the fitness Revamp went pretty well. Some minor life issues meant moving Friday’s lift session to Saturday before the No Kings rally. Friday morning while walking a lifestock pen with Soliel, something started buzzing around her, then landed on my lower calf and stung me.

Initially, I assumed a wasp, but by Saturday, the area had swollen, giving me a cankle and causing several dime to penny sized blisters. As a precaution, there was no long run this week. By Sunday even, the swelling had extended to the foot. Out of caution, the upcoming week’s schedule is getting shifted. Unsure how, quite yet.

Tactical Barbell

Lifting this week went pretty well. Skipped pull ups one day because it the gym was busy and the assist was in use. Squats and bench progressed nicely, with 5 sets of 5 reps at 70%. The upcoming week goes to 80% 1RM. After a few weeks off, it’s good feeling the form come back.

Running

Effective VO~2~max has been slowly progressing, breaking 30 according to runalyze. While I assume the number is somewhat abitrary (Suunto says it’s 43), the trend is what’s important.

Progress

Finished the first half of the Revamp a few weeks ago. Then life became less manageable and hit pause. It was a sensible action to alleviate stress.

Switched gyms from a national chain to the local Y. One was big, plenty of new equipment, sparkly. The other worn in, and it turns out very comfortable and homey.

The move was prompted by lack of on piece of equipment—a proper squat rack. Never thought I’d have an opinion on squat racks and Smith machines. But engaging stabilizers makes a difference in how a lift feels. It’s like the difference between a treadmill and track. One does some work for you, the other is all you. When your goal is self-propelling over trails and mountains, and overall health outcomes, then why let a machine do work for you?

Tactibal Barbell

I was able to finish the first half of the twelve week program, coming to an appropriate stopping point. After ten or so days without lifting, I spent a couple days dedicated to re-orienting muscles and movements and learning subtleties of new equipment.

Running

On the running front, June 1 was a commitment to run everyday for a month (REDFAM). Self-imposed minimum is 20 easy minutes. On lift days, that means a warm-up. The rest of the work is spread between a workout, a long run (90-120 mins), an hour, and a couple 45s. As of this post, 9 for 9. Pace and estimated VO2 max have improved. Surprisingly, HRV has improved and leveled off—on the high end of my normal, but within normal.

Progress

Originally written August 8, 2020

The Bitter Southerner published a list of the seven most essential Southern foods. Apparently it’s “controversial.” Now, I don’t understand why it might be. It is a solid list. The cornbread particularly rings true. Sheri Castle acknowledges there’s a white vs yellow meal fued, some families add flour, and, I’d argue most importantly, an obvious lack of sugar.

Why this attention to cornbread? It’s working person’s food. It’s farmer’s food. Despite what you might read in Garden & Gun, the South is historically poor. (We kinda still are.) Corn would grow in a small plot. You’d know someone with grist mill—up until his death in the 1990s, my great-uncle grew his own corn and milled cornmeal for the entire family. And the butter, lard, eggs, and buttermilk in the recipe? All raised and processed on your plot.

It’s about a quality product—the cornmeal came from what we’d call an heirloom crop now. The corn my great-uncle grew was adapted to his home. He didn’t go down to the co-op and purchase seeds every year. He saved from his previous crops, selecting and reinforcing the plants that grew best and produced the best corn for the best meal.

Having had that cornmeal, and later having had heirloom meal from Anson Mills, I can attest to the flavor of good meal. The corn has a subtle sweetness and complex corn and grain flavor. It doesn’t need sugar.

That’s why my mom give the side eye to anyone putting flour and sugar in their cornbread. It’s about class and lose of quality. Subsitence and small-farms couldn’t afford to toss store-bought flour and sugar into a daily staple. The wealthy could afford sugar and white flour, their cornbread—a basic, daily staple—was a sign of their higher class. (And biscuits? Nothing but flour and labor. You do the math on who could afford biscuits.) But also, adding sugar is an attempt to adjust a recipe. With the commodifacation of corn and cornmeal, we lost the complexity and sweetness of localized crops. Home bakers had to add sugar to make it “like mom used to.”

And honestly, that’s why I find this cornbread cake with pimento cheese frosting a good bit offensive. There’s no acknowledgement of what cornbread means to the South, and it’s culture. It isn’t elevating a humble staple of a culture in an understanding way—it’s treating it as basic, as someting in need of dressing up. And with the addition of all that sugar, obviously lacks an understanding of what’s been lost.