Recently I've been racing my bike a lot, working a lot and thinking a lot cause I'm not in school so I actually have time to think... One subject I had been considering the most was what makes a person happy, what defines happiness and what influences it most greatly. I started thinking about this in part because I have raced Cyclo-Cross (CX) all throughout the fall with good results which made me happy but made me think whether I'd still be happy if I didn't receive praise from my peers. This is something I've considered before in art as well; do I make my art for me or for others to see? I've always arrived back to the conclusion that peers are an important part of why I do what I do, it's important to me for people to recognize what I do, to recognize me to some extent I suppose. I don't mean any of this in a narcissistic manner, I feel it's normal for people to feel this way, maybe I'm wrong but it's rare to meet someone who doesn't appreciate praise. Anyways, I've noticed that happiness seems to be a fleeting emotion that can change as quickly as the wind does. Happiness also seems more superficial when it is reaped from achievements such as successful race results or people appreciating art. What I have seen that makes me think otherwise about these things in particular is that they often represent improvement within a person's life; It's quite gratifying to see physically how a person can improvement in terms of oxygen capacity, seeing your lactate threshold increase from one year to another, seeing how you've improved at painting or photography. These things are not as shallow a joy as temporary things like wins or gallery showings because they offer you improvement that you've worked for over a sustained amount of time.
I just recently got my first win in a CX race. The feeling was fantastic, what I have always wanted. The start was a mass sprint as it always is in CX and I was the first to hit the first turn, a term known as getting the "holeshot". I usually feel so completely destroyed after the first few turns after a strong start that I feel the need to back-off to avoid losing spots from going too hard. This race was different, I decided to push through this pain I felt, to push through while my lungs were struggling to increase the amount of oxygen that was entering my body, I wanted to see how much damage I could dish out to the guys behind me. This was the first race I had done where this thought even occurred to me, to attack the rest of the field, it's risky cause it's easy to blow-up. I'm usually the one who has to react to other people's attacks and to chase after them without losing positions. Racing is like a dance and you have to feel out the rhythm of the race, you have to read the riders who are around you. "Does he look like he's hurting?" If the answer is "no" then it's probably time to attack and pick-up the pace so he is hurting which means it's gonna hurt a lot for the person attacking as well. Racing is so mental; who will break first? After a lap I secured my position leading the race and now all I had to do was keep the heat on for the next few laps. As the race progressed my lead increased to the point where I could see the person in 2nd just now entering the turn I passed through 20-30 second prior. It was a feeling I hadn't experienced before but one that I wanted to keep. This was my day, my race to win, avoiding mistakes was my biggest priority. I ended up winning that race and placing in 2nd as the overall Cat. 4 racer of the 8 race series.

Crossin' it up this season.

I've had this entire past semester off from school. It has been a nice break free from the boredom that usually comes with time off of school. I have filled this free time with a new job, also at a restaurant as my last one was but this new job is less pretentious and more laid back. Casual fine dinning, downtown, further from my house but it's downtown so we have a very different demographic and being able to walk around downtown after my shift is over is a nice feeling. We serve "modern southern" food which is good, things like shrimp and grits, country fried chicken served with some of the best mashed potatoes I've had and sauteed spinach, sounds simple but it is so good.
I don't work all that much though and since the beginning of September I have been racing my bike. My favorite sport, cyclo-cross, the beautiful combination of road racing on mountain bike like terrain. I was fortunate enough to find a local cycling team to join. Every cyclo-cross race I've competed in thus far has been while riding in the Velosports colors of green white and blue. It has been great getting to know my teammates and racing competitively with a select few people, some people I now consider to be my rivals, people I can compare myself to, to test where my abilities are at. Some of these people are on other teams but one of the reasons I'm so glad to be on a team is because they help provide me with goals. I have found, and I find this is true with all things in life, if you pick someone stronger than yourself to emulate then you will become like them, if they climb mountains well, you will learn to stay on their wheel through the toughest climbs, etc. In many ways cycling can be related to the difficulties and stresses of life. I hope to harness this ability in my studies but as it's been so far I have failed to do this.
I still have a difficult time slogging through school and all the bullshit that is associated with it. Fortunately I am nearly done at A-B Tech, the community college that it seems I've spent an eternity at. I'm hoping to go to Appalachian State University in the Fall with an associates of arts. ASU also has a really good cycling team and I would look forward to competing with them while living in Boone if that's meant to be. I still am not certain as to what exactly I would like to study but I have a feeling that I would enjoy something like Global Studies which is the degree I checked out while visiting Boone a few weeks ago. Global Studies involves learning a foreign language, preferably minoring in it, and also traveling abroad, neither of those things I would mind at all! It would make most sense for my focus to be on Japan as I speak some Japanese already and I've been there twice and enjoy it. At the same time I would very much like to study other cultures and their languages. I suppose graduating with a bachelors especially with a foreign focus would open up new doors for me across various worldly locations anyways. As long as I have opportunities to go to new places to learn, and of course race my bike I think I'll always be happy. The trick is that traveling with a bike is so expensive... Maybe country hopping after a few years is the way to do that to make it worth it. I'm excited for my future after college, the degree means very little to me but it seems as though it is the key to currently locked doors.
My best friend recently came back to visit over Thanksgiving break; He just recently graduated with a degree in film. I've always dreamt of doing something big with friends, traveling the world, professionally dancing, making movies, etc. Since my friend has just graduated he is now desperately looking for work in the industry. I suggested to him that it would be fun to make a documentary together. For the past few years I've had ideas of becoming a photo-journalist but the industry is dying out in part due to the rise of consumer photography and the mass explosion of cellphones, everything is recorded these days and it's not been necessary to send a TIME photographer to shoot pictures of a massacre in Africa There are now citizens around the world who record the events on their mobile devices and upload them online. This is considerably cheaper for the editing agency. I fear the days of beautiful photo-journalism are dying out. The photographs that came out of WWI, II, Vietnam, etc are extremely emotional, powerful photographs of human destruction and at times moments of hope. Anyways, I hope that once I graduate that my friend and I can go to Japan and shoot a documentary possibly about the aftermath of Fukushima, shot both from a photography and cinematic point of view. We are both somewhat versed in Japanese and if my studies of Japanese continue at ASU then I should be well versed in the language to translate and work with people in Japan. I still have thoughts of teaching English in the back of my head as well. The JET program still looks appealing as does teaching in Korea...