The Great Injury - A Goal At Risk, a Hero Will Rise

Like all Great Men (and women), it is often not the final victory, but the overcoming of great obstacles that define us. Remember how Teddy Roosevelt overcame a sickly childhood to become Bully-in-Chief, one of the strongest presidents in our history? Consider Michael Jordan against the Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals. He had suffered from flu and dehydration and yet found the iron will to defeat the Jazz and make us all soccer fans. Think of how Luke Skywalker defeated Darth Vader with that bum artificial hand. Reflect on how Napoleon Dynamite transformed his gawky clumsiness into a John Travolta-ish Dance Diva that won the election for Pedro.Then there's Justin Bieber who started out as a goofy awkward self-possessed girly-boy and grew into a world-famous goofy awkward self-possessed girly-boy. Point is: all Great Men have their challenges and overcome them through blood, sweat, and tears to make them better, stronger, and more dedicated than ever before.

Or we simply throw in the towel and go back to watching Pawn Star. It's kind of a toss up.

For me, my great cycling goal has just run into its greatest challenge. My goal is to ride my bike from my house to Jackson Hole (no, not a motorcycle, an actual pedal bike!). I've been training like a mad man. I purchased my first ever really nice bike (translation: it didn't come from Wal-Mart or have a big basket and little ringy bell on the handle ). I logged countless hours and miles at the gym. I have accomplished my first key milestones: I rode from my house to Brigham City, to Antelope Island, and up through South Weber and along Highway 89 and back to my house. These were three 25+ mile rides. On my last ride, a second trip to Brigham on Memorial Day, I felt strong and ready to take the next step, a 50-miler from my house to Logan. I was progressing, getting stronger, and feeling more confident. Plus, my butt had finally calloused enough to not feel all the chafing from the bike seat!

Then tragedy struck on Memorial Day, 2012. I had my GREAT INJURY. Very much like how a solider throws himself on a grenade or a great athlete sacrifices his body for the team or a loved one donates a kidney to a sick child, I sacrificed my Achilles tendon in the epic conquest to act as silly and childish as my teenage son. The goal was inspiring, nay, nearly breath-taking. We had to conquer THE DITCH at the cemetery in Brigham City. This is not some ordinary everyday ditch, either. This was Grand Canyon-like in width, depth, and danger. Spencer and I had to leap over this massive canal, much like a mortal man trying to leap the Panama Canal. Not only must we leap it, we had to rebound and jump to the other side, then to the other, bounding back and forth like gazelles, like cheetahs, like the fastest and most agile of land animals. With great alacrity and agility I leaped across the water, almost Moses-like in my miraculous feat of defying the liquid element. My foot extended, my strength of body exerting, pushing my flying through the air like an eagle, a hawk, a 180 pound 40 year-old human Scud missile. I hit the side of the canal . . . and POP. My Achilles tendon snapped.

Being the noble, mature man that I am, I immediately blamed my son-in-law, Kevin, for smashing my ankle with a rock. It felt like I'd been hit by a baseball bat or shot by a gun right in the back of my ankle, right along the Achilles tendon. I writhed in pain but fortunately uttered not a single swear word (sort of like how George Washington could never tell a lie, I can never say a swear word . . . inspiring, aren't I?) The tendon, like a taut elastic band, snapped in two. There was no question. I knew it immediately. Linda heard the snap, crackle, pop sound from several feet away. Just like that I lost my tendon, my summer, my goal.

Or did I? Tomorrow I go in for surgery. It will be a long multiple week recovery and rehab. My Achilles tendon may never be as good or strong as before. Yet for some reason I feel ready to cast aside my Slacker Self and rededicate myself to this goal. I SHALL OVERCOME! I SHALL RECOVER! I SHALL RIDE MY BIKE! I may only make it from my house to McDonald's for a Big Mac, but I will ride again this summer! In fact, I will ride from my house to Preston Idaho before the end of September!

When this first happened I thought that I would not be able to ride the bike again this summer. It was a very depressing thought. I had progressed so far already! I felt stronger, more confident, more capable of reaching my goal than I thought possible at the beginning of the year. Had this all been for nothing? I feared this would be so. Yet now I know it is not. I have the fire inside me to overcome this challenge. It will be long and hard and painful, but I will do it. I know I can do it. I know I WILL DO IT!

I will ride again, my friends. I will ride again.   

April Update - And It Ain't No April Fool's!

Believe it or not, I have an update for April! It's actually April 30th at 10:45 PM, meaning that if I wait only another hour or so it will be May. If I post my entry right at midnight, can I count an update for both April AND May? That's just a good use of slacker resources! Why update twice if I can get away with only once! You know, if it didn't take so much energy and brainpower to procrastinate everything, I could get pretty proficient at this slackerishness . . . only then I would be a successful slacker, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose . . . bummer.

I have good news! I have completed the first draft of my new book! Yes, okay, that's not exactly enough to float any of your boats out there, not like I've actually accomplished anything, not like I've done anything productive with my time, like feeding the homeless or sheltering injured bunnies or joining the Occupy City Creek campaign or anything noble like that. No, I'm only a poor blue-collar writer trying to make his way in the world, raised in the ghettos of Brigham City, barely literate, teaching myself to read off of Campbell Soup labels and gum wrappers because I had to skip school to tend to the family raccoon farm . . . Okay. Sorry. Getting carried away. That's actually my friend Emily Schultz's childhood story. Sorry for plagiarizing!

THE POINT IS that I've completed the first draft of my book! Now I'm in the painful revision stage. Right now the first draft is as fat as a Pittsburgh Steeler fan's belly after a tailgating party. My book would probably be classified in the Young Adult or Juvenile genre (ha, ha, you say, how surprise, something juvenile from Stephen!). A first novel in this genre usually runs about 70,000 words. Mine is around 90,000. Yikes. So I've cut out about eight pages. I need to go on popping out words like zits on my teenage son's face, but the problem is I don't know which ones to cut! This reminds me of the great scene in the movie, Amadeus, when Emperor Francis II tells Mozart that his opera has "too many notes."

That, incidentally, reminds me of another great anecdote. A tale is told (perhaps apocryphally) of James Joyce, author of what is widely considered the greatest novel in the English language, Ulysses (a real snoozer if you ask me, but then what have I ever accomplished!) Anyway, Joyce was famous for his incredibly slow pace of writing, mostly because he labored over every single word in his novels. One day a close friend visited Joyce and found him particularly despondent. When asking Joyce about the cause of his distress, Joyce said: "I've written ten words today." His friend replied: "Why, James, that's great! Much more than usual! Why are you depressed!" Joyce (the hack) cried; "Because I don't know what order they go in!"

Ah, yes, the great trial for authors. The brutal revision process. Very akin to organ transfers and other acts of remarkable personal courage. I need to cut, cut, cut, but never fear, my loyal readers (I'm basically only talking here to my son who I've bribed with twenty bucks to skim through the manuscript), I will only cut the bad parts. I'll leave all the best parts in! THAT reminds me of a great line from Jack Nicholson in the movie, As Good As It Gets. Nicholson plays the author of steamy, airy, romance novels, all from the women's perspective. One day a raving female asks: "How do you write women so well?" Nicholson replies: "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." Now that's called editing!

By this weekend, lucky fans, I will post a teaser on this blog to my new book. I'll post the first chapter or two, just to whet the appetite (or send you running to the toilets). I'll give you this much, a title.

Drumroll please . . . the title is . . . no, on second thought, I won't give it to you. You can just wait. Until then, my thanks for your reading this ridiculous blog. Oh, and before I forget, I have some cool updates on my cycling and piano goals as well. But, hey, I've written so much tonight that my poor overworked fingers are just bloody stumps. Actually, it's the NBA playoffs, and I've got to get back to priorities here. Check back in a few days for that sneak-peak! 

Slacking My Way to My Next Blog Post

True to my slacker nature, I have not updated my blog since my first post in November! Isn't that great? Not only am I slacker I'm also a procrastinator who couldn't get around to even blogging TWICE in four months. I was intending on procrastinating this for another month or so, but I got too worn out worrying about procrastinating and figured "screw it, it's easier just to blog than spend all this time making up lousy excuses for NOT blogging." All you procrastinators out there will know what I'm talking about, if only you ever get around to admitting it.

Okay, so that's the bad news. The good news is that I've actually be actively pursuing 3 out of 4 goals! Wait, you say, why not 4 out of 4? Because that would mean complete dedication to success, and my slacker nature allows only a partial effort. Fortunately I didn't set only 1 goal, or I'd be doing roughly 60% of a single goal. As it is, I'm actually making good progress without betraying my slacker creed (which you'd find interesting and helpful, but I'm feeling to lazy to actually share it with you, so deal with it).

The three goals I'm actively working on are: piano, cycling, and writing. I've postponed my German training until (a) I actually have a trip planned, (b) I marry a bearded German woman named Helga, or (C) I am kidnapped by a group of bouncing German beer maids. As none of those scenarios seem too likely, I'll hold off on German for the time being.

Here's a quick update, to be followed with some actually decent Excel charts I created (yeah, that's going WAY too far, I know, but bear with me):

Cycling:

• Purchased a stationary bike
• Logged probably about 300 miles on stationary bikes
• Purchased an actual ROAD BIKE!
• Went on my first real ride, an eight mile trip to the library and back (contain your excitement!)
• Got my first "cycler's butt cramp" -- this was, I may say, a proud moment for me

Writing:

• I am now on chapter 24 of 31 planned chapters in my novel
• I have a good idea for a nonfiction book and am now actively researching
• I should be able to finish my novel by April 14    

Piano:

• I completed the Level One piano books on January 4, 2012
• I am about half way through Level Two books
• I'll post a video that displays my piano prowess in my next post (remember, music critics, that I have NEVER BEFORE PLAYED THE FREAKING PIANO) so be gentle on me 

 Okay, there's the updates for today. I promise some sexy pictures of me on the bike, video of my music that will rival the Jon Schmidt piano videos, and an update on my book that will make even Stephen King envious . . . all this in the near future.