Merman

Not quite King Triton, but none the less, underwater me.

All from this year's trip to Cozumel. The beard is coming back but not shaving my head again. Still playing in the water though.

A Very Rowdy To-Do-List

Monday
-practice
-laundry
-go shooting with Cjj

Tuesday
-teach neighbor kid how to surf
-buy supplies for housekeeper
-workout

Wednesday
-outdoor practice at the club
-sleep study*
-workout

Thursday
-Chargers training camp visit
-chronograph new rounds and train with mentor

Friday
-workout
-burn dvds
-practice
-get student ID possibly

Saturday
-indoor skydiving up near Riverside with SuperD
-eat the best chicken soup in the world at Lourdes in Escondido

Seems like a good week but I kinda feel bad that I have no photography, bicycle or motorcycle riding in there at all. I hate having possessions and not using them. Even if it is just for a week that they sit idle.

*Sleep study. So remember the past week when I had a huge reaction to withdrawal from sleep medicine? Well as part of that episode I get a "sleep study". While this may sound like the ultimate college course it is a bit different than that... Basically I show up at a lab in Mira Mesa at 1030pm that night and they hook me up to heart, brain, breathing, eye movement monitors and I lay in bed and try to sleep while they also video tape the whole process. All to find out what is going on with my whole insomnia/nightmare thing.

Sleeping for science.

If I Only Had A Brain....

I graduated from college with my BS just over 10 years ago, 2002. And since about 2009 I haven't had a consistent job requiring any regular thought, critical thinking or intelligence.

My thought process gets of no higher order than deciding what to eat, how fast to do something on a two wheeled vehicle and counting reps during exercise. My brain muscle is soft. Not strong, like bull.

On top of it, I have a lot of free time and no real outside requirements on me about being anywhere at any given time.

Thankfully I've learned to be a self starter, otherwise I'd have spent the last 4 years eating candy and watching cartoons. So yeah, if you've read any of my blog or know me in real life, you do know I keep busy doing "stuff", it just happens to normally be recreation based and whatever I want.

While only the tiniest bit, that is going to change August 19th. I have enrolled and paid for two classes at Mesa College, a local community college here in San Diego. Yes, I know I've already earned a degree and taken classes harder than offered here, but that was in the past. Remember, my brain muscle hasn't been used in a loooong time.

For Fall 2013 semester my Tuesdays and Thursdays each week will be spent all day at school dealing with Basic Algebra and Geometry in the afternoons and Introduction to Digital Imaging in the morning. No need to add a PE class, though I wanted. And I guess I could have thrown in a Spanish class as well to keep what little I do know sharp, but let's test the waters first with these two classes.

My blood type is A+, I wonder what my grade type will be??

Merely Acting

No, not in the stage, lights and Shakespearean sense but more in the Newtonian physics sense of "acting". Which itself is a derivation of "action".

In the past week I've helped some people learn or refine physical activities they were involved in, like jumping a mountain bike or shooting a gun. In one instance poor technique needed correcting and in the other they were starting from scratch.

Both parties had breakthroughs and they all came down to understanding action and it's direction.

What I mean to say is you have force, movement, an object being used, a physical skill set to be performed and a human being. All of these things, tangible or not are "acting" and "actors" in the course of either jumping a bike or shooting a gun.

Where did their breakthrough come from? Once their skill sets were correct the biggest breakthrough came in each person being the actor rather than being acted upon. Mentally and physically they were in charge of the process. Acting on the inputs, either received or given. Where before they had only been reacting or just full on being acted upon.

You could see the switch flip in their heads when they got it. It was great!

Though they often annoy the heck out of me, the little motivational things you see on Tumblr or Pinterest or Instagram often do have kernels of wisdom in them. I think these are appropriate.

Actor>Acting>Observing>Reacting>Acted Upon

Where are we on the continuum? When things go good and when things go badly?

Total Freak Out!

So yeah, I decided to just quit Clonazepam cold turkey from 1.5mg a night to nothing. Bad idea.

For the very first time in my life I experienced the effects of a strong drug withdrawal.

-sweaty
-sore muscles
-rapid, shallow breathing
-hypertensive
-poor memory
-anxiety
-nausea

I felt absolutely freaked out! My "personal physician" had to look after me and thankfully my sleep doctor answered his cell phone and worked me through it. I was afraid I was a crazy person and was going to now start suffering from horrible panic attacks.

Thankfully it was just prescription drug withdrawal. (ironic smirk) But yeah, I've never felt like that in my life..... wow.
I have some new empathy for people who suffer from drug withdrawal now and legitimate panic attacks.

Follow Me on Instagram

If you want a little bit of day to day, real life Rowdy with much less reading, then please follow me on Instagram. My username is "rowdymatt". Follow me and I'll follow you back!

Click on the blue IG icon for a direct link or the smaller webstagram follower link. Or just whip out your phone and search my name, @rowdymatt






That way you don't miss stuff like this:

Food, travel, funny, selfies, motorcycles, bikes, shooting. Pretty much the subjects of most my pictures. #followme #followback

Unforced Errors

My raw times are OK..... But my vision is not keeping up with how fast I'm moving the gun and pulling the trigger. Thus not quite the accuracy I should be shooting.... Also you see me fumble a few reloads, one majorly.

At Expert you absolutely can not have any mid or major level mistakes and expect to win. I am two "clicks" off of the best guys locally. I need to make a major improvement in my accuracy at speed and round the rough edges off of everything else that I do.

I'm happier in my mental state, taking some pressure off of myself, but I do need to do more to improve my skill level. PPPPPP.

Sept 21, the US National Championships. 62 Days to get it together.........

Working on my Eye

Balboa Park, a set on Flickr.

Here are some of my most recent photography exercises from a walk in Balboa Park.

Hubris

Like everyone, I have a cycle or rhythm I seemingly live to. I feel like I am entering an "up" phase. A phase where I feel confident and invincible! Cue Busta Rhymes going "rawr rawr like a dungeon dragon".

Running this morning at the beach I almost did a Rocky and finished my run with my arms triumphantly in the air. Like my 4 miles was some major accomplishment. hahaha.

When I did finally voice my, "I'm feeling pretty invincible" feeling today, it was while Super D was taping me up for some bad tendonitis I've had in both elbows.

Me and Jorge Lorenzo, we think alike.

These are the songs of my life.

Well not really. But in today's episode of the Rowdy soap opera, these are the songs of my day. To paraphrase an old daytime title.

Hank Williams Sr., Ramblin' Man. I absolutely need to buy more of his music before Saturday afternoon.


Public Enemy, Harder Than You Think. Ignore Flava Flav's dialogue at the beginning and focus on the words of Chuck D over delicious horns.


These two songs make me feel like I can accomplish any goal I have, that whatever wellspring I have within me pours forth true and pure Rowdy-ness.

Be true to myself and do what I need to do. Have to do. Rowdy. Style.

Russia?

I just looked at my statistics and after readers in the US, far and away most of my foreign traffic is originating in Russia.

So dear Russian reader(s), I'd love to hear from you personally. An email address is provided in my profile, linked to the right.

Some Things I Like

Somethings I like, that you may or may not know about me:

Cinema. Last night I went and saw the Danish movie "A Hijacking". I enjoyed the pacing and emotional development of the two main characters. Anything to avoid something like Grown Ups 2. Uhg, I shuddered just typing that title.

Tonight while eating a delicious dinner on the couch I was watching Moonrise Kingdom. Oh man, the slow motion shot of them exiting the chapel. I could almost cry. (I'm a closet romanticist in the classical sense**)

** They celebrated imagination/intuition versus reason/calculation, spontaneity versus control, subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact, revolutionary energy versus tradition, individualism versus social conformity, democracy versus monarchy, and so on.

Cooking on the grill. I've learned how to make home made pizza you cook on your gas bbq grill. I can do a rack of pork ribs if given enough time. Last week I did a lemon catfish. Tonight I chopped up cucumber, tomato and red onion then sprinkled it with balsamic vinegar. To be scooped into a warm pita with the thinly sliced carne asada I cooked on the grill tonight.

I don't enjoy the time it takes to cook something good, but I do enjoy the effort and skill that goes into making something tasty people want to eat. Grill, yes. Please never ask me to cook something in the oven though..... (oh wait, I make a great chicken pot pie.....)

Black and White Monster Movies. Dracula. Wolf Man. Frankenstein. The Mummy. Creature from the Black Lagoon. Gojira.

Nostalgia. Wow. I must really be old. I get glimpses of child hood memories that just well up powerful emotions in me. A smell. A color. A picture. Sounds. I'll just get a spark of something that takes me back to a small, almost forgotten part of childhood that comes ringing back with full force and clarity. I find myself "there" in the fullest sense.

Like this picture from Google Maps that shows where I lived in Kennewick,  Washington state from age 7 until 13. So much happened in my young life during those years in what was then a green house, the first one built in the development. Wow......

Opera and Classical Music. If you checked my Pandora account you'd see two stations get 90% of what I play. First is my Eric B and Rakim station. But second is Peer Gynt Suite for Orchestra. For goodness sakes, I was giddy to go to the Stadt Opera and the Wien Konzerhausen when I was in Vienna last year at Christmas time. I felt electric in a way no popular music ever could for me. And I only played the violin, for one year in school, and just so I could be closer to a girl I though was cute. Who eventually spurned me.

I'm a Hero!

Well at least GoPro tells me to be a hero. And they should be nice to me after all I've bought from them over the years, goodness......

So up at 530am this morning to take my new Hero3 and my Nikon D7000 to La Jolla Shores for some pictures.

First, some GoPro ones of sharks and such.

And now some dslr pictures.

Tendonitis

Well, whatever thoughts I had about returning to jiu jitsu were dashed Friday. Doing a fairly hard workout I now have bad enough tendonitis in my left elbow it is difficult to bend past 60 degrees. The joint is swollen and painful.

I'm following the conservative at home treatment of ice, rest, compression and anti inflammatory drugs. I don't think it is ruptured but it is definitely inflamed.

So if my connective tissue can't handle a little bit of extra in my work out, no way will they stand up to the stress and rigors of a joint submission based martial art.

Just another sad reminder of how weak our bodies can be.

PS-i had a little rant on my Instagram account I am going to clarify better, here later, about politics, art and social media once my thoughts are less emotion driven.

On Killing

Have you had someone try to kill you? I have. It is not pleasant.

Has someone ever pointed a gun at you in anger? I have. Again, not pleasant.

Crime, politics, race, religion, anger. There are people out there who want to or could/would kill you for any one and or all of these reasons. You might not experience this too much here in the US but do you want to bet on it?

Think your immune? Think it wont happen to you?

Nature, and especially human nature, is brutal. To think anything else is foolish.

Come to terms with this or become a victim. There will be a time in your life when you can't walk away.

Prepare or perish.

Illegal to legal with a lunch for $39

Almost every single down hill mountain bike trail in southern califonia is illegal. They are built on private or government land with no permission. Land owners, Park Service, BLM, Sierra Club and so forth have all made it essentially illegal to ride and build downhill trails in the area. Which kinda sucks because southern California invented things like, oh say motorcross racing, so you'd think the climate would be more friendly towards this sort of thing but they're not.

There are of course legal mountain bike trails to ride on, but they are geared towards cross country riders and are multi user, sharing with hikers and horses. The speeds and which a downhill (dh) bike travels and the type of terrain these trails on essentially make them good for only one user, the dh rider.

If you want to ride real, fun trails you have to go to a more progressive place as far as land management (ha! take that California, you really aren't progressive. ya freakin' oppressive nanny state!) or a mountain town with a ski resort that's built trails for summer users of the gravity powered bicycle sort. Think Whistler in British Colombia or Winter Park in Colorado.

Here is a video from Winter Park promoting their opening to give you a comparison on just how far BB has to go:

Here in California we have Mammoth Mountain, North Star and now Big Bear Mountain Resort offering lift assisted biking in the summer, targeted towards downhill riders. The dirt at Mammoth sucks frankly. It is talcum powdery, moon dust. You feel like you're riding on a flat tire. Oh, and it takes 6+ hours to drive there from San Diego. (i've done a day trip, there and back in 24 hours but it is brutal) They do have a couple good trails, but if I'm gonna go that far I'd rather make the effort and go elsewhere. North Star is even farther away.

So that leaves Big Bear. The biggest downhill mountain bike race in the US used to be held there! And then someone broke their neck and sued them, ceasing all bike riding on the resort. What evolved was they'd take your money and carry your bike (with stipulations) to the top and then you could ride on trails, built illegally but with tacit approval from the Forrest Service, on any land NOT actually the resort. Take my money, but want nothing to do with me.

Finally that changed this summer! While they are essentially just toe dipping by opening a very limited amount of trails this summer they still have done it. You can now ride a full on dh bike there and not get kicked out. They now have 3 (really two in my opinion) trails just for bikers actually in the resort's boundaries. With two more planned by summer's end. Just a little less than 3 hours drive from my house.

$39 gets you an all day lift ticket, a lunch voucher and hours of legal downhill mountain bike riding. It's not perfect, but I'll take it!

Want To Conflicting with Need To

So far today I've done more of my "want to" than "need to" list. I'm not proud of it as I am normally very good about this.... Hopefully I can make a come back with the time remaining in the day.

Want To's:
-go on a motorcycle ride. check! (see pictures below)
-go to boot camp to get some exercise. check!
-eat pizza. check!
-shooting practice. not yet.
-order motorcycle parts. not yet.

Need To's:
-get my Humira shot. nope, still wussing out on this.
-get insurance for the new motorcycle. still haven't made that call.
-mail off brass, DO's cd and a sharps container. all packed, just haven't gone to the mail place.
-call Gander Mountain about something I ordered a month ago and still haven't gotten.
-eat some vegetables. check! had raw celery and broccoli with my turkey on wheat sandwich at home.
-make my Cozumel trip video. sooo much footage, it's daunting.
-recover instagram password

In my value system, the things in my Need To Do list definitely seem more important, and yet I haven't really done them. Argh.