Balance point.

I've never been super awesome at wheelies on a motorcycle. And now at my age the idea of throwing myself on the ground for fun is less and less appealing. I mean, I'll take it as a matter of course in doing something and it happens, but not going in knowing it will.

So instead I will be perfecting my bicycle wheelies instead. As I kid I could ride a wheelie around the block on my bicycle. Today I'm lucky if it's a few bike lengths.....

Should be a fun diversion while it's kinda chilly outside and I'm inbetween training evolutions during the day.

-I do have pictures of me doing wheelies on a motorcycle and a pedal bike, just on my phone, not on my computer where I published this from.

Fun!

Fitness isn't really essential for my sport. Like bowling I guess, hahaha.

But fitness never hurts and makes the rest of life more fun.

And I think push bikes, to use the UK term, are fun. And if you're a new reader I was a bike mechanic for years as a part time job before college and later during a transition.

It's 68f during January, the sun is out and I have access to a bike. The fun makes itself!

Highest of highs and hardest of hard

Ahhhh, a picture of the time I climbed Mt Whitney; the tallest mountain in the 48 states.

What a grueling day it was for most of us in our party. A rowdy epic for sure.

Killing Time

Since I've killed all my social media stuff I'm still in the habit of being on the computer or my phone for like 4 hours out of the day but with much different things during that time. Eventually I'd like that time to be cut in half but until I make that happen here is how I currently kill my time while on my phone or online

-Wordfued game on my phone. I have like 6-8 games going all the time. I'm pretty good, if you want to play me it is "rowdstar" when you want to add me.

-Golf solitaire on my phone. Thanks mom.

-Duolingo on my phone. Absolutely the best language learning app out there!! I'm doing Spanish and Norwegian.

-Blogger app on my phone so I can more easily do this while out and about and at the spur of the moment.

-Shooting and competition forums. Mostly lurking on all but Enos, where I post fairly regularly. Rarely on my phone for this.

-Movie preview, trailer and spoiler sites.

-Genealogy work.

-Motorcycle news, racing reports and reviews.

-Youtube for watching about whatever has popped into my mind.

I swear I go to the same 12 websites for 90% of my traffic on the web. Notice nothing about news, politics, regular sports, music, fashion, travel, money and the other things I think are really big draws for people. I am considering adding Instagram back but I'm not sure.....

Two unexpected things today!

The first, I made a conscious decision without being under any duress or influence of narcotics (which I don't use anyways but it makes it funnier) that my lunch today will be an apple and salad. Oh and mineral water.

That judder you just felt? It's ok, the world is turning again.

Secondly, I received an email this morning asking where to mail my plaque from the Florida State USPSA Championships a few weeks ago. Evidently my 3rd place overall division finish/first A class was awarded something. I'm still very unhappy with third, but this is a pleasant surprise.

That will make going to the mail box in a few days worth the walk.

Monday!!

I'd change it from Monday  to "anything".

Match Win Video

So the rules radically changed in IDPA for 2017. This was my first match under the new rules. Benton Gun Club has an IDPA match the 3rd Saturday of every month starting at 9am. Come on out if you want to get started in a fun pistol match.

The changes made the shooting a little more fun in my opinion and not worrying about cover calls was a HUGE relief. I was first overall by over 30 seconds and I won every stage. I hope this is validation of my current training regimen. Check out the video and subscribe to my Youtube channel if you want to see more action like this!

3 days in.....

3 days in on not drinking any soda and doing alright. And as I despise diet soda if I can stay away from the regular stuff I'll probably make it. And I realize that gatorade and juices are no better either, so I'm not doing it for naught and replacing the soda with too much of something else. Just drinking a ton more water than I used to.

3 days in with all of my social media stuff deleted. Talked with my main sponsor today and they understood and are totally cool with it. That made me very happy as well!! So yeah, Facebook, Instagram, my athlete Facebook, Kik, messenger, Snapchat and all of that is totally deleted on the profile level and apps gone from my phone.

I evidently have an inactive Twitter account and Google+ from my email. But who looks at those?? I have a Youtube channel and that's it. Feels pretty good!

Not what you think....

Success in your match performance isn't who can do the best each and every time but rather who makes the least mistakes. You can win a match not winning a single stage if you don't make any mistakes.

It's better to finish 2nd or 3rd all match than it is to be 1st, 8th, 1st, 10th etc.......

Things I thought I'd never say....

"I ate too much pizza." But oh man, evidently last night I did. When you can't sleep because of the huge boulder of food in your stomach and heart burn all night, well you probably did eat too much pizza. I didn't think it was humanly possible, but I did it. Kinda like running the 4 minute mile. But stuffing my face.

"Gray hair doesn't bother me." When I only had one or six of them I just plucked them out. Now I have tens of them and I just accept it. Though it is one reason why I always shave my beard when it finally gets good and long is the two stripes of gray in in running down from my chin.

"I think I'm going to stop drinking soda." It's a lot easier to maintain weight when you're not drinking 2-300 extra calories per day from sugar. I love the taste of sugary drinks though so while better for me, not very fun. I'm slowly learning to enjoy just drinking water most of the day. And funnily enough I notice I also make minimally better food choices during the day when I mostly drink water.

"The new King Kong remake is going to be awesome!" Uh, thanks to Peter Jackson I have hated King Kong for years now. Not even the ride in Orlando changed my mind. But this new movie looks like it will undo all the bad King Kong I've had to suffer from since 1978.

"I'm going to Cuba for the day." Yep, it's set now. When I am in Florida this March, the first time of two March trips, I am doing a day trip to Cuba. Big deal you say? Yeah, you could have gotten to Cuba before, but for many Americans of non-Cuban descent it just didn't seem like a doable trip, until now. Also, I grew up in the Cold War era. Kids today learn Islamic terrorists are the bad guys but when I was growing up it was Communists. And a prime example of Commie awfulness was Castro and Cuba. So it's a little shocking to be going to what was once denied, enemy territory.

Ef El Ay

I have a lot of shooting matches in Florida this year. Most of them are in central Florida and not much I want to stick around and see, especially when by myself.

But in March I'll be with my friend from California, DO down at the bottom of Florida, south of Miami. So I thought of doing things fun together since we'll be there a few extra days. Snorkeling, shark fishing, Everglades air boat, drive to Key West on the Overseas Highway, driving school at Homestead Raceway. You know, rowdy stuff.

Until I saw you can fly to Havana, Cuba from Miami and back the same day for just over $200!! Uh yeah, I wanna go to Cuba!

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Listening to the guy who's been the national champ for what I do more times in the past ten years than anyone else his day is:

Get up 6am and then-

Work out for an hour.

Load ammo for an hour.

Dry fire for an hour.

Shoot live fire for two hours.

Do this every day of the week. 7am till noon devoted 100% to advancing his shooting. To beat him I have to at least equal this. And not for a month, but for years. Years.

Daunting.

And if you haven't seen me shoot in a while, this is what it looks like:

Delete

I've deleted the Facebook, Messenger, Kik and Instagram apps from my phone. I've deleted my Athlete FB page, my personal FB page and just stopped using the others as I can't access them from my phone, they'll die of neglect.

Social media was taking more from my life than it was giving. I already have enough drains on me in the real world to add others that didn't provide enough value.

I still text, I still email, I will still write here, I'll still play word games on my phone. Other than that, forget it.