Boys of Summer

Ah, the Boys of Summer. Got out of the house for a spell today, testing the wellness water. Did some errands, shopping and stopped by the ol' ball yard to watch the kids at play. Lot's of memories housed between the lines, some good, some very good and others nightmarish. More, probably much more, on this later.

Top L-R: Coach Michael D. Lynch asks for five from one of his Blue Jay players. The Pirates on the pine awaiting their turn at the plate. M. Elliott Lynch was on the disabled list for todays contest suffering from the stomach flu, (although he seemed OK when I dropped of the custom cap from the Florida trip and the boomerang from OZ). In the background stand the opening day starting lineup for the 1963 Seattle Rainiers. These boys could play, I can almost hear Don Henley say.

St. Anthony's Trailer

At last. Featuring the suave and expert testimony of World Champion Spencer Smith. For some reason this clip encoded rather well, so maybe the combination of the 25th anniversary of St. Anthony's, Spencer's eloquent tips on training and the new capture settings on the RCVcam, create the magic. Hocus Pocus keep that act in focus. Presented for your enjoyment.

Meatless

Had to post this today for a couple of reasons: 1) It is a great read, 2) I agree wholeheartedly with the author, 3) I have failed on MANY an occasion to tactfully share my reasons, and 4) I have been busy all day finishing up the St. Anthony's trailer, and hence, disposed. Hope you enjoy. I will have the trailer up tomorrow, promise.

www.slate.com/id/2190872/

Riding the Crit

There are many of us out here in creativity land that can use a refresher course in how to deal with criticism, he thought while looking at the dailies. Not everybody likes my idea of cool, my treatment of reality, or my methods, manners, or morals. Does that mean I have failed, am failing or will fail???? No, no a thousand times no. It took me a long time to get to the realization that A) Nothing is personal, B) If you are going to be an artist you must be willing to face the music (and sometimes it's dissonant, and, C) That all criticism can (and should) be used for growth, improvement and advancement. In dealing with the daily dose of feedback (yes there was a jarring negative), I came upon the following commentary and though it worthy of inclusion. Hope you agree, he said, as he reached for another pepto.


Criticism is essentially feedback, in which there are two parts: giving and accepting. In this article we discuss accepting criticism and how it can work toward our success.

Gautama Buddha's preaching was interrupted one day by a man unleashing a flurry of abusive invective. Calmly waiting for his critic to finish, Buddha asked, "If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?" "To the one who offered it," the man replied.

"Then," Buddha declared, "I decline to accept your abuse and request that you keep it for yourself."

Or as Mary Katherine Gallagher (Molly Shannon), in the movie Superstar, so eloquently put it, "I am rubber, you are glue. What you say bounces off me and sticks to you".

Buddha and Mary knew one of the main rules to accepting criticism: one does not have to accept it!

Criticism is essentially feedback, in which there are two parts: giving and accepting. In this article we will discuss accepting criticism and how it can work toward our success.

The first rule of accepting criticism is understanding the motivation behind the criticism. Understanding this motivation helps you decide how valid the criticism is, and whether to accept it or not. Here are some of the more common reasons why people criticize.
• Out of jealousy. When others are jealous of your work, they will criticize with the intent of damaging your self-esteem. It is usually easy to spot this motivation because the critic will usually have something to gain by your failure.
• Out of anger or frustration. Often when someone gets frustrated they misdirect their frustration and start playing the blame game. This blame is dished out in the form of undue criticism. Most of the time, this criticism is outrageous and even laughable to those with a clear head. This kind of criticism can easily be identified by the tone and the words used to criticize.
• Concerned for one's own interest. People have different tastes and preferences. Some critics will criticize based on their own personal preferences. Now this can be a perfectly legitimate form of criticism, as in the case where the work criticized is especially for the critic. Take for example someone who hires an artist to paint a portrait. The one who is being painted is justified in criticizing the work based on his own personal preferences, since the work was specifically done for him.
• Concerned for mutual interest. This is the most common form of criticism given by customers and employees. They criticize with the hopes that changes will be made that will better their situation and the company/individual in general.
• Concerned for your best interest. Criticism made by parents, loved ones, or good friends is usually done with your best interest in mind. This is important to realize because it is this group of "critics" that are usually the most resented for their criticism.

The second rule of accepting criticism is choosing to accept it or not. Based on the motivation of the critic, do you think this criticism has merit? If so, how much merit does it have? Accepting criticism is using the criticism to better your work or performance. Rejecting the criticism is not letting the criticism affect your work, performance, or especially your attitude.

The third rule is responding to the criticism. This is where most people damage their reputations and good will by reacting to the criticism negatively. A response is reaction with thought. In this case, we have already thought about the motivation of the critic and chosen to accept it or not. No matter what our response is, it should be stated positively.

Why is accepting criticism so difficult? Here are some of the top reasons:
• Other people do not know how to criticize properly. Most people criticize in such a way that makes us very emotional. However, we know that we cannot control how other people express themselves, but we can control how we internally respond to their criticism. Practice self-control.
• We often take it too personally. We must remember that it is our actions or performance that is really being criticized and not us.
• We fail to put criticism in perspective. If you have created a work of art that thousands of people admire, and a few express dislike, realize that you cannot please all of the people all of the time. It is true that for every one person who criticizes, there are probably ten more that feel the same way, but even with these numbers your work or performance is being enjoyed by the majority.
• We fear failure. Trump does not make great deals all the time, Benjamin Franklin did not always have good inventions, and Schwarzenegger certainly does not always make great movies. Our fear of failure, rather than acceptance of it, causes us to often deny the truth or at least be blinded by our own ego. When criticism is just, we must accept it graciously, learn from it, and move on.

Critics often expect harsh reactions to their criticism, probably because that is the way most people respond. Not successful people. Shock your critics by thanking them for their feedback and if you choose to accept the criticism, share with them what way you plan on using their criticism. If your critics say things such as, "You suck!" or "Your work sucks!", don't ignore it. Ask them to elaborate as to what about you or your work they dislike.

Criticism is an extremely valuable element to success. Since most success is based on providing something of value for others, it is important to value the opinions of others and change your actions based on good feedback. It is this feedback that helps us to achieve success.

Department of

Got some catching up to do. A week in California will do that to ya. Thankfully we have some time between now and the next event in Boise, ID on June 1, so I am planning on following this departmental schedule in ramping it up:

Health Dept: (DoH) As you will recall, I brought back a nasty virus from Australia. That was a month ago and it hasn't gone away. I think it is squatting. Experts and concerned individuals have suggested that it is now, officially, bronchitis and that I am a fool for not having gone to the doctor for antibiotics sooner. I reply that I indeed may be a fool, but a fool who fights the battle of hypocrisy on a daily basis. I believe in alternative healing, I believe that our bodies can, and will, heal themselves given clean water, fresh air, nutritional quality and time to rest and recover. So in the big picture, what is 30 days? Am I going to go running to Big Pharma and beg for pills to cure my cough, when at all other times I berate and lambaste them for profiteering, price fixing and corruption? See my fix? So I will sweat it out and allow time to heal this wound as it has with so many others. And then....

Fitness Dept: (DoF) I will get my sorry ass back out on the track and start to run again, orthodicless and slowly, enjoying each and every foot strike, in the sun, singing my happy running songs. I will also re-set my trusty CompuTrainer so that I can multi-task video editing as I spin away my blues. Oh, and I will also get back to the pool every once in a while to prove to myself that I can do 1500 meters in less than a week.

RCV Dept: (RCV) With three RCVs available at CompuTrainer, and Louisville launching this week, we are slowly gaining momentum. The comments at Wildflower were 100% positive and as I told Chuck last night, no one said boo about the price. I am putting the finishing touches on OZ, with St, Anthony's on deck and Wildflower (both courses) in the hole. As St.A's is rendering (a week) I will build the trailers for St. A's and WF. That will be fun and is always a delight for me. It's pizzazzz, dig?

Cabin Dept: (DoH) Need to get started (again) on the building project. This year it's three phases: Roof, kitchen and shed. Getting those three done before Kona in October will make me one happy kahuna.

Mind Dept. (DoI) I want to continue to improve all phases of the editing process, use of the HD Cam and web building. Remember folks, that one of the tangent projects to the RCV main course is the "making of" video. As long as I can stay ahead of Roger's encoding and post production work, I might be able to get started. So far I am ahead almost a dozen RCVs. But the big months of one shoot every week are looming, so this might be a project for next year. Still the footage is captured.

Spirit Dept: (DoZ) Meditate more, more regularly and more fervently. Be more thankful. Be more positive, share more with others. And figure this "relationship" thing out. It is spiritual not physical.

Money Dept: (DoF) Take advance steps to ensure that 2009 returns include some consideration to RCV revenue and royalties. Otherwise you might be contributing to the ear-mark of THEIR choice. Not good.

Eyerthing else Dept: (DoTTT) Yes, that's right the Department of the Ten Thousand Things. Be mindful of them all, and all the time. Dial it up. Understand the connection of action to response, doings and consequences, NOT doings and ramifications. It is all connected. Dude. And you can start tomorrow. Or right now. Start Now.

I smile like a rainbow. Or see Shasta peering over Kurts touchdown signal. It is good to be alive (and in the end-zone). Even with bronchitis. He said with a wheeze.

Wildflower Conspiracy

Friday, May 2, 2008. Lake San Antonio, CA.

We're baaack. I do love this place, the solitude, an absolute quite where one can listen, if one so desires, to the sounds of nature's original podcast in Dolby 5.1, 360 surround sound. I had forgotten about the wild turkeys and their drunken revelry, the soft cooing of the doves, the wind pushing past the dry acacia leaves, and the piliated woodpeckers keeping incredibly precise time hammering out staccato 32nds while searching for dinner as an encore. And now, you can add four thousand triathletes and their audio commentaries of carbon fiber blues and north-country fleece to the cacophony of man in nature. That may be a redundancy, but their sounds, as well as their sights are not. So here we go. The trek south was uneventful, just another long boring cruise at 70 mph down the I-5 corridor. Gas is a joke, maxing at $4.07 in Redding, CA, home of the planets weirdest people. I mean that. And I have twenty years worth of anecdotes to attest. Ya want yesterdays? We pull into town to get gas and decide that since we are there, might as well get a smoothie. We search for a Jamba Juice to no avail and finally settle on a Baskin and Robbins. The only girl working has an attitude, wishing she was watching TV instead of scooping ice cream for tourists. After a ten minute wait in line (!) I order a banana-strawberry. I can already tell from the way she is making it it is going to suck, but I have already paid, so I am stuck. Kurt by this time has already used the head at a restaurant across the street and decided to not wait in the line because it could be midnight before he gets waited on. He bails for the van and I go to use the 31 Flavors head. It is locked. I ask the gal for the key, she shuffles some papers and says it's locked. I know that, can I have the key please? Well. they locked it last night. Well, whaddya say we UNLOCK it so YOUR customers can use it? I don't have the key. You don't have the key? No, they locked it last night. Yes, I understand that, OK, thanks, have a nice day. Weird.

So we press on southward, Kurt at the wheel now after my six hour, 450 mile stint. I try to rest but my lungs are irritated again and I cannot breathe deep, wheezing constantly like a two pack a day chain smoker. I may never be able to run fast again. This blows on the large scale. Maybe I have the bubonic plague and better get around pronto to doing my will and testament, so that some lucky relative can inherit and manage my debt upon completion of the final chapter. Or maybe I should just go see a doctor, pay the $150 and get some antibiotics. Or get health insurance, or knock off a pharmacy. What a freaktard. The holistic method of allowing time to heal all wounds seems to be failing with this one. What good does it do to spend days, weeks, months building up one's immune system only to have it fail at the first meeting of a new strain of a foreign airborne virus, he asked incredulously.

We now move smoothly to the big news of the day. And, boys and girls, this is what blogs are supposed to be, FREAKING BREAKING NEWS. Am I right Donny? OK, let me try to set the stage. Friday morning, I am up COD, pitch dark, a trizzilion stars, turkeys, doves, and woodpeckers doin' three part harmonies (I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now) and I gotta race like a piss-horse. It is four o'clock. Several hours later after my third cup of instant coffee by gas stove, we decide to head down to the expo and check it out even though we can't start to set up till 9 and it opens at noon. We never left, early birds swamped us and it was busy. So we're making it happen, doing the expo thing (it is more fun than usual for me because people, God bless 'em, are actually asking good questions about the RCVs, how did you do this and how did you shoot that. So I'm even more pumped than normal. Then it happened. Guy wearing a Red Sox hat walks in, we exchange greetings and we start the rap exchange, this guy is good, smart, talented, curious so thirty minutes later we're still at it and we segue to the GPS/Google Earth data issue. A little back story is important here. We have been having nightmares getting accurate elevations from google Earth on our international courses. So much so that we have asked some of the race directors at these events to help us out by using an altimeter at their races and send us the data, in some cases a year after the initial shoot. Not real elegant. The classic case is St. Croix where the bike start is at sea level. I know this because I was there and it was sea level. But GE says its 60 feet. This causes obvious problems. The Red Sox guy, Dan, I think, (come to find out he's an engineer) immediately says "sure, there is an oil refinery there". I say, yeah, Hess, so what. And he says, "because wherever there is an important industrial or military site, the government, owners of NASA and all the birds that we get GPS data from, scramble these signals so that you can get close, BUT NOT TOO CLOSE, and usually it's about 60 feet off". As soon as my jaw was re-wired to my face, and I asked Kurt if he had hear that, we both almost simultaneously said, "better call Roger".

So there ya go my friends. Once again we have uncovered yet another conspiracy. The ironic humor in all this should not evade any of you that have been following the trail of RCVman for anything longer than a day. This is just too weird to be true. Did they hatch this one in Redding? Is that Mofo Cheney really this devious and sinister? I know that Star Wars is big, but so big that they consider us competitors?

Stay tuned dear blog faithful. This shit is really happening, and I swear I am not making it up. How could I?

Tomorrow the long course (56 miles), Sunday the short (24.8). We're clearing out Sunday after the last event and pointin 'er North. Maybe by then we will have had the conference call with the Joint Chiefs, where I have but one question, "Gentlemen, WTF?"

Saturday night. The day is done, race over, sun setting. Back at camp. It was a long one. Shoot went OK, I had forgotten how bad these out-back country roads are, so took on a little more asphalt chatter that I had expected, but both cameras, the Canon up top and the new Sony HV5 shooting from the low scooter angle provided some stunning live action. The day was perfect, some cloud cover, not much wind and no rain, should be a "relatively" easy chore to smooth cam out the video and remove those distracting road shakes. If todays long course was the cake then tomorrow's Olympic distance should be the icing. If it wasn't for this gawdawful respiratory irritation (worse today) I would have put a five start pin on today's lapel.

The government intervention GPS conspiracy (this needs a acronym) got a little more intricate today, almost Bond-ish. Guy came by as I was spelling Kurt after the bike leg, and I tell him the tale. He says, yeah, he has a buddy who is in the same biz and they (just can't make myself say us or we) have five countries (all allies) that each share one component on the big machine. Five keys to five locks that open one door. One BIG door. That way nobody has the capability to do the dirty deed without four others having a say in the matter. So now I have to go to the UN before we can get accurate GPS data so our indoor trainers can function properly? Do I just call and make an appointment? Do I need to drop a few names? Hire a lobbyist and line some pockets with cash? I repeat; Gentlemen, WTF? Having a glass of wine, then go watch some more finishers and try to find the sweet sleeping spot tonight that will allow both free breathing, back support and protection from the cold. Did I already say how much I love this place?????

Monday was the long drive back on I-5, with a sleep in Dunnigan.

Tuesday morning. Back in the saddle. Cough is worse. I have been INSTRUCTED to go see a doctor. Successful road trip. Next up: Boise 70.3, June 1. Stay tuned RCV fans, as we have taken on yet another mission of International import. That's right, Operation Chaos Busters!!!!! (OCB to you).

Roseburg May

Morning Gang. A foggy, quiet, silver first of May morning in Roseburg, Oregon. Kurt and I are en route to Lake San Antonio for Wildflower. Got in about 7 hours of I-5n and pulled into an Applebees for some grub and never left town, opting for a last good night's rest at the Sleep Inn before hitting the tent and bags for three days of camping. In case you don't know Applebees is cool as a casual watering hole, but horrible as a place to eat healthy food. I have the spinach and artichoke dip every time and it is about 99% fat and 1% other. We have 650 miles to go and all day to do it in, so I might be able to get some pix. The plan is to stop for provisions in Salinas, so I will try to do a report from there, becaue the last time I was down for WF, there was still no cell reception out there in the triathlon boonies. So I'm gonna be out of touch for a spell folks. Sorry, but, them's the fax. Would really like to take this singular opportunity to say HAPPY MAY DAY. At last, it has been a long winter, and we can start to think about long outdoor rides, runs in the sun and flowers stretching towards the sun. Shine on.