Why we need to change our ways, not tomorrow, but today.

Reading on a forum the other day, ok actually having a debate over healthcare someone said "what would you do without modern medicine, someone else relied "Live longer"
I laughed, how absurd that was. I did my usual quick search to prove the moron wrong, but what I found absolutely blew my mind, he was right. Turns out at the turn of the 20th century life expectancy was only shorter do to child mortality being very high, if you made it out of your childhood, your odds of living to a ripe old age was actually pretty good, think about it, how old was Franklin when he visited France in behalf of the fledgling US?

Let us continue, It has been a couple of years, but talking to a good friend of mine who is a Cancer research about finding a cure he remarked "We have to quit finding ways to cause it first"

That always struck me in my head, and as I look around I wonder, while other countries seem to take precautions, and go forth with a healthy lifestyle, America slowly fights off the healthy lifestyle leading the world in heart attacks and obesity, not necessarily in that order.

We seem to take pride in shoving our faces full of the worst possible crap there is, so much so that we even make jokes and laugh about it, but I ask you, if someone was playing Russian roulette would you be laughing? If someone buried a note in your highschool time capsule that said in x amount of years you will have a stroke if you open this letter, would you open it?

We co go farther with this, there is a panic among many people over vaccines and if they cause autism. That may or may not be the case, I realize the science is heavily against it causing autism, I still hold the door of plausability while knowing in the meantime it is probably in our best interest to still vaccinate at least against certain very nasty diseases. With that said there seems to be a great deal amount of irony knowing that someone who will not allow their child to be vaccinated, will then turn around and feed them meat soaked in Ammonia and radiated, with twinkies for desert.

We then move on to our Beloved Lawns where our all American tradition of BBQ takes place. Sounds innocent enough right? well sort of, while that very person who has a lawn which uses roughly 50 percent of your household water consumption, will then also complain about global warming and drought, I guess I missed the class where this made sense as well. We can take this a bit farther with even a more troubling and known cause of evil, pesticides.

Now mind you we have a love hate relationship with pesticides. We love them for keeping the bugs off of crops, and we love them even more for keeping bugs off our beloved flowers. But pesticides are a carcinogen. Bugs eat the pesticides and birds eat the bugs, what do you tink will happen? Worse yet bees which we desperately need for pollination area also an insect and are suffering dramatically because of it.

The next lawn/crop loving chemical which is killing us specifically what we know as "Roundup" definitively causes autism. I am willing to bet those same moms worried about autism in Vaccines will still spray their lawns and eat vegetables coated in the garbage. Not in Europe they do not, it is already banned.

Look I can go on but we really need to clean up our act, hell our bread does not even mold anymore, things have got to change, and I do not mean tomorrow, but I really mean today, your kids and their kids depend on it.

Oh one more thing, while ya'll are worried about the radiation from fukishima did you know that many of those chemicals we create never go away? they stay in the water, slowly building up, how many centuries until this is a major problem? Probably not as long as you think, pharmaceuticals from our over medicated bodies also do not digest and mutations are being caused in aquatic lives because of it, guess what, people are being effected by it as well.

Time to shape up people, and I mean now.

I have always been asked "How do you do it?" It is not hard, here is how

For my entire life people have asked me how I managed to do so much when I was not working.

While working my business I often worked 100 hour work weeks, that of course was for only about half the year, the rest of the year I did kind of what a wanted.

Before I became self employed I rarely worked steady but readily enjoyed life, owning what I wanted and doing a fair amount of traveling. Truth be known I could have, and should have done far more traveling.

I always heard the same thing, and reading the posts on a fellow world travelers wall when she went to Russia "how do you afford all this travel?" it reminded me why it is simply so easy.

We are without want, in other words we do not need what everyone else thinks makes life complete.

I do not need the latest or greatest of anything, never have, never will it is just not how I am.

Rather than wasting money I set money aside, dont get me wrong, I enjoy life, but how many of you have stacks of toys sitting in the garage you never touch? how much are those toys? I am willing to bet for that stack you could have done an equal amount of traveling as I have.

Look life is all about compromise, but really falling into the American Dream trap is nothing more than a nightmare, people work their entire lives to aquire shit, they cannot wait to get rid of when they finally realize its burdon shortly before they die.

I am like many people, I still have far to much, but I have heard it over and over again in my life when people walk into my house "you do not have anything" and they are right, by American standards, I do not.

Life for me is about experiences, I would rather be out riding my Mountain bike, Motorbike or simply seeing something new and great.

You can win that battle with "who has the most toys wins" go for it champ, I want to be the guy who did the most, that world out there is big, or small, depending on how you see it, I will send you a post card.

65 Year old Lady Summits Mt Haggin in a day

What a day. I was supposed to ride motorbikes with a fellow from a chat forum, I did not hear from him and I ended up working with my business and bogged down with paperwork.

Secretly all day I craved my Yellow Mountain Bike, I had ridden it in a fun ride last night and I could not get it out of my mind.

I finished my paperwork as 6:15 rolled around, I knew Dave would want to ride and would be home around 6:30, I called and told his son to tell his dad to be ready, 7:00 we rolled down the street.

We decided to climb up to Hurst lake at the base of Mt Haggin. We knew we would not make it all the way but it is 3.5 miles from our doorsteps of solid climbing. The climb was as always a difficult one this time of the year with the ground being spongy and the fingers of hell called new grass gripping at your tires making every peddle difficult.

We would pause and watch the sunset, then continue up the road, soon at the gate, our destination there was a dog whining looking back up the trail.

Not sure if this was a lassie moment I took off up the hill following the dog to see if its master was ok. I would see a black shadow and yell "are you ok"

"I am fine" came a faint obviously tired voice. I decided to climb up and see for sure as the figure was moving downhill so incredibly slow.

I was shocked as I got closer, there came a wrinkled silver haired lady, slowly trodding down the trail "What a long day" she would say.

I was honestly taken a bit aback and asked her how far she went "oh all the way to the top, and last week I did this mountain and this mountain the week before"

What could I say? She was 20 years my senior and climbing stuff I had myself never accomplished.

I would ride out on a thrilling downhill pondering life as always, what lays up the road? Not to long ago I was thinking I did not know how much left I would have, but after seeing her, who knows?

We talked to a fellow slightly older than us at the bottom in town, he commented how amazing that was and she was lucky to be mobile "Well": I replied "Better to die up there than dreaming about being up there"