Actually Living in Paradise

One of the many running jokes in our household is that North Yelm is out of control; the weekends don't start in North Yelm until sirens blaze past our house. Fire trucks, police cars, or ambulances whiz by the one road at a fairly regular rate. Of course, they're more prominent between Friday and Sunday. But that doesn't mean you won't hear them on Wacky Wednesday, or Totally Trashy Tuesday. We'll be doing whatever it is we do on a daily basis, whether it be dishes, or surfing the internet, or chasing cats, and the second we hear a siren off in the distance, we know exactly where they're headed: North Yelm. Our reactions are becoming less surprised nowadays, ranging from a shake of the head, to pleas for North Yelm to "knock it off"! Seriously, there aren't that many residences up that road. By now, I'm pretty sure that we've heard enough instances of official vehicles whip on down that road to equal every residential addres...

I just made it through 99% of Jumpmaster School. All that remains is to burn through a few jumps next week in whatever position the instructors put me, provided the weather doesn't snow like it is being forecast right now. The Jumpmaster course has been quite the challenge - more than I've put myself through in quite a while. It all started with the nomenclature test. Simply put, I had to correctly and exactly identify each part of the parachute harness, reserve parachute, weapons case, canopy release assembly, riser assembly, H-harness, et cetera. Any mistake resulted in a reduction in points. Any score below 70 points on any portion of any test in the entire course was considered a failure. Safety violations of any kind were an automatic failure (minus 35 points). Why they didn't just make it a 99-point violation, I'm not quite sure. After the nomenclature test was the JMPI portion, which stands for JumpMaster Personnel Inspection. We learned the...

Sit in your leather chair and call your sandy jets Drink your chilled Hennessy and place your lavish bets Encompass yourself safely in your illusions Think about what you do, think about what you say Don’t believe that yours is truly the only way Sharpen yourself with righteous collusion Beware your voice, mark my words Of my choices, don’t make light Just because I want peace, Doesn’t mean I won’t fight I’ll play fair and make nice with all Soak up rancid sunshine But night will come and your world will end The second your world touches mine Take off your reins, open your brain Think with your soul if you can Hone your tolerance razor sharp If only history could be written by the oppressed Could our future withstand that test Of truth?

So no kidding there I was, in one of the major franchise bookstores a few weeks ago, trying to pick out a book to read for the homeward leg of a work trip. I perused multiple sections unsuccessfully, even stopping in front of the how-to section contemplating becoming a self-taught motorcycle mechanic. For a moment I pondered the purchase of several magazines in place of a book. But since I was traveling from the Eastern seaboard to the Pacific Northwest, I needed a plot. As I wandered toward the mall entrance of the store, I stopped in front of one of "those racks." You know the one; it is a circular tower no more than two feet wide and six feet tall which spins around its axis like a used car lot advertisement displaying all genres of paperbacks. Believe it or not, here is where I found my selection: "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. Now, several of my friends have mentioned this book to me as a "must-read", which is why it sounded fa...

This past Thursday was our new Commander's "1st Annual Group Ride," and all motorcycle riders in the unit were told that this ride was their place of duty. So with me being a new motorcycle owner, and all excited to go on my first actual ride longer than four miles, I got my stuff ready and showed up. We were to meet at Jimmy Ray's Cycle Shop in Graham, WA at 9:00am, and go through some safety & awareness classes. The Group Commanders spoke and then they picked out several veteran riders to lead packs of eight (or so) riders. The route Would take us from the motorcycle shop through a few towns, and straight to the base Mount Rainier to a small town named Paradise. It was a relatively straight shot from the shop to the mountain, with few turns off. I didn't count the exact number of motorcycles that ended up showing up, but it easily numbered over 60 bikes. It was many more than I thought would show up. Cruisers, sportbikes, a couple sport tourers, a coup...

One of the scariest things that I have felt as a father is the semi-sudden awareness that my children will leave the nest. They will go from infant to toddler, child to tween, and then from teenager into adulthood, and in my eyes it will have happened so quickly that I could’ve held my breath and watched it happen before I was forced to exhale. There will be points in their lives where you see phantom glimmers of their adulthood peeking out at you and winking, hinting at their futures. These glimmers will become more prominent and then morph into behavior patterns, which will then shape how your child takes his or her own niche in the world. And it will at times remind you of yourself and how you went through transitions in your own childhood. But you will one day realize that your own parents saw those glimmers in you, and your perspective will flip from that of a son, to a father, and then to a father’s son. My oldest son Joshua, who just turned 15 recently, took charge of ...

Bubba, the young boy of the family, received a late Christmas present from one of his Grandmothers this year: military-style action figures. Normally, the most common gifts for Bubba to receive are Hot Wheels cars of all makes, models and colors. He loves them! He will take every single car out, regardless of how many there are, and set them bumper-to-bumper in a line. When asked about it, Bubba will always reply with, "That's the road, Daddy!" He cannot play with only one car; he has to play with EVERY car. That is his world - it's all about motion and action and going fast. Ricky Bobby, eat your heart out. So this time he gets action figures. He is most definitely excited about them. Now, Bubba doesn't really yet have the skill, much less any patience, to stand these action figures up on their feet. Besides, on the carpet it’s darn near impossible. Instead, he places them on the ground with their legs spread in classic James Brown-style sp...

Welcome to my first official Blog! I've done some small amount of writing in the past, but nothing regularly so let's see how this sticks to my lifestyle. I may be putting some of my motorcycle rides and/or endeavors into this, so I'll have to practice putting up pictures and remembering details as I ride. For those who don't know about me, I'm the proud owner of a used 1999 Triumph Trophy 900 motorcycle. I bought it back in April 2010 from the original owner, who purchased it in Southern California and took extremely good care of it. He passed it over to me along with a folder full of service records, some extra case seals, spark plugs, and an oil filter. I took the Basic Motorcycle Rider's Course back in July of 2008, and it took me almost two full years to save up the money. This is actually a good thing, because it took me about that long to figure out exactly what type of motorcycle that I wanted. I did pretty extensive research, too. I looked ...