K Mart

see i told you guys i shouldn't have been posting the other day, what a sad excuse for a post, ah well i won't deny i have my days but then there's days like today. it's saturday, i was going to go to work but i received a message last night from a guy who wants to take a look at the rover so here i sit waiting for a call. it's not even 10am yet and already i went to the site to tell the guys i wouldn't be there, washed the truck, bought some armorall and cleaned out the inside of the truck. impressive what you can get done if you get up at 7:30.
last night melissa and me hung out, well ok we pretty much drove around all evening but it was still fun. we went to one garage sale and then explored costco. it's really easy not to buy anything in a store where you're not allowed to without a card. then we stopped in at Chapters/Starbucks and spelled the crazy words they have on these cards, words that aren't really official words but could change the world one word at a time. ah the inspirational abilities of a coffee shop.

words unspoken.......

this may not be the best time to be writin' one of these but ah well. tonight was a slow night. we worked a full day today, Carl and me. for the last while we had been putting in six or seven hour days but today the rest of the crew showed up and we started the new phase of construction. leaving at five was i guess still a half hour early.....nobody really cared.
dinner was excellent again, i don't think my aunt can make a bad meal, we've had some burnt ones but they still had flavor. i finished another L'Amour, this time a collection of his short stories. i lifted some weights cause i felt like it and then went for a roll.
this town really has nothing to ride except some curbs, i came home with a bruised shin and scraped hands.

tonight........tonight was a night where sitting and looking out at the mountains from the deck was.........lonely, really lonely. lonely that remembers what it's like to be with someone, to have them sitting beside you, whispering back and forth. simply having someone's presence so close that......even silence is ok.
But please don't comment about this post cause if i pull my head out of the sand i know this (being away) is a choice i've made, i know that it would be really hard, probably impossible, to be this free with someone to share it with. i imagine marriage may be a little like that, and someday i'll find out that it's probably far better. so i'll leave you with a quote from the weakerthans that if you want you can pretend is about me or maybe about you.

"If I could I would make you a raging river,
with angry rapids, supplied with rain,
so you could always meander and forever be able to run away
without contending
with myths wrongly interpreted
with pain.
A harsh wind."
-Without Mythologies

Self Portography

Me and my bike will be famous, you just wait and see. We'll start a protest for equal rights in Geneva, maybe roll along the Great Wall in the name of peace, and we'll circumnavigate the globe to raise awareness of the nasty effects of urban sprawl.

Until then we'll enjoy lazy Saturday afternoons together on the shores of mighty rivers.

Light Enough To Travel

Check out my sweet new bag. It's got wheels and a telescopic handle and it's brand new and it's blue and I only paid like 6 bucks or something, oh and i'm pretty sure that I can change the wheels to skateboard wheels so that I can tow it behind by bike and it also has back pack straps so you can wear it on your back and i think i'm gonna build a ramp that fits on it for street missions. It's the ultimate in carry on/travel/kindergarten utility purposes.

The Quiet Stranger

There is always someone to fulfill every archetype concerning humans. Everyone knows a doctor, a janitor, a friendly neighbor, a concerned mother, a hockey dad, and a quiet stranger. Somehow that stranger, even though we know them, remains a stranger. They never say too much, just enough to interact with us. The "us" is our world and they, well they are lost in their own world, a world where they are totally unknown to us. That's where our imaginations take over to create a life for them to live. Maybe they have family, with kids they play with, with parties at friends houses. Maybe they have a job that they love, and a favorite coffee shop where they meet their best friends to talk. Maybe they love sunsets and actually do enjoy long walks. Maybe they have a house and a yard with big trees that they climb up to feel young again. Maybe they have mentors who are older and greyer then themselves who they ask the tough questions about life, love, and happiness. They might even have a life partner who is their closest friend and lover, who they will spend the rest of their lives with. How much of this will we, as outsiders or their world, discover as true in their lives? Probably not very much, and that may be exactly what keeps the quiet stranger in a mysterious light. If we knew all that about them, they would become real to us, they would become part of our world as we would be a part of theirs. So enjoy the quiet strangers, enjoy how your imagination creates an ideal for their lives, just remember that the real people, the ones in your world, are the ones you should be investing your time and energy into, so that hopefully their lives grow closer to the ideal.

Let's talk marriage

jen: you could be married soon
eric: so far the lights not on at the end of that tunnel
jen: well turn it on
eric: i can't, it's a motion sensor and i'm not within range

Repeat

Blood to cap a roll
Walking that same route
Holidays filled with anger
Here we go again

Nowhere to go
Passion mixed down to time and money
Alone for a sunny day
Another day another dollar

Hole at the knee
Broken mirrors reflect
Stained hands rough
Just like the last

Back to back
Rest evades again
And back to the beginning
Repeat

Girls Want Guys With Skills

I was going to post about how girls never look for gentlemen rather they are far more attracted to dangerous, rebel sorts of guys but I didn't know how to word it so nevermind. In other news I'm in love.......with my new hammer. It looks like I'll be heading back to Manitoba once again. And I won't be posting about music cause I'd have to use music to describe how I feel about music so it just won't work. Really I could just type lyrics and song titles instead of trying to literally translate my thoughts and feelings for this blog. Of course then we would have to have the same tastes and music libraries but it's a thought. As this post was going nowhere it is now going to end.

The end of the road

I went out for a roll today, around town then back into the residential area on the hill where I'm staying and then into a whole other world. Up on the hill it's windy and you can hear traffic and kids playing but if you take the opening between two houses on the last street at the back of the hill your surroundings almost instantly transform from urban to forest. After skidding down a washed out path I came upon the creek at the bottom of the coulee. Alongside the creek runs a winding trail through the trees. At the end of that trail is a bridge over a gravel road and at the end of the gravel road is what you see in the picture, which was taken looking back down the road. It was beautiful there, quiet enough to hear the birds and hardly any wind. There is a reason for the road though, directly to my right a just out of the frame stands a dream home.

Humbled By a Crack Addict

I was asked to work with Marty today. Marty is someone who had it all, a wife and kids, he employed 60 people in his own construction company, now he’s a crack addict and an alcoholic. I had heard awful stories that his appearance did nothing to contradict, he looks close to death, purple skin and bloodshot eyes. With this I formed an opinion of him, or maybe judgment is a better word. I thought to myself, great I have to work with this guy the rest of the day, is there anything I can learn from a lowlife like that.

Now this is not going to end with me justifying the man, he is who he is, but he had an affect. Right off the bat he was on me and ragging me about my attitude and to be honest I was saying things with a twinge of contempt. He wouldn’t have any of it, every time I had a defense for any of my actions he came right back with “it’s all about you, isn’t it.” I couldn’t say or do anything right, and I was starting to feel like a fool. And he kept calling me a little girl, no shift in tone, not joking, just “you think you can do that, little girl.” He wanted under my skin, and to an extent he got what he wanted. I was mad, I didn’t want to show it but he was pissing me off and yet he was the one who knew what he was doing.

Marty, the crackhead, knew far more than me and was making sure I knew that. At that point I had a choice to make, I was either going to stay mad and make it my goal to make him look like a fool and probably insult his life or I was going to have to let go of a lot of pride and admit that he is not just a shell of a man but someone with a lot more knowledge and skills then myself. Someone I could learn from, maybe not life lessons but I’m a terribly ignorant construction worker compared to him. I felt whipped, but I walked home free of a lot of pride, asking myself “who am I.”

Trampoline 3 eric 0

I tried again today, backflips that is and the first one was to the springs so that's it, the trampoline is the official winner. So I probably won't be learning flips on a bike any time soon unless I find a foam pit somewhere.

I don't know how many days in the past two years I've been overwhelmed with an incredible urge to leave. To take any form of transportation in any direction, and be gone until I felt like coming back.
that's my Cheetah On The Razor's Edge shirt, I don't know if anyone remembers when they brought a cheetah to the mall in the early 90's but I got a shirt like this then and was super pumped when I found a new one at Value Village out here.