blog | belgo.com | Christopher Shepherd

Le Fin Du Monde

Tue, 25 May 2010 22:29:55 -0400

Paradiso

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:27:13 -0400

Eventually, of course, the wind changed.

No more 20-knot assaults out of the north. Sometimes now, the seas are calm enough to permit my little 18-foot bowrider to go into the blue-water ocean again. For the patient, turbulent times eventually give way to more peaceful times. Unfortunate things still happen, and sometimes there are still 2-foot seas in Cudjoe Bay, but these are, I am happy to report, more of an exception now than a rule. In a fine (for me) reversal of fortune last week, it was me towing a disabled boater into port.

I've been riding 10 miles a day on the ole Schwinn, and twice now I've (we've) done the 15.5 mile ride from US-1 through Middle Torch Key and Big Torch Key and back. By my estimate, I've put about 600-650 miles on the Schwinn now, and as you may have guessed, I'm now encountering maintenance issues. The Schwinn Crest is a fine casual cruiser, but my 200+ mile/month habit is beginning to knock me out of the 'casual biker' category and more into the 'srs biz on two wheels' category. I share your stereotypes about bicyclers too, with their expensive machines and seemingly fitness-crazed lifestyles, so it is with some alarm that I woke up one day to discover that I am one. So here I am, learning bicycle maintenance to keep the Schwinn alive as I shop for a nice Cannondale. Or Trek. Or Specialized. I don't know what I'll get yet, and I scarcely even know what I want. But I know how and where I ride, and that seems like a pretty good start. Despite what pedaling into that nasty winter wind has done to my knees, I am simply incomplete without a good 10-mile ride. Yeah, the cardio and weight control are cool, but they're no longer closely related to why I do it. My name is Christopher and I'm a bicycle nut.

But that's not all. The Fleet has added a third ship (for those keeping score, yes the Porta-Bote is still here), with the re-acquisition of a kayak, and she's a beaut, too:

It's a brand spankin new Hobie Odyssey, and although I initially had great difficulty discovering a reliable way to secure it atop the Honda Element, I eventually got the hang of it, and we discovered that the sheltered, upper-estuarial waters of northern Cudjoe Key offer a fine alternative when the other waters are too rough, or the winds too high. Shallow, perhaps, but that's no challenge for the kayak's 2-inch draft.

So we're all doing fine, even Colby, and I'm still in school struggling to find the time to compose enormous papers for Composition class as I attempt to balance all the fun outdoor toys with ever-increasing work demands. But it all works out, and frankly, as long as that is the most of my worries, I'm okay with that. I'm mostly concerned with maximizing my enjoyment of the space I have here, the sun, saltwater, and trails of the Lower Keys, and imagine my surprise at discovering that none of this ever gets old. Despite the seemingly limited (in terms of square mileage) space, enjoyment only begets more enjoyment. I guess I'm doing something right, because I'm still not writing letters to the Citizen or bigpinekey.com moaning about how the Keys aren't what they used to be. I leave that to other people, and they're apparently pretty good at it. Speaking of printed public moaning:

(Here it is, kids, C-Dawg's Post-Political Declaration of 2010)

Lately I'm losing interest in labels and outrage of nearly all sorts, and it is this to which I attribute the utter lack of political content in belgo.com in recent entries (years). It isn't that I've forgotten what I disliked, and it certainly isn't that I've ceased to disagree with government policies. In part, recent uncivil protests and harshly divisive rhetoric have made a profound point to me, and it isn't the one they were trying to make. In part, I've come to accept that whatever course of action I take is unlikely to matter. The one time I did write a long position piece and publish it in the public rags, I got about 3 responses about how long and boring it was, and one response from a person who seemed to be genuinely reached by it, but he wasn't newly-persuaded, mind you, merely agreeing because we already felt the same way. Lastly, in part, I've come to be more absorbed in my silly little life here, and that silly little life is going to be largely the same no matter who's in what office or who spits and curses at whom. I'll still hold positions, mind you, and I will express them in exactly one place, where they are solicited and counted with an optical scanner by Monroe County. That's it. You can have your Tea Parties, Coffee Parties, deficit crises, wars, just don't expect me to give up my morning ride or go to your meetings or read your vitriolic rants for what is essentially team spectator sports by any other name. This is the age of the post-political Christopher Shepherd, and he doesn't care what you think of that. You can call it apathy, but as I've said, I'll still vote.

(If you think that's something, just wait till I get started on religion and mainland USA. Hint: My attitude on those things is almost exactly the same as the political posture I've just expressed. Enjoy your beautiful world. I'll enjoy mine, and you can bank on that.)

Now I think I've said enough. And if you'll excuse me, tomorrow's gonna be a gorgeous day. :)

-Chris

Purgatorio

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:23:39 -0500

If I didn't know better, I'd have to say things looked kind of bad for me. The boat blew up an entire engine in December, and I thought Kirk was going to cry as he broke the news. It was a solemn, contemplative day, like the loss of a loved one. Nobody, least of all me, could say if the boat would ever be fixed, or what the next step was. I eventually had it towed, pulled up, engine-swapped, and made seaworthy again (for a nominal fee just north of 6 grand). While I was at it, I went to great pains to legally register and tag the trailer, and add a ball hitch to the Honda Element. Crisis resolved? In February, it broke down again, and it is back in the hands of the marina (thanks TowBoatUS). But what we do know, is that it has a brand new engine, new prop, and a bottom job. It's likely to yield a summer of fun, if the winter would ever give way.

In the depths of December's crisis, I also managed to suffer a complete failure of my iPhone 3GS, as well as the clothes washer and clothes dryer. Colby (the orange cat) got a terrible bladder infection and nearly died, in an expensive predicament now referred to as The Incident. Repair bills from the condo in Orlando meant I wasn't getting full rent checks, or in the case of February, any rent checks. Meanwhile, drastically cutting 1099 work in 2009 meant that in 2010 I now faced the large annual tax bill amidst decreased means to pay it. It was something to worry about as the dermatologist used liquid nitrogen to freeze painful precancerous cells off of my forehead. When it rains, it pours.

Eventually, I got through February by simply putting my fingers in my ears and waiting for the next bomb to go off, and not being very surprised when it did. But it is dismissive to say I've had bad times.

I passed my first college class, College Algebra. I got halfway through English Composition I and continue making fine progress to this day. My weight of 195 pounds was reduced all over again to 169, and it continues to drop, because I've adopted a pescetarian, 1300-calorie-per-day diet and I either run 3+ miles, or bicycle 7+ miles, every day, depending on the weather. The financial setbacks (all the difficulty of the past few months boils down to just that, an enormous financial setback), while certainly not negligible, are going to pass, and when they do, my expenses will be low enough that I can hold just about any steady job and still pay all the bills (April's huge tax bill will be the last of these annual headaches that I have suffered since 2004). And Colby has been much closer to me since The Incident. The main reason for all this personal progress in the depths of disaster, is simply that I was always too bone-headed to give up on the idea of a halfway-pleasant someday. And would you look at that, some interpretations of the events could even lead one to say I've benefitted from the hardship. My golden handcuffs may one day self-destruct, but damn if I won't be educated and in shape, with a new closer relationship with Colby.

Work has also gone in new directions, as I send ISO-8583 payment messages directly to major cardbrands, and create pretty Cocoa-like web user interfaces with Cappuccino. I'm even baking bread from scratch again (which 2 or 3 of you may remember was the original raison d'etre for belgo.com's predecessor blog, belgo.org). I haven't been in Key West wasting money on booze, but I have been in Big Pine Key and Little Duck Key walking beaches in solitude and figuring out how to save money on groceries. I haven't been driving every day, but I have been bicycling new trails on several Keys, and those trails have taught me about hidden places and forgotten history unknown even to die-hard locals.

The Man, the cruel universe, whatever you want to call it, can and will extract all the dough from me that it possibly can. But I admit no defeat whatsoever, until the flame of discovery is extinguished completely. And right now, the wind only seems to be fanning the flames. Maybe I was overdue for some flame-fanning.

-Chris

US-1 Picture Show

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:38:12 -0500

October Surprises

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:28:53 -0400

Sorry for the nearly two months without an update. I assure you I've been busy restructuring my home, having the yard landscaped, and addressing as many deficiencies as I can identify. Yep, I've been keeping secrets from you, and today, my planes will fill the sky. So let's talk about some of those things.

School

It's true, I'm going to school. I'm taking a few classes through Straighterline at the moment, since they transfer relatively easily into Florida community college credit. I'm most of the way through College Algebra (MAC1105), and it should be the last math class I ever have to take. After that, I'll be telecommuting through Comp I, Macro-Econ, Micro-Econ, and possibly others. I won't have to appear in person for many, if any, Freshman classes. So what's the goal? I'm so glad you asked.

The intention is to transfer all of these credits to Florida Keys Community College and pursue their AS in Marine Engineering, where I'll learn to build boats from the keel up, and most importantly (to me), learn to fix inboard and outboard engines. Marine engine repair appears to be my best bet to get out of computers and integrate with the local economy on a somewhat comfortable basis, although that's more of a longer-term plan. For now, there's no danger of me leaving the programming world.

Fitness

Longtime belgo.com readers may know that I lost 40 pounds at one point with my fitness drive of 2007-2008. Moving to the Keys threw it off track in many ways. There was a lot of new food to eat, and gallons and gallons of booze to drink. The end result saw me regaining some 30 of those pounds, not to mention smoking cigarettes while boozing it up in an Islander haze. But for a few days shy of a month now, I've been doing half an hour of cardio 5 times a week and not smoking, as Grace prepares healthy dishes for us that are full of veggies and low on calories. This is the same formula that worked in the past, and it's already taken several inches off my waist, and several more pounds off my weight. I went pretty quickly from a heart rate that raced over 160 when I stepped onto the machine, to a heart rate that takes a lot of work just to push over 140. My heart is back in shape, thanks to a revitalized elliptical-path training program.

Projects

Ohh yes, there have been some interesting projects. The yard got pretty heavily landscaped a month ago, but I can't really take credit for much besides having the initiative; I paid people to do it. But the inside of the house got pretty nicely squared away too, as the office and living room got reorganized. Grace's computer got replaced with a very nice new Mac, and I also got a nice Mac desktop, my first fixed desktop computer in most of a year. The Macs have Geforce 9800GT graphics running dual 24" Dell LCD displays, and dual-core 2.93GHz processors, with 4GB of RAM and 1TB of disk each. It's the first time in years that I've had computers nice enough to compel me to stay up late playing with all of the cool things they'll do.

We're still boating, also walking trails and geocaching, and sometimes I still spend a day or two in Old Town Key West, but I gotta tell you, right now the biggest emphasis is on living life as well as possible, and often that means I don't make time for narcissism on Facebook or here at belgo.com.

But I still promise some cool pictures soon.

-Chris