Great, great sex.

Now that I have your attention I want to talk about decision making.

Decisions are the building blocks for success and the basis of failure. They produce elation and pain for yourself, individuals or large groups of people. Your life began as a decision. Good or bad, right or wrong, mistake or purposeful, someone made the decision to do something that resulted in You. And now, you constantly make decisions that affect your life and the life of everyone else around. So friggin’ aye, you need to consider the importance of these things because your decisions directly affect me, and in a profound way.

Prior to you happening, our early ancestors made decisions with very little history on which to base the choice on. What a life! How to decide what to do, how to live, when NO ONE came before you? Man am I glad stupid people lived before me, so I can do better than them with my decision making.

Prior to that, the question is: Who made the biggest decision of them all? This decision involved the creation of life on Earth, which if you are religious, was a decision made by some form of a god. If you’re a scientist, there was no decision made at all, it just happened as a result of many things converging and time, time, time. Anywho, we’re not gonna figure that one out any time soon…so!

When you make the hundreds of decisions you need to every day, consider the short and long term consequences, especially the consequences on other people like me! And please, consider the most subtle consequences, the ones that don’t jump right out at you. To do this, you need to know people, and have a sense for how people think and react to what happens around them. Every little decision counts just like the big ones.

For example, a young dude made some very bad decisions the other day. He happened to have a rifle in his hand at the time, and was pissed off. One of the major rules of decision making is: Don’t make ANY when you’re pissed off! He was only 17 and probably had horrible parents. This poor young buck got super pissed at his family over gutting a deer, drove out to several highways and shot at cars.

The decision to get away from his family was a good one, I back it. The decision to take the rifle was bad decision #1. The decision to find something to shoot at was bad decision #2. At the very least, if you gotta let off some steam go shoot a stuffed animal in a sand pit. I’ve done it, I’ve relieved stress that way. I’ve also sat alone and focused on taking some air in and out, which usually works.

From there, this kid’s decisions go down the tube and he’s gotten himself into a world of shit, as well as ended another’s life. It’s amazing and scary to consider that everyone around you has this power, and only their decision making process keeps them from using it. On the highway, driving a car, walking downtown, whatever. That’s how important decisions are from top to bottom.

Wisdom is what they call it. It’s simply the consideration of everything you know prior to making decisions. The other half of wisdom is believing in your decisions enough to admit and live with the wrong ones. Wisdom is not always the right decision, it’s just careful consideration, making decisions with confidence and living with the consequences in a respectful way.

Quickly consider the consequences of every decision you make. Pick one from today: What shoes am I gonna wear? How did you come to that decision? Did you have a meeting at Nike, which means you should not wear Gravis? Is it hot as hell, which means you ought to wear sandals? Or are you one of those color-matchy accessorizing types? That choice could mean more than you think.

Admit to yourself why you make the decisions you make, figure out where you fall on the hard ones before they come down the pipe. Live up to the bad ones, and PLEASE, please just chill out when you’re mad. Emotions and decisions go together like guns and ammo.

Escape to Vermont

It’s been hot here as everyone knows. We have one old air conditioner in our house and it lived in the Chickenbone Penthouse as well as Meghan’s place in Winooski, where it remained on for many days during the summer.

Only the other day did we realize it was time to clean the dust collector. And what a good dust collector this thing was. I removed the cover to find a relatively thick layer of khaki dust and stuff collected and blocking the air flow through the cooling machine. I had to clean it, but not before realizing the millions of tiny particles of skin, hair, breath, books, food, any particle that passed through the last 3 homes I have had.

The dust collector on my air conditioner contained particles of my past, the invisible garbage of the air around us for the last 3 years. And I washed it down the drain, it came off easily, but refused to go peacefully. It clogged the shower drain for a few minutes in brown chunks of wet dust-goo. I picked it out, forced it down and flushed the dust.

I take solace in the fact that for the past few days, we’ve been collecting new dust, new particle memories that are a little more positively charged, with a little more potential. I am not sure if I’ll wait another three years to clean the filter, especially now that the air conditioner works so well. And you know what, we all need to move on faster.

In another fit of Vermont-removal, I got my new license plates for our car. No more green mountains. Oregon evergreens adorn our Chevy and Volkswagen. And I also washed the last of the Vermont dirt off the Chevy just the other day. Took it to the Washman, downtown. Dudes did a nice, nice job on both vehicles. ‘Cept the wheels could have used a little more love. Oh, and I got a new passport as an Oregon resident. Last step is to take the driver’s test and replace that ugly-ass license.

While more and more Vermonters contemplate the move to Portland (which I wholeheartedly encourage for all readers, just let us buy a house before you get here), Meghan and I are making the trip back east in…how many days honey? Not many, maybe 30 or so. We’re achieving marriage in Dorset, Vermont. I hear it’s been hot there too. Hot and wet. Hot and dry I think is better than hot and wet. But it really doesn’t matter for me because if it’s hot, I’m wet.

I’ve had some thoughts about Burlington and Vermont from afar, and I’ll share them with you here:

• It’s small, and people there think they’re more influential than they are.
• It’s pretty hippie, about the same ratio of stinky long-hairs as Portland
• For a small place, it does have a lot going on, but the music scene is beat. Hasn’t been good since the mid nineties. The Burlington music scene died with The Pants.
• Vermont moves slowly, including Burlington. See the first point, above.
• Vermont is an amazingly beautiful, diverse landscape for such a small state. Riding a motorcycle down or up Route 100 is like nothing else. I miss small, cramped forests!
• Vermont has great, great food places, and Burlington is home to many of them.
• There are many bars like Esox, but there’s only ONE Heather, at Esox. She made many Friday nights better and in doing so, made very little money for Esox and more for herself. Too bad most of it went up her nose.

I feel a comeback in the future for Burlington. I forsee throngs of big city dwellers in NYC, PDX, CHI, LA, SF making their way home to Vermont again, stoked to be back where things happen, but none of it really matters. Yet everyone there is real good at pretending it does, which is why everyone gets along so well.

Here’s a wedding card we received this week. It almost feels like us: cute and well written.

Relative Problems

Things are so damn good for us, me, you. It’s a very positive time here. Not so, in many other places.

I walked into Fred Meyer today, which is full of good stuff to purchase and was packed with purchasers. Quite conveniently, my bank’s branch is located as within the store. Nice. I deposited my self-made paycheck (first one in a while) and sat down to eat pizza and drink a peach Snapple.

Peach Snapple saved my life when I was a caddy. Caddying is: Hauling asshole’s (not always, but sometimes) bags for 5 hours in the sun up and down hills of wet grass. Chasing golf balls and reading greens for blind old bats who could not see straight, much less putt straight. Caddying sucked except for peach Snapple and being the best summer job ever. Anyhow…I digress-s-s-s.

I sat down at a table to eat pre-made lunch of pizza and some asian salad wraps at Fred Meyer and there was “Wooden Boat” magazine, the most recent issue, sitting open to an article on the table. The article is about my brother’s surfboard company, Grain Surfboards. I read the article, which had pictures my brother, Nick, shot for the article. My brothers are pretty stoked people, to be able to make wooden surfboards, ride them in Maine and shoot pictures of them. This is what they do. They’re not rich people, but the opportunity to spend thier (their) time this way in a beautiful place and get covered by the AP and magazines is pretty crazy. Now thier (i mean their) boards are showing in a window in Soho, on one of the busiest corners in New York.

My point is not only to promote my brother’s company, (yea baby!) but to make you realize how good we have it, how lucky we are to live with relatively minor problems, and plenty of great things to do with our lives. Believe me, I am glad I don’t have any big problems right now, even though I know how quickly that can change. You gotta realize and enjoy that fact more often, or you’re wasting your time being needlessly bitter or simply ignorant.

A little perspective: We’re not being shelled, bombed, shot at, or ferried to Cyprus. Hell, Ryan Coulter is having the best week of his life. I have a mobile phone that does damn near everything, ‘cept wipe my bum. Last weekend, I drove 4 hours to spend 6 hours on the coast of Oregon getting a sunburn with my girl and some friends. The week before, I drove 12 hours to camp, drink cheap beer and fish for gigantic brown trout near Idaho. Worthwhile and fun.

Little things matter and they can take the edge off. I say, look at them, realize their potential and enjoy them. Cause tomorrow, things will change.

Here’s our shopping list for the week. Can you tell what I added to Meghan’s list?

2 bottles toilet cleaner
lunch meat
bread
eggs
cheese
milk
cereal
bananas
berries
cherries
melon
tomatoes
meat
fish
Cheap Beer
Assorted Good Jerky

Open minds, Open Sandwiches

Total Recall

I fished this week on the Owyhee river in eastern OR with Egge, Jess and Schroeder. Been waiting to fish with Egge for months, what a comedy trip. Anyhow, we were basically camping on Mars it seemed, with a cold river laden with large brown trout flowing right through camp. From camp we drove the truck to named fishing spots that I will not reveal, but there were big trout there. Walk down to the river and catch big trout. Bring beer. Sounds easy right?

Something was up, we did not catch trout we were supposed to, but two good things happened: Some great laughs and re-connecting with Egge, one of the funniest ex-pro snowboarders in existence. Also a friggin’ great fly fisherman.

The landscape down there reminded me of Mars. Red rocks, sand, mountains, sun. Pretty insane place, very BIG. I’ll definitely remember many details of that trip, but unfortunately I won’t remember the trout because I did not land any. I watched Jess catch a couple and I watched Egge work a feeding trout sitting right next to the bank. He crouched on his knees in the river, freaking out each time his fly passed over the nose of the big brown trout. He watched it feed on natural flies in between casts. He must have cast to that trout 3 dozen times before giving up. At one point, the fish hit his fly, missed it and eventually came back to feed in the same spot again.

I wanted to go on that trip for many reasons. One of them was that I knew it would be a memorable trip. I knew it would make for good memories. Those memories would include fish, beer, friends, good laughs, and a really cool place on a new river. I wanted to create new memories, in addition to catching some big ass browns. At least I got one of those out of the trip, and I have a new spot to fish with those dudes in the Fall.

In this picture is the neighborhood in which I grew up. In this picture are places where things happened with people. There’s skateboarding in this picture, skinned knees, hacky sacking, a first kiss, crying, laughing, early beers, school, family. This picture includes the places where I grew up and learned everything. Only memories live in this neighborhood now.

I learned from those memories and I keep learning. Those memories have helped create new friends, new jobs, new businesses, a future wife. My life is built on the memories created within the area of this image. My house lies in the middle somewhere. My school, the park, my best friend’s house, the street I learned to ollie on, the spot where I broke my leg, our dirt bike track, our back yard. I am one person, and my life is all over those streets and lawns. Imagine the power of all of the people I knew.

Imagine if memories could be created without living the experience. Not sure how good that would be. But maybe it’d be cool.

This is just a great damn photo of Scotty at Bromley shot by Shem. Has little to do with this post, but…

Routine Weather

I am tired of the sun in my face. I no longer want to perspire in the plain heat. Most green things here are brown for lack of moisture. I am sure the fish are hiding deep in the shadows.

I need some change. The past 10 days feel like one long stretch of nothing special (with the exception of July fourth). We’ve had two wonderfully overcast days in thirty. Those mornings were at least memorable, at least provided a point of reference in a slew of perfectly blue, sunny skies. I hate the blue now, I don’t really care for it.

I have always lived where the weather changed so often you had to keep your sunglasses in the pocket of your rain coat. When I rode my motorcycle (R.I.P. 2001 BMW R1150GS) I remember wearing rubberized rain pants with the crotch sealed up, and a waterproof riding coat on potentially wet days. Many times, I had to stop to remove the pants, put sunglasses on and continue riding, only to stop a few dozen miles down the road in a shower again. It was fine, the change provided a reason to remember the ride.

But in weather like this, there are no standout days where you get all of the outside things done you had been putting off. So today I went out to do those things I needed to do, and I sweated.

About the only good thing about constant sun and heat is that dog poop gets hard-baked and is nicer to collect and dispose of. See, I have a “no turd left behind” policy that means that even after I’ve combed the yard for dooks, and mowed what’s left of the weedy, brown lawn, I go back over to find the sneaky little poops that are missed after the first pass.

By this time, there is no moisture left in the little butt nuggets, which were once the expensive, “sensitive stomach” dog food we purchase from high end food stores. So they scoop easier, with less mess and almost no odor. Today was a big day, just about filling a plastic shopping bag to the breaking point. And now the process begins again…with no rain in the forecast.

McMerica

I just watched Sonic Youth play, arguably the best band to ever come out of this country. A perfect blend of melody, rock, good songs and noise. Also, this band has been able to successfully blend its members for over 20 years and a ton of albums and songs. They’ve worked together to run the business, write the songs, travel the world, record and play for people. The mission has remained the same, and people appreciate the consistency and apparent stability of the band. They just make great loud rock music and get it out there, year after year.

America is an idea that is not marketed or taught to people or reminded to the people of this country enough or well enough. It’s a dicey blend of people, languages, businesses, money, personalities, cultures, beliefs. The best place for people to learn about America is TV these days. I learned something from The West Wing. But someone should take it upon themselves to teach and remind people all over, all ages, why we’re here. Eighth grade was not enough for such a great place.

Let’s examine a product of this country that I view as a perfect example of what this country and it’s blended innovations are all about: The McGriddle.

A long time ago, someone decided to combine meat with bread, put the bread on the outside and eat it with their hands. This would not have worked with the meat on the outside. Eventually, people had the balls to try all kinds of stuff on sandwiches: different meats, added cheese, and even vegetables. Sandwiches soon became a staple, a perfect combination of items that go well together, and are super easy to eat without utensils.

But then, a stroke of genius. Some great human decided to make a sandwich before noon. The breakfast sandwich was born. Eggs and meat had been eaten with bread in the morning, but never had someone put the bread on the outside, the eggs and meat on the inside, and eventually, added cheese, that melted from the heat of the other ingredients. Amazing. A complete, tasty meal between your fingers, before noon. Nothing could top this. But of course, someone in America had to. Leave it to McDonald’s.

You would think the Egg McMuffin was good enough. They had sold millions of them. Formed egg, rounded bacon (stolen from Canada), yellow, melted cheese product, all “sandwiched” between toasted muffins (stolen from England). The Egg McMuffin made it possible to spend very little money and eat a complete, power breakfast, full of protein, carbs and even dairy, with just one hand while driving. Again, pretty friggin amazing. But Americans will always outdo even themselves. McDonald’s had to do better.

Enter McGriddle.

Pancakes and syrup are a breakfast in and of themselves. You don’t need anything else, people have been grilling sweet cakes and adding natural maple syrup and butter to them for years. It’s a warm, inviting and sweet way to begin the day. At some point, someone (a hungry lumberjack perhaps?) made some pancakes, fried some eggs, even grilled some meat and ate the whole thing in one sitting. A mammoth meal, but really the ultimate morning jumpstart.

Denny’s and other diners popularized and distributed large breakfast meals with pancakes, eggs, and meat throughout America. People accepted the idea of gorging themselves in the morning and combining ingredients normally kept separate. They let the syrup touch the eggs, a major development in the history of combination big breakfasts. What was once unheard of in the world of morning foods would be capitalized on soon, and in a major way.

Breakfast product developers at McDonald’s knew they needed something new. The venerable Egg McMuffin had performed admirably, and was still outselling it’s cousin globally, the young Sausage Biscuit with Egg. All the while, the Big Breakfast lagged in terms of sales, but with a fiercly loyal customer base, and some help from friends in high places, pancakes remained on the menu in the morning at McDonald’s. How could the company capitalize on the investment it had made in the mass production of pancakes, eggs, meats and hand-held sandwiches? They launched The McGriddle.

The ultimate blend of the best in breakfast, the Sausage McGriddle is a sandwich that includes two, small, syrup-infused pancakes (embossed with the company’s Golden Arches logo!) with a formed, folded scrambled egg, round sausage patty and melted, yellow cheese product in one, hand-held slamming device. Not only had the company figured out that this blend was something people wanted, but the R and D department solved the issue of infusing the syrup taste INTO the griddle cakes. To top it off, they branded the new sandwich with an embossed stamp of the rounded “M” on the outside of each cake, just to make sure we all remembered who built the McGriddle. The syrup had officially, globally touched the egg.
Taste. Distribution. Simplicity. Brand Marketing. Innovation. High Calorie. Low Health Value. Deep Desire.

Only in McMerica…