A Message from Lance Armstrong

Your chance of getting cancer increases roughly as the third power of your age. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what you eat or drink. Cancer is rough to live with, and even rougher to die from. Whatever else you can say about Lance, he's serious about his campaign to beat cancer. Maybe you think he's a cheat. But at a time when his accusers say that everyone was cheating, that means the playing field was still level - the competition was still equalized. Whatever he did, it was below the level of detection, which is all any detection system can guarantee. I think he's a little bit crazy for living and training the way you have to live and train to win the Tour de France, year after year. And I think he's a hero, who made the journey from dying to winning. But I think he's a hero especially because of his Livestrong Foundation work. Now... what do I have to wear that's yellow?

Going Downhill

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Ok, the guy has bike handling skills. The guy is probably not suicidal. But are he, his fellow competitors, and the spectators adrenaline junkies or what? This is from the helmet cam of a rider in the Valparaiso Cerro Abajo Race, an urban downhill competition in Chile. Macho, no?

Indomitable Spirit II

This from a guy who has had Parkinson's Disease for 20 years who wants to cycle across South Dakota:



And this from a guy with a progressive life-shortening motor ataxia who plans to ride the RAAM (Race Across America - 3000 miles in a single stage):



FYI, they both ride Catrikes, by Big Cat HPV. Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!

Indomitable Spirit

For those who have experienced losses that mar their holiday season, may the video clip above remind you that joy can be reborn.

Small Worlds, Must See!

A friend alerted me to the small wonders of Creation. Have a look at Olympus Bioscapes, an international competition for beautiful images made with microscopes of living creatures.

Y Chromosome Challenged

Note that the unicyclist above is a young male. I figured this might lift your spirits as we slouch toward another election.

Who says bicycling isn't a blood sport?

Ouch. That was Mark Cavendish, going down after touching wheels with a fellow sprinter. Note how his front wheel breaks and pancakes after the touch, triggering the chain-reaction pile-up.

I have long maintained that people who ride bicycles on the road, whether for transportation, recreation, or racing, just don't have an intuitive grasp of statistics. On a per trip basis, the odds of being killed or injured while bicycling are greater than rock climbing or sky diving, but a little bit less than cave diving. Or as Lance Armstrong says, "There are two kinds of cyclists: those who have crashed, and those who are going to."

And of course, we have our helmet laws backwards. Kids can recover from traumatic brain injury much more easily and completely than can adolescents and adults. If we were really interested in protecting people, we should require the adults to wear the helmets, and leave the kids to their parents' best judgement. Besides, helmets cut down on the number of potential organ donors.

Not that I have anything against cyclists, mind you. In fact, here is my ride, tricked out with light weight components, so I can chase my buddies up the local hills:

It's a Lightning.

Geek and Proud

OK, there's a tragedy in Haiti caused by its buildings, which were built without regard for earthquake safety. Thank you Haitian government for failing to set and enforce the ground rules that would have kept people alive and unhurt. The Haitian government didn't go far enough to protect its people.

At the same time, the US government is perhaps going too far, enacting a health insurance reform bill that doesn't reform health care, and may be too costly. But a pack of wild Senators crazed with the momentum of the moment, oblivious of the concept that the Senate is supposed to be the more deliberative body in Congress, is railroading it through.

And the world stock markets are heading up the central peak of a W-shaped economic recovery.

I could rag on about the bad news, but a friend pointed me to this, and it's just too geek-chic for words:



The European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN is the French abbreviation) has built the Large Hadron Collider, with which it is looking to validate or invalidate the long-reigning Standard Model of particle physics and cosmology.

We've come a long way from when a single man with two pieces of glass could shake the foundations of a Church that had idolatrously conflated its opinions of the Creation with the worship of the Creator!

Brains of Mush, Balls of Steel

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Where have all the Vikings gone?

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

My psychologist wife says that if they don't have unstable personal relationships then they're probably normal people just having a good time. I think they're in-f__king-sane!

Silent Sermons

Sometimes Beauty & Simplicity say it All

contributed by Kay Goodnow

I grew up a Sunday Episcopalian and a Roman Catholic the rest of the time. I attended Notre Dame de Sion, a private Catholic French finishing school for girls. But I would go to church on Sundays at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 40th and Main Streets in Kansas City.

I do not remember much about what I was taught. I do remember that St. Paul’s had the most magnificent stained glass window I had ever seen. It was a round window, and the colors in it were predominantly red. During the years when I attended a youth group there on Sunday evenings, as the sun was setting in the west, the window would literally explode with color. It spoke to my heart and somehow it remained there. With the single exception of a white lamb with one paw raised, I do not remember what it depicted.

Some fifty years later I had occasion to be in the vicinity of that church and I went in, just to see. Although the building has been enlarged to accommodate classrooms and administrative offices, the sanctuary remains nearly the same. The red carpeting, which led from the front door to the altar and which I believed to be miles long, is gone, and has been replaced with hardwood floors. St. Paul’s is today, and probably always has been, a beautiful church. It has an air of majestic dignity and commands respect; to me it seems to call for silence, for meditation.

There it was, ‘my’ magnificent round red window. As in my youth, it took my breath away. It is pure beauty, and even today, undefiled. I wanted to stand there and let it speak to me, to let it repeat over and over again "I am here" just as it had in my youth. Tears started, but it was time for the church to be locked. I went away, glad that I had gone there.

There are beautiful things in this life.

When I was in the 7th or 8th grade a friend invited me to go with her family to the Benedictine Abbey in Conception, Missouri. I went, because it was something to do, but mainly because it was a Catholic thing to do. I do not remember the nature of what transpired or the reason for the trip; just that it was in winter and it was snowing.

It seemed like a very long trip to me and I was excited when we finally arrived. I stepped out of the car. It was early in the evening, but dark. Unmarked snow covered the fields and the buildings. I felt no sense of cold, only awe at the pure beauty of the stark but regal landscape. I wanted to stay there forever, and just let my feelings be what they were.

When we entered the monastery (in my memory, the word ‘basilica’ replaces ‘monastery’) we were ushered into a chapel, which also was dark. Only the eternal tabernacle light and what seemed like millions of vigil lights, red, blue green and gold, kept it from total darkness. I was mesmerized. I could not move and I do not remember breathing. The round, red window from St. Paul’s placed itself squarely above that massive altar, high up, nearly to where the two sides joined in an arch. It was a perfect place, one of those perfect moments in time. The tears began, but this time no one hurried me away from the beauty and I was content.

When the chanting started I believed I was imagining something or that my ears were deceiving me. Here was more beauty and, as with the window and the snow, it was pure and unadulterated. I let it pour over me and I consumed it. It spoke to my heart. As it grew in volume and complexity, sometimes changing from full tone to half tone, and sometimes changing cadence, I knew that it would always remain with me.

At first I didn’t hear the words. I heard only the quality of the sound and the love that it conveyed. I could feel the peace that lived in the hearts of those monks who were singing. And then I heard the words of praise and knew them as Lauds, the Evening Prayer. The Latin came and went in my mind and in my heart and then I was hearing, over and over again, "I am here."
There are beautiful things in this life.

I believe that all of us experience what the camera industry refers to as a "Kodak moment." They are to be treasured, as time passes quickly and our lives become full of the demands that added responsibilities incur.

The beautiful moments come more frequently now, for me anyway, ‘mellowing’ with age and experience. I had one just this week that I feel is more than significant. I had just met a grandmother and we were exchanging glorious stories and enjoying the fact that grandchildren are well worth the effort of having lived through the agony of raising our children. She related that two of her granddaughters, ages two and four, are learning to pray. She was laughing.

"The two-year-old is just starting to form sentences," she said, "except for when she prays. We can’t get her to say anything other than ‘God is.’"

God is! Time, and my heart, stopped. Reality stopped. My heart filled with so much golden light that I had to give it away but it kept coming back, stronger each time. God is! Blessed is that child who knows that God, simply, is!

The tears, always there as my companion in a time of great joy, began. My mind wondered how and when all of life became so complicated, so frenzied, so duplicitous.

For me, the stained glass window, the snow, the vigil lights and the Gregorian chant are linked somehow to ‘silent sermons’. Their simple beauty, etched delicately in my memory, remains constant, long after the spoken words have faded. But then, so is a baby’s first smile, the crocus in spring, and the magnetic pull of the tides. Life is beautiful in it’s simplicity. God is!

Ice Crystals

contributed by Kay Goodnow

30 December 2000

Winter has always been my least favorite time of year! I attribute my dislike for winter's darker days and cold weather to the simple fact that I was born in July.

People from more northern climates laugh at me, and say that winter in Kansas City is really mild. Well, it’s cold enough for me! I do not like to drive, or even walk, on ice. Snow is snow. Ice, on the other hand, is entirely something else. Ice can be treacherous. Life is precious, in my opinion, and should not be squandered while trying to teach an automobile how to figure skate. This last requires an incredible amount of energy, laced with adrenalin, and leaves me feeling very tired.

I detest and deplore winter. I do not like to wear a coat. I do not like coping with other people's germs, flu, colds and pneumonia. I am aware that good old hard freezes sometimes rid my world of germs, allergies, and other complications, and I justify the existence of winter that way. But I don't like it and I never have.

Years ago, when I was growing up in the Catholic-Episcopal tradition, those who were formulating my conscience instilled in it an anomaly they called "hell," and it was full of eternal fire and brimstone. If, they told me, I didn’t do things the way they wanted them done, I would burn forever. I never told them, but this didn’t frighten me nearly as much as it would have had they threatened me with a hell full of ice, snow and northwest winds.

I have seven excellent reasons why I cannot escape to a warmer climate, and they are called "grandchildren." But every year, in November, as the days get shorter, I grouse about moving south and every year I gear up for the reality of another wintry existence in Kansas City. As the days fade from the beauty of fall into the harsh and often dark days of winter I yearn for the sun. On the first day of winter I make a note in my memory unit that we have already reached the shortest day of the year and that from that day forward we are, at least, on the uphill side of spring. This makes me feel better.

On December 27, 2000, I was driving south to Spring Hill, on my way to work. It was a sunny day with no wind but it was very cold. Heading south on Metcalf I noticed that even though the sun was bright, there was fog. I thought that was unusual. I turned west on 199th Street and noted immediately that where the sun touched the snow the light was incredibly bright, sparkling like millions of diamonds. It was beautiful and I slowed the van to better revel in this glory. With the sun at my back and an intense feeling of well being, I caught myself breathing a ‘thank you’ for this wonderful serenity. I admitted to myself that even if it was winter, this was one of the most beautiful days I had ever seen.

I turned south again on 169 Highway and then realized that what I had believed to be fog was glistening, shimmering, tumbling, moving slowly as though in freefall. It wasn’t fog at all. It was ice crystals, millions of them, and although they were moving they were not falling, they were drifting. At that moment I wished that I had a camera with me. This was one picture that demanded to be shot in black and white to capture the stark, cold, brilliant reflection of the sun. I sighed. I breathed another thank you, and I said "Father, I see the beauty and I feel such peace and I admit that all of Your creations are beautiful!" For me, this was a major concession. (I hate winter!) Still, I was unprepared for what would follow.

I had to go west on 223rd Street for about one block and then turned south again, into the subdivision. I had to pull over to the (buried) curb and stop the van. Off at a distance, in the southeastern sky, there was the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. Ice crystals shrouded its bases so that it had no real beginning and no end. Its colors were true to the more traditional rainbow, but it was more muted, quieter somehow, and starkly magnificent. It sparkled with energy and life force. It had a powerful effect on me and I felt my own tears as I wondered if I would even be brave enough to mention it to other people when I saw them. I wondered, too, if I had imagined it.

I remembered another scene from long ago. While flying to San Francisco, the plane approached the Grand Canyon and the pilot obligingly flew over the crater. It was sunset. The sky and the clouds were a golden rose tinged with fairy dust (those mite like particles that parachute from the sky) and the crater was reflecting those same colors and light. It took my breath away and I didn’t realize that tears had come until I felt them. I have never forgotten the awe, the reverence I felt at that moment. And until the other day, I had not felt them again.

On the outer perimeters of the subdivision, where commercial construction is in progress, the work areas are protected by weather fences. When I glanced at them I realized that I was looking at miles of crystal squares so brilliant that they were blinding. The ice on the trees and shrubs, everywhere I looked, shone with light and color.

I gave up. "This is a day that the Lord has made, " I intoned in my Church-of-Kay style, "I rejoice and am happy in it!" Then God, as always, had the last word. As I turned once again to watch the rainbow fade and then disappear completely into the mist, He said, "I am the Alpha and I am the Omega!"
I was 15 minutes late arriving at the model home. The general foreman was there and the first thing he asked me was if I was having problems with the van. He had seen me parked on the crest and was just about to come out to meet me when he saw me driving again. I smiled. "No," I answered, warmed that he even cared, "I was just admiring the scenery!"

We are still experiencing unusually cold weather. We still have gusting winds. We have snow showers and, if the overly dramatic weather forecasters are to be believed, there is no relief in sight. I tell myself that that’s just the way it is. I tell myself that it’s only a matter of time until spring arrives in all her glory. I tell myself that I can take it, and, secretly, I believe that if I am brave enough to face it, I might one day see this wonder again. After all, some people live a whole lifetime and never see or feel the beauty of this world. I am lucky, God has spoiled me again. I have seen and felt it twice.

Happy New Year! May this year of the millennium bring peace, joy, warmth, light, love and all the beauty of life! May you have thousands more!