Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Tag: bicycle

  • New Digs

    Here are some photos from my new digs. It’s a nice 2 bedroom condo I’m sharing with my friend Anne.

    I didn’t going into Anne’s bedroom or bathroom but they are very nice too – quite spacious. We also have a balcony and a small laundry area. we have a space we think will have a dining table and chairs there and we need more artwork in the main rooms. I didn’t want my Superman art to over power the whole condo so that’s in my room… I could put my portrait in the living room, that’d be creepy.

    Things seem to be going ok so far.

    • early risers
    • love coffee
    • like men
    • ride bicycles

    and likely more than that in common. We might both be (I’m sure I am) tippy toeing around one another to ensure we don’t upset the apple cart too early 🙂

    I don’t think we’re doing a house warming party or anything but if we do I’ll let you know.

    By the way – friends helped me raise enough money to get my bicycle repaired thanks to all. I’ll post photos when I have it back and am on the safe bike paths again.

  • Slow Motion Perception

    Yesterday while riding my bike I took a fall. I was on mile 8 of the journey and it just happened. What was really cool about it was the slowing down of time and the intense focus on the different aspects of the fall.

    I first noticed the tire really close to the edge of the sidewalk and thought I should correct that… then I over corrected and started to fall.

    My eyes did a close up focus on the tire, I saw the wheel start to slow down and I was amazed at how slow it was going. I then looked to my left and saw the ground was just hanging there out of my reach but I was getting closer to it so slowly.

    This reminds me of Douglas Adams suggestion on how to fly – He says there’s a trick to it: throw yourself at the ground and miss. He suggests you do this by getting distracted at the last moment by a bowl of petunias, a long lost satchel or a pink towel…and boom you might be flying…. this sadly did not happen to me, I just hit the ground.

    But the entire process happened to my senses in slow motion. Even the scraping of my arm along the sidewalk, though painful, seemed to take an eternity.

    So I began to wonder why that happened, and thought back to a car accident I had been in in 89 or 90 and how that too seemed to happen in slow motion (I wasn’t the driver and walked away mostly unscathed). I found this little article on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_motion_perception and while not a scientific journal I thought it was quite interesting, mostly because if something happens to me and it’s happened to others then I can relate and it’s suddenly relevant… it would have been much more interesting to be flying or discover I had superpowers, but this article will have to do.

    Slow motion perception is a subjective perception of time in which things are perceived as passing by slower than the normal perception of time. To a bystander watching a life-threatening situation such as an accident, time is moving at a normal speed. However, to the individual in the accident, time seems to have slowed down. As a result, the individual in the accident may be able to think faster and act faster during these events. However, even though individuals commonly report that time seems to have moved in slow motion during these events, it is unknown whether this is a function of increased time resolution during the event, or, instead, an illusion of remembering an emotionally salient event. Research conducted by David Eagleman has suggested that time does not actually run in slow motion for a person during a life-threatening event, but, rather, it is only a retrospective assessment that brings that person to such a conclusion. To bring this into the realm of scientific study, he measured time perception during free-fall by strapping palm-top computers to subjects’ wrists and having them perform psychophysical experiments as they fall. By measuring their speed of information intake, they concluded that participants do not obtain increased temporal resolution during the fall, but, instead, because their memories are more densely packed during a frightening situation, the event seems to have taken longer only in retrospect

    what would be pretty cool is if while in that state of consciousness you realized it and like Tobey Maguire’s enhanced Spider-Man senses in the first set of those movies… we could catch all the items from that tray before they hit the ground… But instead I probably just looked like a flailing idiot at the time.

    I think having Saturday Night Live do a skit series where one of their actors plays Neil Degrasse Tyson and uses physics to explain this kind of thing and then end it with “and you basically are just flailing around like the evolutionized chimpanzee you are.” or something… then he could show up and discuss other things that annoy people – like when i’m going leaving an intersection and still catch up to traffic that was doing 45 mph when they passed me “Why does this happen Neil?” we’d ask and he’d go into some long boring explanation of speed and relativity and we’d be all amazed. While he’s talking the camera would catch up to the car in question and we’d see some idiot texting or something instead of paying attention and the Neil could say… “but in this case we just had an idiot”.

    I got back on my bike today and rode it to the shop for it’s scheduled tuning… my legs are sore and I can’t grip the handle bar with my right hand (or turn my house key, or a few other important things) but I got the bike there and walked home. I plan to ride it again and I’ll probably take another fall or two before I die some day… but next time I hope someone or something distracts me and I can just fly awayIMG_0403

  • Weekend Musings

    It was a weekend full of AA stuff, and there wasn’t even a round up.

    ImageFriday I attended the 5:30 meeting at Prince of Peace – they have a meeting there everyday at 5:30 I guess and the format is different on each day maybe… on Tuesday I spoke there and heard the Friday was a call-up ticket meeting so I told Cliff about it and we both attended. It was a very full meeting, saw many faces I know and enjoyed the meeting. Afterwards Cliff and I had dinner at a restaurant across the way – not bad at all.

    Saturday morning I headed to AHWATUKEE for the morning Men’s stag, it’s open discussion. It’s really a birthday meeting, they let celebrants share and then pick the topic. Saturday a gentlemen picked up his 40 year chip and the topic wasn’t too bad. Afterward Cliff and I had breakfast, then I met his dog Gunner. Cliff was also kind enough to bring my new bicycle home in his truck and I went riding almost right after I arrived home. I rode about 10 miles and then was ready to go to sleep for the rest of the day, but I didn’t. 🙂

    I’ve been watching the TV show Warehouse 13 on Netflix and one of the characters is in AA and that’s been interesting to watch, in one episode he switches bodies with his partner and she’d been drinking and it kind of throws him for a loop. I like that he’s a regular guy in AA and still able to deal with the world – as weird as it may be – without being so different or a stick-in-the-mud.

    Sunday morning was another meeting, i even went to the fellowship before the meeting at Starbucks. My friend Roger picked up his 18 year chip and talked about his recent trip back to NY where he first sobered up many years ago. There was also someone who just moved to the area who picked up a 2 year chip, she moved here from Virginia Beach and her sponsor told her to find a meeting to make coffee at and she asked for help to find such a place. Over all it was a good meeting.

    After the meeting Sunday I did laundry and then took the bicycle out for a nice ride, there are nice bike paths all over here so lots to see and do.

    This morning I’m going to work, some meetings and a doctor appointment in the afternoon – more on that later.