Matterhorn Bobsled ride from afar

Space Mountain

Main Street USA

“I’m going to Disneyland!”

I’ve never won a Super Bowl (not even on Madden…) but on Tuesday I got to say the magic words nonetheless: “I’m going to Disneyland!”.  And even a cynic like me, who has seen a little too much of the negative side of life, must admit the place really is magic, to the point that the $82 admission fee somehow seemed like a bargain.  My friend Shannon and I went to the main park (as opposed to the adjacent California Adventure) and soon felt like two little kids again as we went on ride after ride. The next day, we felt like two fortysomethings again, but that’s what Advil is for. Commercialized and at times hokey as it may be, Disneyland remains the kind of place where kids can see their dreams come true and adults can recapture, however briefly, the feeling of what it was like to be young, innocent and carefree. I’m not much into shopping, which is a huge part of the Disney experience, but I do like rides. Here are my top five (this doesn’t include Splash Mountain, because I didn’t bring a change of clothes, or Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, because it was undergoing repairs):

1) Space Mountain (Tomorrowland): Ok, so ranking Space Mountain first isn’t particularly original, but that doesn’t mean it’s undeserved. The line was very reasonable (under half an hour, shorter than several other rides) and the onboard experience nothing short of dazzling. You first shoot upward through a tunnel with dazzling graphics all around giving you the sense that you’re about to break the speed of sound (or is it the speed of light?). Then you plunge into a vast darkened space lit only by “stars” and “planets”, among which you careen at a breakneck speed. The genius of this ride is that you can’t see the track under you, at least unless you’re much sharper-eyed than I am. You really do feel like you’re flying.

2) Star Tours (Tomorrowland): Any fan of the Mos Eisley cantina scene in the original Star Wars movie (yes, I’m one…) will love this ride. You line up at a futuristic spaceport, ready to embark on an interplanetary flight during the Star Wars era. What begins as a simple journey in your craft (basically a people mover that doesn’t move) with 3D glasses to view the passing scenery through a small-scale movie screen suddenly gets much more complicated. You and your shipmates end up racing for your lives through some galactic hotspots with R2D2 and C3PO as your guides. To call Star Tours jarringly realistic doesn’t do it justice, but it’s as close as I can come.

3) Indiana Jones Adventure (Adventureland): What I liked best about Indy was its vehicle of choice, a six-seat Jeep. Then again, I got to sit at the steering wheel- very cool (while it didn’t actually steer, it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part)! The Jeeps go up, down and sideways over some rough underground terrain where Indy-type adventurers are interspersed with a handful of fairly scary monsters (the cobra still gives me the creeps, but then again, I hate snakes too). One of the most realistic rides in the park as well as one of the most exciting.

4) Matterhorn Bobsleds (Fantasyland): Here you ride in narrow bobsled cars (one person per seat) down a hollowed-out “mountain”, which thankfully is much more fun than it sounds. Matterhorn is sort of a cross between a bobsled run, a waterslide and a roller coaster. In keeping with the mountain theme, there are lots of twists and turns and a few wet spots, but not very many steep drops. The eleven-year-old behind me ran off at the end, ready to get right back in line. The eleven-year-old inside me was tempted to do likewise.

5) Pirates of the Caribbean (New Orleans Square): Pirates doesn’t have the speed and thrills of the other rides listed, but it’s perhaps the best value in the park- lots of riding time with a minimal wait. You traverse Captain Jack Sparrow’s domain and witness him and his henchmen both at work and at play. Once you even find yourself caught in the crossfire as his ship battles the garrison of an enemy port city. All ages and temperaments will enjoy this ride.

I’m out in Southern CA this week on winter vacation and trying to get as good a sense of the place as I can in just four full days.  On Monday, like any good U2 fan, I went to Joshua Tree National Park in Eastern CA.  Joshua Tree covers 8,000+ acres in what is known as the High Desert.  I had never been in a desert before and what I expected was basically lots and lots of sand dunes.  That proved to be an ignorant assumption, for in fact the desert is alive with many different kinds of species and a variety of vegetation too.  Imagine a cross between the landscape of an old Lone Ranger show and that of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies, and you’ve got the basic idea.   Two plants that are especially common close to the ground are a small black scrub plant called blackbrush and a larger, squarish plant with spiky yellow leaves called a yucca.  The Joshua Trees themselves are generally between 10-20 feet tall with a number of twisty, stunted-looking limbs capped by greenish, banana-shaped leaves.  While they look benign, they pack a punch, as I discovered when I foolishly tried to touch the leaves on a low-hanging tree.  A gentle, hesitant touch was enough to draw blood!  I later learned that some birds who nest in the tree impale their prey on those leaves.  Happy to be only pricked rather than impaled, I was more cautious thereafter.  Some of the more interesting sites were the Hidden Valley Trail (narrow defiles lead onto a broad plain which you can explore via a mile-long circular hiking trail) and the Keys View lookout point (you can see nearby Palm Springs along with snow-covered Mount Gorgonia, the tallest point in southern California, and Signal Mountain, south near the Mexican border).  The desert experiences many temperature extremes (hot during the day and cold at night), and I gained respect for anything that can survive in such a harsh environment.  On the way out, I bought a DVD of all the National Parks, and I hope someday to see many more.  But you have to start somewhere and that’s what I did today.

Here’s proof that miracles do happen: I won a supertiebreaker!  More importantly, it gave my 40s team a 3-2 season-opening win at Great Bay.  Yes, it came it third doubles, but why rain on an all-too-infrequent parade?

The team match started off as a cakewalk, as Adam and Mark Guerringue (his longtime partner from the North Country) obliterated a couple of bumped-up 3.5s in less time than it will take me to write this post.  As GB had come in last in their 18 and over 4.0 flight, we began to expect a similar lack of resistance on the other courts.  That was a near-fatal mistake.  The remaining four matches were played simultaneously and the hosts took both singles decisively in straight sets.  Jeff Hannum couldn’t shake a case of the flu which threw him off his game, and Rick just no answers for a big-hitting net rusher.  Chris Mc and Jeff Siegel cruised at first doubles, so that left it up to me and the recently promoted John Duckless on court 3.  We should have known something was afoot prior to the match when we overheard the GB captain telling a young, athletic-looking guy: “We’re going to use you on court three just for today”, which is classic stack-speak.  Once we started playing, it quickly became clear that this guy, whose name was Dan Witham, was GBs best doubles player, hitting two-handed bullets off both sides and covering vast stretches of court behind his older partner.  John hits big first and second serves, is fearless at the net and competes extremely hard, so even though he has some major weaknesses in the rest of his game, we hung in to take the first set 6-4.  I was playing pretty well and hit two spectacular shots, the first a back-to-the net lob to counter a great opposition lob where my momentum carried my into the back fence (we ended up losing the point, alas).  The second came on set point (0-40, to be fair) with Dan serving.  After a long crosscourt exchange of hard shots with Dan, I came in to return a low, angled slice and pushed a running slice backhand around the net post and past the opposing net man, Don, before he could react.  We were pumped, but unfortunately we lost a 40-0 lead on my serve in the next game and our opponents got back into the match.  Dan’s serve was weaker than the rest of his game, but his returns were on a par with Ian Hastings’s two-handers.  Don got his first serve in, lobbed effectively over John and called anything close to the lines out.  John held serve consistently but bricked several easy volleys and missed far too many returns.  And I was playing well but couldn’t close out a few service games from ahead and when returning went mano-a-mano with Dan a few too many times rather than change the direction of the ball to find his partner.  All that added up to a very even set, but I was broken in a long game at 4-4 and then Dan held (his only hold of the day) to force a supertiebreaker.

These guys’ serves were even weaker than mine, so I was a bit more optimistic than I might otherwise have been.  But given my supertiebreak record of late, that’s not saying much.  Luckily we started well and, at 2-0, caught a major break when Don’s “out” call on a ball that hit the sideline was overruled by a GB singles player standing close to the line on the adjacent court to watch after finishing his own match.  From there we stayed ahead thanks to some inspired net play from John and finally claimed a 10-5 win.

I felt my performance went up a notch both physically and mentally from previous 4.0 matches.  I hit the ball cleanly and accurately most of the time and communicated often with John during the points, which minimized the gaps that we left unguarded.  I still need to swallow my pride and stay back on my serve on occasion if a returner gets hot against me, especially if my net man and/or the receiver’s partner is shaky.  And I have to stay positive with my partner.  I did that for the most part here but did throw my racket once after he missed three easy volleys and I dropped my serve from 40-0.  So obviously there’s still room for improvement.  Luckily John is a resilient and competitive guy who played his best under pressure, and I stayed positive and built some much-needed tiebreaker confidence.  Our team got a needed win but we’ve got to get a few more reinforcements in order to make it into the top two of our tough six-team league (currently after round 1 of 10, Hampshire Hills has 5 points, we have 3 as do Mountainside, and Executive and GB have 2).   The fact that we struggled to beat what will most likely be one of the weaker teams shows just how little margin for error we have.

In Nemo’s Wake

In tennis (and I suppose in life too) plans will only get you so far.  The problem is, the other guys make plans too, and sometimes theirs work better than yours do.   Adam and I lost our Mountainside match in a supertiebreaker, and I’m still pissed off two weeks later because I got outplayed mentally by Richard King.  In past years, that would have been an embarrassing admission, because Richard was a big banger who didn’t put a lot of thought into his game.  However, he married into the Joslin family and began to spend more time on the court as a teaching pro, and his mental game has made a significant jump.    He seemed to have three basic strategies against us: be active at the net, chip and charge against my serve, and go at Adam with heavy strokes when possible.  He did all three of these things extremely well.  We couldn’t have scripted the beginning of the match any better, though, as I hit some good returns and a couple of perfect lobs to get an opening-game break.  We were on the verge of consolidating with Adam serving at 40-15, but he hit a couple of careless shots and just like that, we were back even.  The rest of the set was all Mountainside and ended 6-2.  King took my serve early and crashed the net behind some nice chipped backhands, and he’s an immovable object once he gets up there.  I missed too many first serves and failed to hit my spots with the ones I did make.  Adam’s groundstrokes went off the boil.  The two Richards were rolling and playing with confidence.  It was just ugly.  At any level of the game, if you go a whole set of doubles without your team holding serve, you’re not going to experience much success. 

I’m proud of the fact that we kept fighting and were able to turn the match around in the second set.  We broke King midway through the set and made it stand up for a 6-4 win.  Adam and I got each other pumped up, and we mixed up our serves and formations better.  I started giving King body serves to take away the angle on his chip, and we had some success with the Australian formation on Atherley.  And the Mountainside guys’ level dropped just enough to crack the door open for us.  Unfortunately I slammed it shut on myself before the supertiebreaker started when I said (out loud to Adam!): “oh geez, it’s gonna be tough to win a tiebreaker with our serves against theirs.”  Now technically speaking, what I said was true: they both have great serves and we both have mediocre serves, and in a shortened format that’s a huge advantage for them.   It just wasn’t the right way to approach that situation.  We had the momentum and we had been returning well and serving well enough, and I let that all slip away with a negative comment which hurt not only my confidence level but Adam’s too.  A few years ago, I liked my chances in a supertiebreaker against anyone because I knew I had the mental toughness to pull through.  My physical game is almost back to what it was then, but the mental game obviously has much farther to go.  It won’t come as a big surprise that we went down 4-0 in the breaker.  I got hot at the net, though, and we made a big surge to go in front 7-5.   We were THISCLOSE to a huge win, but it wasn’t to be.  The Richards boomed some huge serves and we dropped a couple of tough points on Adam’s serve, and before we knew it we were walking off at 7-10. 

At least our team came through with a big 3-2 win.  Jeff and Todd barely broke a sweat at 3 dubs, Jeff Hannum -who’s really playing well-came up with an impressive straight set win over Ted Mastin at 1 singles, and Rick Paquin stole one (there’s just no other word for it) against young Dan Bruzga at #2.  Dan has all the talent in the world but he shot himself in the foot with a ton of unforced errors after winning the first set easily.  Give Rick credit, he’s a competitor and fought hard to take an 11-9 supertiebreak win.  Chris and Jerry lost the other doubles to Glenn and B; they really should have won the first set and after they let that get away, the second went quickly.  So we still don’t have a real dominant number 1 doubles team, but I think whoever we put out there can be competitive against anyone.  Our first order of business is getting into the playoffs, though, and we still haven’t locked that up.  With Rick’s win we basically eliminated Mountainside, but we also have to finish ahead of either Concord or YMCA to make districts, and it won’t be easy.  There are some other matches to be played this weekend and their results will determine how many courts we need in our finale vs Concord, but right now it looks like we’ll probably need a straight-up win.  That won’t be easy, because Concord has better singles players than Mountainside and their top two doubles are excellent.  But if we go in to the match with a playoff-level intensity, we’ve got a shot. 

I’ve been practicing about three times a week since, but we got snowed out of our A-1 match last weekend by the biggest blizzard to hit NH in years.  There was over two feet of snow here at the coast and just as much if not more inland.  Parts of MA and CT were shut down for days.  We missed one day of work here (a Friday) but by Monday it was pretty much business as usual.  If I can figure out how to get pictures posted on here, I’ll try to put up some of the storm.  I got to try out my new skis last Sunday and I had a great time.  I went up to the trails at the nature center in Rye, which go really close to the water.  It was a beautiful sight, there was a ton of snow, and I surprisingly remembered a lot of my ski technique (one embarrassing face plant notwithstanding). It had been about seven or eight years since I had skied, but on Sunday I was out there for maybe three hours and had so much fun.  I need to do more of that!  It certainly beats running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike.  I went again early this morning with my friend Maura and a couple of her friends.  Maura’s really spunky and can do just about any athletic activity known to man.  One of her friends was a steady skier and the other more of a beginner, but the trails there aren’t super challenging so it was ok for everyone.  The bad part was that we had had a couple of warm days and lots of the snow had melted, which made following the track difficult.  There were a few too many icy patches and even some bare spots, but it was a fun way to start the day.  My skis came with a pass for some free skiing (one day at each of three different areas) but it has to be used this winter.  So my next step up will probably be to go to a ski area and try my luck there. 

My trusty green Honda CRV didn’t suddenly morph into a DeLorean. “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis is still an oldie instead of a current top 10 hit. And I certainly didn’t regrow my shaggy 1987 hair, however much I might have wanted to. But when I stepped onto the scale today and topped out at 190, I was almost back to my high school self in one very important way. Ok, so I was 180 back in the day, but you get the point: the D-train is on the verge of shedding its caboose! I’m continuing to work hard and starting to see and feel some positive results. Although some icy road conditions this week caused me to skip two gym workouts, I did get to play tennis three times. I practiced with Ed Lee without injuring myself, and am getting through my matches with more energy. It paid off today, as Jeff and I rallied after being two breaks down in the third set to win an A-1 matchup at Westford by one game.

I have to admit that being bumped down to a 4.0 has made a big difference in my mindset. It has given me a realistic short-term goal that I feel I can achieve with continued improvement. To be completely honest, I’m not going to work out more at the gym or practice my tennis harder just so I can hike the AT something like ten years from now, but reaching the 4.0 sectionals (and even nationals: why not!) this summer is a much nearer horizon. And we have a home match tomorrow against Mountainside which if we take care of business can bring the first big step in that journey- reaching the district playoffs- significantly closer. Like anything worthwhile, it’s not going to come easy. Mountainside’s 1 and 2 doubles are among the best in the league, and Adam and I are playing at 1 this time. Mountainside’s two teams are very different and we have the challenge of mentally preparing for both. Richard King and Richard Atherley are big servers who play the net aggressively. If we face them, we have to serve down the middle a lot (their weaker sides) with a high percentage of first serves. We also would likely play two-back when returning their serves to take some pressure off the returner. Finally we have to make them volley as both of us can outvolley both of them. That might mean hitting a hard backhand down the line return from the deuce court rather than worrying about going crosscourt. And it will surely mean keeping some points alive when they are on the offensive. But I’ve been playing with more confidence lately and feel like I can execute those strategies. Adam and I talk a lot and we aren’t afraid to try some unorthodox tactics to give us a better chance. Plus I’ve practiced against pace a lot lately and done ok. A tougher matchup for us would probably be against Glenn McKune and B Manning. Originally from Zimbabwe, Glenn is a longtime teaching pro who is probably even more consistent than me and has great hands at the net. I’ve had a lot of trouble with him in the past. B is another veteran who I’ve done better against. He hits a flat ball which is easier to volley (I like to volley) and he has some issues with his overhead (I like to lob too). He’s a really good guy: even though it’s strange that he calls himself by just one letter instead of an actual name, he’s about 60 years old so I guess he has it figured out by now. If we face them, I think we have to take more chances with our returns, try to put more pace on them rather than just try to get them back, because you can’t outplay Glenn at the touch game. We also have to focus on B and try to break down his game and his confidence. Either way I have to play with no fear and try to grow from the experience. The rest of our team is significantly better than the rest of their team and if we can win our match (we play before all the others) it will give our teammates a big lift. As my old buddy Dave Blais used to tell me: “cut off the head, and the body follows”. We get to deal with the head tomorrow morning and we have to relish the assignment and just go for it. Let’s hope we can make it happen.

Ok, so obviously I’ve been a big-time slacker with this blog lately, as this is my first post for 2013. The good news is I’ve actually stuck (so far) with the changes I was trying to incorporate into my fitness routine. Admittedly it’s not going to strike fear into the hearts of a Navy SEAL, but 2-3 workout days and 2-3 tennis days per week are starting to make a difference. My weight has dropped to just below 195 and I’m starting to feel more energy and less fatigue when I play. I still need more strength and flexibility in my leg muscles, as I can’t sustain a strong singles hitting session with lots of lateral movement the way I used to. My shoulder strength is still not what it should be either. But I have to take progress where I find it. I hope this work pays off down the road at the summer team playoffs and individual tournaments. Last summer when I ended up reaching the final at the one tournament I played, at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, I lost five or six toenails in the earlier rounds and just couldn’t move, and as a result let a winnable title slip away. I don’t want to make the same mistake again at the much more important USTA playoffs.

My 4.0 team debut was an inauspicious one, as Jeff Siegel and I dropped a hard-fought match to Dana Lavoie and Mike Delaney (yes, that Mike Delaney…) at the Goffstown Y just after New Year’s. Dana’s big serve and heavy forehand and Mike’s laser-beam backhands and fast hands at the net were a little bit too much to overcome and we lost 4-6, 6-3, 3-10 in a supertiebreaker. I served adequately and had some great volleys, but Jeff and I didn’t communicate very well and I played a miserable supertiebreaker, missing returns and smashing an attempted poach into the back curtain on the fly. If we see these guys in post season play I will need to attack the middle more as that’s where both guys’ weaker strokes are, make my volleys more compact to counter their pace, go at Dana hard and low at the net, and maybe approach behind some shorter balls to make them hit on the run (as long as the short balls don’t sit up too much). And I’ll have to talk much more on the out balls and middle balls and really pinch the middle to take that part of the court away. Trying to get a better start than 1-5 in the first 20 minutes would probably also be a good idea. Anyway, I was disappointed but not discouraged- we came very close to beating a team that had won all its previous matches by wide margins, and we (I, for sure) still have a lot of room to get better. The bad part was that our team lost 1-4, as the Y brought a strong singles lineup while our captain sat our best player, Ed Lee, ostensibly to preserve his rating for the districts. We bounced back this past Saturday with a 4-1 win at the last place River Valley Club (Lebanon) to stay in the midst of a four-team playoff chase- we have to finish first or second to qualify. The match was most notable for the River Valley’s carpeted courts, which reminded me of the Kimball School auditorium floor circa 1980. Luckily we won one of the singles matches by default and that opened up a practice court, so I got used to the carpet’s idiosyncracies: low balls skidded while high balls (including my serve, sadly) sat up begging to be hit for what seemed like an eternity. Adam Hirshan and I had little trouble with our opponents at #2, winning 6-2, 6-2 after making a couple of adjustments (staying two-back against the guy whose first and second serve both came in at full force, and using Australian formation against his partner who had an uncanny ability to hit an inside-out forehand return to the crosscourt alley in seeming defiance of the laws of physics). Todd Toler, who was teamed with Jeff, hits with a much bigger swing than Adam and me, and consequently he had more trouble with the surface en route to a straight-sets loss, but we kicked butt in the other two non-defaulted matches as Jeff Hannum (singles) and Chris McCallum/Mark Lande (doubles) just had too much power for their opponents. I was just happy to break into the win column and feel like I contributed something to a much-needed team victory.

I was talking to a friend the other day and she mentioned how much she liked to ski on some cross-country trails near her house, and it got me to thinking: why don’t I do more of that myself? I like the exercise and the scenery and I was on my high school team, but I don’t even own a pair of skis anymore after several moves in recent years. So I went onto LLBean.com and got a relatively basic ski package for a very reasonable price, with three free day passes at XC areas thrown in. They should arrive in the next few days and hopefully help my winter fitness (and more importantly winter enjoyment!) go up a level…..then it will be up to me to get off my butt and make the most of them!

Winter came late to our corner of the world, but it did make an appearance in the days after Christmas.  Thursday’s storm left several inches of snow inland but we got mostly heavy rain and big gusts of wind, along with about an inch of the white stuff which for the most part failed to stick.  Yesterday afternoon and evening’s deposits weren’t so quickly erased, though: I’d estimate we got about 4-5 inches, which would make it our first truly “lasting” snowfall of the season.  I may just be growing old and senile, but I remember there being a lot more snow back in the day, even if I didn’t have to walk ten miles each way through it to get to school.  Even now, though, there are some times here in New England when you have to interrupt whatever plans you may have had and just batten down the hatches at home for a while.  Yes, you’re annoyed if you have somewhere truly important to go, but otherwise these rare moments of enforced relaxation can be restorative- and instructive, too.  No matter how much we think our civilization has advanced, there are still times when mother nature has the upper hand. 

I did two more workouts on an every-other-day schedule, and am gradually upping the intensity level.   It’s funny how I seem to have lost more muscle tone on some parts of my body than on others.   My arms haven’t changed a whole lot, judging by the relative ease with which I’m able to lift the weights during those exercises, but my chest (which wouldn’t have been mistaken for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s to begin with) is downright feeble.   I don’t sense any changes in my energy level or appearance yet, but my goal right now is just to establish a routine so that once I go back to work, it’ll be ingrained enough to stick.  In theory it sounds great.  We’ll see what happens when the real world hits.

Yesterday I found the answer to my TV woes: I need a component video cable because my old ps2 is incompatible with the newer technology on my TV. I was warned that even with the cable the games and videos may look really bad, but for ten bucks (as opposed to over 200 for a PS3) I’ll at least take the chance.

While I was up in Portsmouth, I went to the Fox Run multiplex to see the new Abraham Lincoln movie. I think I was the second-youngest person there, which was scary in and of itself. I really did like the movie, though. Rather than being a full biography, it focused on the first few months of 1865 when Lincoln was trying to get what would become the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery passed before the Southern states surrendered. Daniel Day-Lewis was a terrific Lincoln, and the movie itself showed all the different pressures he faced (hysterical wife, son who wanted to go to war, more-radical Republicans pushing for full Negro equality, and conservative Democrats trying to block the amendment altogether- not to mention the burden of bringing the war to a close). I think today we have the impression that Lincoln was more a statesman than a politicican, but the movie showed him getting down-and-dirty as he twisted the arms of wavering House members by various means, concealed information about the peace negotiations from Congress and used humor to defuse tense situations. I’ve often heard it said that Lincoln couldn’t be elected President today due to his homely looks and sometimes awkward manner, and that may be true, but I believe with the political skills he had, he would still have been an effective leader in a high position. And let’s face it, our country needs more leaders for whom style takes a back seat to substance. Abe Lincoln overcame his own issues and limitations to guide our country through a terrible time, and that’s why he’s one of my heroes.

I went to the gym today for the first time since my parents died.  I had been dreading going back, but I knew at some point I would have to.  I’d spent so much time looking after them the past few years that I had let my own fitness slide more than it should have.  Of course, mom passed away 2 1/2 months ago, but school and the related routine provided just enough of an excuse for me to keep staying away.   Besides the obvious health benefits, I also have some other incentives to get in better shape.  My USTA tennis rating recently moved down from a 4.5 (think moderately-skilled teaching pros and former small-college players) to a 4.0 (think glorified hackers with a few ringers thrown in), so I’ll have a chance to be more competitive.  Since that news I’d started practicing harder, a couple of times a week plus a North Shore League match most weekends, and I’ve gradually started to feel my endurance come back and my waistline shrink ever so slightly.  Still, I need to up the off-court stuff too, so today I just went through 8-9 machines on light settings to get back into the routine, then did some cardio.  This should be an interesting year tennis-wise and I want to maximize my potential (such as it is at 43) if I can.  There’s also another, more distant goal.  Someday (and I don’t mean “someday someday” but “someday within the next 5-10 years”) I want to hike the Appalachian Trail.  Yes, the whole thing.  I know it’s crazy, because at this point I’m only a day hiker who can’t even start a fire without clicking one of those gadgets with the long handles! But I’ve had a lot of crazy and not all that positive stuff happen in the past few years, and the idea of getting away from everything for six months and worrying about nothing beyond putting one foot in front of the other appeals to me in a way that I can’t fully explain.  It isn’t something I can do right away for a variety of reasons, but it’s out there.  I’d call it my white whale, but given how that ended up for Ahab, it might not be a particularly good omen.

Anyway, my goal is to write for 15-30 minutes at a time on here about my goals and the steps I’m taking to achieve them, and sometimes just about life in general.  I took a little longer today because it’s something new to me, which meant in practice that I was reduced to staring at a blank screen for entirely too long.  Eventually I just decided to start writing and hope for the best.  They say the longest journey begins with a single step, and that’s what I took today.