Bicycling Your Big Mind

Fahzure and Spoke(n) have at times been accused of being narrow minded (focused?), devoting lots of energy to bicycles, often at the expense of other information and opportunity.  While bicycle culture is broad and deep, it is only part of life, not its entirety. How does one utilize the cycling experience to expand consciousness, develop self awareness, destroy the ego and be open to possibility and potential?  One way, is to ride with others, especially those focused on growing your potential.  Parents understand this with respect to their children, but as we get a little older (more rigid, less capable) accessing the joy and wonder of growth and novel experience is increasingly difficult for many.  Sometimes you need a guide.

Kristen Ulmer has been exploring the mind/body activity interface for more than a decade. Back in the '90s Kristen helped pull skiing out of it's narrow (I'm not talking waist width) focus by pushing the limits of free and extreme skiing.  The challenges associated with risk, evaluation, injury, innovation and competition were not well understood and considered.  These mind/body challenges and, a maturing career, led Kristen to begin work with Zen meditation as a way to continue to grow the extreme sports experience. Kristen, working with Genpo Roshi, has developed the Big Mind practice of mind/body integration.

Seeing Kristen at the Outdoor Retailer show in SLC, she suggested that Fahzure consider the opportunity to take extreme to the next level (mine already goes up to 11...what could be next?).  Kristen will be guiding Mountain Biking and Big Mind! August 13, 2011 in Park City, Utah from 10a-5pm. She suggested that some spiritual practice experience would be helpful: yoga, meditation and breathwork all qualify.  You're probably also well equipped if you have explored the work of Watts, Trungpa, Hahn, Castenada or Hoffman.   

Give Kristen a shout (quickly, it's next weekend) if you'd like grow.

A vast empty space...the mind...the twilight of a career

Lance,

what

is

it

like?

   Escape...South America

Imagine it is your Sunday, 6:30 am, you've just woken up and, with a warm cup in your hand, you stand at the the sliding doorway staring out over the open yard and hills beyond.  The air is still, damp, only the birds are active. The light is low, golden, magical.

    Cassi Yost

This is the magic hour, or as Nestor Almendros notes, maybe only 25 minutes, between the time the sun sets/rises and when it is dark. Malick, of course, has used this technique in all of his films since working Almendros (who was going blind at the time!) on Days of Heaven, including Tree of Life, where there must be 300 magic hour shots, the result of which is a year or more's worth of suspended reality.  Which brings us back to Lance Armstrong, who has been in a suspended reality since hearing a grand jury had been convened about a year ago, and must be asking himself, right now, am I in a dream?

A reality?

A nightmare?

  

                      Oddly Enough                      (now that's watt I call a powermeter-GT represent)

We're all likely to find out soon, likely before this guy succeeds at doing the same thing.

Which brings us to the Wheel of Damocles (tm).  As I see it, LA has about 25 minutes or days or let's just call it July 22, 2011,  when he is indicted.  After all, it is, perhaps, the only news that could upstage this. I have my reasons. What are yours?