Choose thine path.

So when I'm riding on my motorcycle, Bonita Moo Moo, it is critical for me to know what what lies ahead on the road.

I am a risky driver and rider sometimes, but I am extremely cautious. I take calculated risks. If I can't see what lies ahead I slow my ass down . If I know it's a road with too much turbulence, say lots of rocks.....I'm going around. Though I take risks, I care about the path I go down. I want to enjoy the ride to get to the destination. I don't want to second guess my every move. Have too many doubts.


I do this in relationships also. I tend to think about what lies ahead. I tend to recognize with my overly cautious eye, the things that make for unease up ahead. I will take the risk as long as I can until I recognize it's not a path I want to risk for. I tend to take it too far, allowing something to continue that I'm not real comfortable with. And it shows. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to do that. My partner deserves to know if I'm on the same page. If I want to be with her. If I'm having doubts.

That is what I would want anyways. If you have doubts about being with me......then please be honest and don't be with me. That's like that old talked about wisdom, do unto others as you would have them to unto you....or do not do unto others that which you would not done to you. Both ways are good brain and life nourishment.

Always wanteth to Blogeth, but never bloggething.

Lots of things go through my  mind on a regular basis. I find them interesting and I would like to record them and share them with the blog site and whomever comes across it.

One that I will (or want to, rather,) start blogging about will be my mother and her health. It is kinda cool and not cool at the same time. Her health is giving her problems, thus I'm in pursuit to undo some of the problems that have begun. Most, if not all have to do with eating habits and sedentary lifestyle. I cannot make her do anything she doesn't want to do. But this has spurned me to change my lifestyle and eating habits. It's kinda of an adventure. I'm playing with cooking all healthy, whole foods. It's kinda neat.

:) Hopefully I'll write more about it. :) Or at least Vlog here and there.

2 Things on a wednesday.

note: this is long because I feel I have to catch you up on stuff. I haven't posted a blog is a LOOONGGGG TIME.. since my bike was stolen over a year ago. 

I'm realizing ever so slowly over the past several years that I hate the way I eat. I'm pretty much ashamed of it. I don't like it. I know it's not right. I know it's fake. I know it's unhealthy. I know it's expensive. I know I can do better.
Knowledge over the past few years via cinema presentations like "supersize me" and "food inc." and a nutrition class in school have been changing my perspective on things. Even more recently I've seen some pretty interesting documentaries about humans on netflix. One that I came across was called "food matters". Intriguing. But this documentary kinda pushed me over my limit. 

You see i'm living in Austin Texas now, no longer san antonio (for the most part). I'm in a whole nuther world. People here are not as overweight as they are San Antonio.  And though I'm not terribly overweight, I am surely not healthy. Well here in Austin it's nothing less than a wholeeee bunch of alternative people eating differently....and a whole lot of healthy people being active. And since i moved here three months ago......i have not cooked one meal. NOT ONE. Not a singe friggin meal. I eat out ALL day every day (other than the occassional pb and j and bowl of cereal at the work place). It's chocolates, it's junk. junk. junk. Everywhere that I eat.....all the while, having these voices saying.....you have GOT TO STOP THIS. Shame. Internal. I'd say it's more from my own knowledge of what this shit is doing to my body....and my fellow countrymen's bodies. Side note: You know why the fuck we need so much healthcare these days.....because of the American diet. All of it. processed, old nutrient-less stuff we shove down our throats every day. And then what do we do to cure it.....use unnatural medicines with the most horrible side effects. We've departed from the natural things the body needs. We are making chemical stuff to solve all our physical ails which we brought upon ourselves by our bad habits. People are making bank off of our bad habits and we are effortlessly paying into the system and voting for them with our dollars.
Anyway. to make this short from here on in this post.... I started juicing. My fridge has been filled with celary, cucumbers, oranges, carrots, ginger root, apples, kale, lemons, black berries and kiwi...and other stuff i can't think of...for the past 2 weeks. 2 juices a day.  Morning and night. Almost every day. It's been doing me good.
Anyway. This morning i didn't have a juice. I was out of produce. And also this morning I needed to buy tacos and be at the job at 730 for a class we were having. Well. Todays intake messed me up. 3 tacos. chocolate candy. a bunch of schlotsky's sandwich quarters, cookies. Junk junk junk. And my tummy ached.
So instead of poppin pills as i normally would, I looked up a juice recipe for a tummy ache.

The tummy tamer: 1 cucumber, 3 celery stalks, and one 1/2" of ginger.

It didn't taste too bad. Like water with a zest of something unique to it. Anyhow. By the end of this post....my tummy feels better. :) that's neat. Anyhow. I'm going to hopefully track this stuff and my progress. hopefully this sticks. With my dearest friend Kim encouraging me and my roommate Robert also being on board, It might be a little easier. :)

Second thing.
I think i have suggested this before (on facebook)  but, a lot of people are really uncomfortable when they are asked for money by homeless people and the like. We always think and assume they seek our money for drugs or alcohol which may or may not be true. My suggestion in this part of the post would be to find out what they want money for....for instance, i want some money to get food..and instead of giving cash, take them to get a meal (if you have time of course and if you feel safe enough taking that risk). If they need money for the bus....well, where are you going? can i offer you a ride? :) Anyhow, it's something  different than just plain ole giving cash. It's practical. It feels different. Not that you seek gratification, but it's more gratifying in my opinion. It's meets the need. You get to ask stories and hear different perspectives. You get to hear someone that our society totally looks down upon.....and get a glimpse beyond the stereotype and maybe see them as a human. A down and out human.

 I've always tended to lean towards assisting the down and out in ways like this. It is somewhat natural to me.  I think i learned it from my amazing mother who has housed I don't know how many struggling people throughout my life growing up. She's housing like 2 right now close to down town San Antonio. Not all homeless transients, some are old and widowed and lonely. I also grew up 2 to 4 times a week going to the local catholic shelter and picking up donated goods and taking them to the needy. As a single mother, she used to pick up strangers all the time. :) Pretty non conventional these days.
Anyhow. That's it. Good evening to your face.

A Ron Paul Adventure

So I don't like to drink too much. I like to drink. Just in moderation. But last night, .... I had wayyy to much to drink. Never will be a fan of a night where I puke and pass out on my couch and feel like super poop the next morning.
This is the beginning of my adventure that I'd like to share.
I woke up feeling like poop this Saturday, November 5th. My buddy fell asleep in my bed...i took the couch. When I was taking him home this morning, I felt sooooo bad that I had to pull over again to purge. bleh. sooo disgusting.
Anyway. All this bologna just to say the day started out pretty bad. Then I went back to sleep til like 1:30pm. Pleaseeee! what a waste.
Anyhow, i'm a fan of Ron Paul you see...and today there was going to be a sign waving to get the word out. Supporters of Ron Paul do this because Dr. Paul doesn't get much media attention, even though he wins quite a lot of polls. Those polls used to be indicators and pretty important, but now that Ron Paul wins so many of them, they count them off as rigged or unimportant. So we do our own advertising. I'm one of the guys that likes to declare that "Ron Paul cured my Apathy".

Not me, but I love the sign

 Politics is boring and friggin ridiculous, filled with back biting and hypocrisy. Greed and shady stuff. Nothing I like. But Ron Paul is different, he's the antithesis of all of that bull crap. Honest, sincere, forthcoming, humble, kind, consistent and all around a swell guy. My apathy for the things of the political world has been cured. He teaches when he talks and never bashes his rivals. Just calls out bad ideas and explains why.

So I've been to a few things promoting the guy. A sign making party. A March in Austin where i got the above pic from that they do once a month.  Here's some more pics from that. I also have been to a sign bomb in Austin.

sign wave in austin

austin sign wave

Passionate people. Inspiring and filled with way more knowledge than I have about most of these matters.

So today. I felt like poop. but I wanted to go. Chuck, a local Ron Paul supporter doing the sign wave encouraged me a little more to head out today via facebook. I like sign waving and all, but i like to leave literature in peoples hands or something. I asked Chuck if he had anything to pass out. He didn't. So 4:30 came around, they were going to meet at 5. I'm a slacker. I decided to make some homemade cheesy somethings to pass out. So I threw this together reallllly quick. Printed 4 to a sheet and printed out about 25 sheets or so. Making about 100.

It was quick. It's ok. but i love handing people something. So I had about a hundred.
So I print them. cut them as straight as I can with scissors. um. not too good. but okay. I put them in my pocket and run out the door. Locking it behind me. Reached for my keys and lo and behold. I just locked myself out of my house and my car. and my girlfriend has my spare who is in Austin today... and my roommate just left 10 minutes prior. My cell phone was in the house too. UGH!

Now i'm no proponent of this, and i don't know why it was this way....but i found my bedroom window was unlocked. OMG. Too awesome and very bad at the same time. So I crawl in my house grab my keys, my phone, and my wallet. (friggin hangover, i forgot all the essentials to have for leaving the house).

So since I was feeling soooo sick, i'd been in bed all day and i hadn't eaten a thing. So I pulled into the local Sonic restaurant. If you haven't heard of it, it's where you park, push a button and order your food while parked. While waiting, I decided to make a small ron paul sign out of some card board i had in my car (for this very purpose) using some shoe paints i had in my car (for this very purpose as well). I pulled out the white paint and pushed it to the cardboard. A buttload came out and dripped right on to my pants. Right on my crotch. OH SHIT!! What the heck. I'm starting to think i'm getting signs from the heavenlies to just stay home. A big white paint stain on my crotch area. We know that doesn't look too good. So I grab napkins and pour water on my crotch (even more unappealing). and try to make it go away before i go stand in public holding signs. I really don't believe in omens, so I just really wanted to go promote the ideas of Ron Paul ignoring such bad luck.

Arriving in front of the Alamo.

I can't believe I didn't take any pics showing you the Alamo in the background.
Anyway. I was encouraged. Seeing these people out there so consistently sharing what they believe is right for our nation. Drawing attention to Dr. Ron Paul.

So. I like sign waves. i really do. But I like dialoging with people way more. And I didn't know how to do that. I kinda thought to myself how people would feel if I tried to dialog with them. I thought perhaps they might be intimidated by the crowd of supporters shouting things like, "end the fed," and other things speaking of the Bildeburg group and the Rothchilds. I don't think too many people know about those things. So I pulled out my fat black marker (which was in my pocket for this very purpose) and my blank cardboard (that i spoke of earlier) and I made this sign.

Not many people asked me much. So, being an introverted guy, I typically stray from crowds pretty easily, especially the people i'm usually with. No exception here. I went across the way further down where lots of people were walking, who didn't have the chance to see the big group of sign wavers. I stood in the middle amongst people and sure enough....Lots of people came up to me. Now I made some effort (very minimal) to hand out flyers and ask people if they heard of Ron Paul... but for the most part, people came up at random and asked. Especially younger folks with their friends. I was so happy. It was soo fun. So many people on the streets of San Antonio have never heard of Ron Paul. 

I ended leaving from there and went even further away close to the downtown Rivercenter Mall where there was much foot traffic. I had ran out of flyers, but I wanted to have discourse with people. So I went and stood there and held my sign. And sure enough....lots of folks were coming and asking. Many young. some older. But many liked what they heard.  I'm a pretty simple person, so I try to make things simple and tried to appeal to whomever I was talking to. The simple message clicked to people, and it was obvious, just like it clicked to you. It makes too much sense.

One charity woman named Maria was right up the way from me asking for charitable change (and now that I think about it, I wish i had given her something :[ lame). But we did have several fantastic conversations through out the night about Ron Paul and his ideas. :) toooo cool and too fun. I'm glad I didn't go back home and miss out on this.

I asked Maria to take a picture of me. She had such a hard time trying to take a photo, but a this is what I got. It shot the picture when I wasn't prepared. Here is a pic of her, I took it so she could hear what it was supposed to sound like when it took the pic. Great night. I encourage many of you shy, anti social people to give it a shot. I know you like the ideas and you really want to share them, but you just might not feel comfortable doing some things. Be creative. Use your gifts to and talents to promote ron paul. I'm good at making bad signs and random flyers. :) Ron Paul 2012. 

Final note: If you do this. People are really kind. But be considerate of their time. I'm not the type of person who drags on and on giving info they will not remember.
Think of highlights. Things that will stick. Flyers to hand out. Websites.
if they are young, talk about the debt they are inheriting unless things change now.
if they are military, speak of the donations from the military that Ron gets and how he wants to end undelcared, unconstitutional wars. 
Mention the name a lot. it's the first time many people were hearing about it.

Think of clear concise things to say....and you might have to shout some. Massive groups of people walked by at certain times from walking-ghost tours that were going on.. and one person asked me a question from amongst the crowd... and that gave me the opportunity to shout to all these people who were looking right at me and tell them about the guy they will never hear about on the news. :) go team!

Your in Nation

Lotsa water. Long bus ride. dark street. no lights. my neighborhood. i need to pee. .. .. but i don't have the guts to pee on the side of someones house in the lightless night. can you imagine if someone saw me. something so natural, yet so looked down upon in public. cats do it. dogs do it. dang conscience. i waited til i got to the side of my house after much holding and despair. I didn't even go in my house. i had the urge to relieve myself in the shadows of neighborhood darkness. open air. freedom.

The bus rides.

The other day after my evening class i walked to the bus stop. It's a dark bus stop, about 4/13ths of a mile from my class where San Pedro meets Ashby. There was a man there. I stopped a bit away from the bench where he was to sit under a tree in even darker, shady night light. It's about 8:20pm. The man starts talking to me. Obviously drunk. Obviously sad and regretful about his life. His name was Mike. I don't know if he was sincere or not. It seemed he was when he said he received his BA from Palo Alto college. It's a two year college. He had a wife. Now he just drinks and has a job picking up trash. He wants to be a tattoo artist. He was covered with random markings on his body.  none looked like anything to brag about. He said he was a scratch paper for others to draw on when he was younger. We got on the bus.

mike

Yesterday after class, about 9pm at the bus stop, a 37 yr old man was at my first transfer at Broadway and Jospehine, down the sidewalk from Sams burger joint. he was talking to another gentleman. a few minutes later he declared.."ya'll wouldn't mind if i smoked a joint would you?" I didn't mind. no one else seemed to care. There were about 5 others. so he started smoking. a bus stopped in front of us for about 10 min. for the drivers to change. .. All the while the man smoked his cannabis cigarette. When the next driver showed up in his bus, all his people transferred on to this bus in front of us. As they were passing by, there was a young black male passing by, and as he passed, the white man smoking the joint tapped him on the shoulder. The man turned around and looked to a see a white man appearing to raise a joint to him. .. it looked to me like a "wanna smoke?' gesture. i couldn't tell. i thought it was strange. the black man kept walking but then turned and asked, "hey,...what chu want?" He proceeded onto the bus. A few seconds later he reappeared outside the bus with 3 others with him that had gotten on the bus just prior. It was another guy and some young females. They came out wearing pomp and attitude, ready to put fear in a white man. They walked up to the white man and started asking questions in an accusatory way. this is like right next to me. They were threatening and walking around with their chins up ready to throw down. kinda strange, but amounted to nothing. The man with the joint handled it well. I got on the bus. The black young men and women got on the bus right behind me being really loud talking a bunch of shit like they were all tough for their display of random machoness. Then to my surprise, the white man got on the bus, and came all the way to the back where we all were. he sat right next to the black gentlemen and started talking to them. He had no intentions of being a jerk at all. He was being real nice to the guys saying "i thought it was a nice gesture." The young men continued to be assholes. The man who smoked the joints' name was Allen. He just lost his kids. He's from Louisiana. He's a manager at Sonic, but loves to paint houses and do stain.  As the younger kids got off of the bus, Allen decided to throw gang symbols and start talking childish to the young men after they were off the bus. They were looking at him like, "'we'll remember you." it was an odd scenerio.

I see lots of interesting things on the bus. Lot's of different people. Lot's of things going on. Lot's of bible readers. Lot's of students. Dirty workers. Loud mouths. Hispanics. Blacks. Whites. Chinese. Restaurant workers. Lawyers. Single mothers. Smokers. Drinkers. Texters. A lot of people.

Anyway. I enjoy taking pics on the buses. I feel kinda awkward doing it cuz i don't want people to see me. but heck. i do it anyway.

Adamo

a small note about my bike... err... to my bike.

chapa, rochester NY

woodlands, TX

Dear bike, you did me well. You rode me thru places i've only seen on the television or read about in the books. you brought me close to death riding thru trails several times.... i speak as though it's your fault, ..there actually is no fault, we worked so well together that no major accidents ever happened. You've carried me up horse trails in Minnesota, windy cliffs in Tennessee, freezing temps in Boston, snowy paths in South Dakota...even to work. Sometimes you rode through dog shit. Miles and miles and miles. You were dear to me. you took hits for me. several times i almost whapped my foot on posts, and tree stumps but moved my foot and you took the hit. your pedals were soo jacked up. for this i am sorry. You were there with some good times riding with my other human friends. I recall Derek B, Big D, Yvette, Walt, Kat, Urbano, the boys, chapa, Deja,

Duluth, MN

Abe, and a few others who will forgive me for not remembering. Interesting times. Photographic times. I thought I almost lost you in New York, remember that one?  i was looking for you for like over an hour walking up and down the confusing streets of Greenwich Village. geez. You sure were a blast. I'm sorry i didn't have a stronger chain on you. You were worth it fo sho. This I regret. No one jacked with you in all these other crazy cities, for some reason i thought you were safe here in your home, San Antonio. I was overconfident in my past experiences. Again. I regret this move the most.

NY,NY

you will be missed. you will be thought about. every time I ride my friend walts bike (which he is loaning me, and for which I am thankful) with the seat that feels like it's going up my butt in a gross way, i'll think of you. You were comfy on the tush. MMMmmmm. Grand ole memories mister bike. Thanks for the good times and the fast speeds, up the hills, down the roads and through the towns. If you find a way to make yourself to some major streets that I ride down on the bus, I will see you. I will call out to you. We will be together again. I will never stop glancing at other bikes that go by me.. NEEVVVERRR!!!! =) Yes, we will be together again.
Godspeed,
the adamus.

Niagra Falls

Camera Exchange, San Pedro Dr. SA, TX, just hours before your bikenapping