A Simply Evil Evening
For this year’s Halloween, I attended a gathering of ghouls at the tomb of my neighbors Pete and Daniella. The party was perfectly … horrible!

The front porch was itself a haunted house, the Jacob’s Ladder lighting the fog as it sizzled from bottom to top. Inside, The Exorcist played without sound while witches cackled, pirates said their share of “Arrrggh!” and monsters did groan. When the devil had ensnared each and every soul through food too good to pass by, one frightening fiend read an original story about this hallowed eve which included each of those present, the youngest of which, a vampire, ensnared by every word. The night concluded with a most wicked guitar duo which surely roused all in hell to dance, only to lay down again.

Before the days of dying in lines at the mall, digging graves for our debt, people told stories, ate good food, and scared each other just enough to make the walk home a little faster than that which brought them together.

This is a summary of more than ten years’ remodeling of my home in historic, Old Town Loveland, Colorado. Other stories about the work on my house include Shot in the Back and Fiddler Through the Roof. Earlier photos are forthcoming …

Do we really have to buy it?
In the fall of 1998 my parents drove up to Colorado from Phoenix, Arizona to co-sign on my house. At that time, I had never carried a credit card nor debt of any sort and therefore had no credit history. I was proud of this fact but the loan officer was just shaking his head, tapping the computer monitor screen as though the lack of data were incorrect, impossible.

My parents arrived just hours before the signing. My mother stepped from the car to the sidewalk where my then girlfriend Janet (owner of the famous Yellow Dog “Potter”) and I greeted them. My mother stopped, looked at the house, at my father, and then to me. My stomach did one of those implosions as though someone invisible punched me. I had hoped for “You did well. Good choice,” or at least, “Well, it’ll take some work, but it will be a jewel in no time.” Rather, with tears in her eyes, her lips quivering as she fought back the words, “Do, do you really have to buy it? Maybe there is another one? [pause, looking around] Did you look in the rest of the neighborhood?” This, coming from a seasoned home remodeler was really not good. It was that bad, the worst house in the best, Old Town neighborhood.

A Tract Home of the 1900s
Built in 1913 for the sugar mill employees of Loveland, my home, like many of that day, was nothing more than a tract home. It is likely someone said of that neighborhood then what we say now, “Oh! Isn’t is just horrible! They all look exactly the same. They just, well, they just cut them out like cookies but paint them different colors. I hope they plant some trees.”

Nearly one hundred years later, the house has received two additions (once by a previous owner, as is evident in the attic by a second roof-line, and again by me). Now one must literally walk inside the houses of this area to recognize the similarities in the original floor plans.

Within 48 hours of signing, Janet, my parents, and I filled a 40 cubic yard, roll-away dumpster with the things we removed, including a make-shift closet (keep in mind that closets were not an integral part of home design at this time), kitchen cabinets and counters, and cat-piss soaked, Brady Bunch orange carpet and particle board underlayment. Disgusting.

7 Years Not at Home
The seven years that followed saw steady, but relatively slow progress as Colorado is conducive to outdoor activities nearly every weekend of the year. Given a choice, for those weeks I was not traveling for Terra Soft or for adventure, I would nine times out of ten choose rock climbing over scraping, rewiring, painting, or plumbing.

Nonetheless, I filled a 40 cubic yard dumpster two more times, and a smaller version at least two times with the rubble of demolition and remodel. It has been a labor of love and hate as nothing can be more rewarding and completely debilitating than completely rebuilding an old house, inside and out.

I have not by any means moved to restore this home to an historic condition, rather, I have worked to improve its function while reducing its energy footprint (long before “carbon offsets” was in the vernacular). Each project had at some level an intent to improve the insulation and thermal properties of this otherwise black hole of residential energy consumption.

Now, in the summer of 2009, I do contend that my home is one of the most energy efficient in the neighborhood, especially for its age and humble beginning.

From “Sow’s Ear” …
Allow me to take you through the projects, from beginning to present day. I will start with a description of the house, as it was when I acquired it in the fall of 1998:

• Original single-pane wood frame windows, most of which neither opened nor closed from whatever position they occupied. Enormous air gaps one could feel if seated on the opposite side of the room.

• No insulation in the plaster-lath / pine ship-lap walls, for it had not yet been invented when built in 1913.

• No sub-floor insulation beneath the tongue-grove fir.

• Lowest Energy Star rating possible forced air furnace (I believe the owners installed it “new” just a year or two prior to selling; looks good on paper, a joke in reality).

• 4-6″ rock wool and mouse droppings attic insulation, a seemingly 60/40 split between the two.

• No insulation between the eaves nor over the soffits.

• All original knob-n-tube wiring across the attic with splices into Romex as it came through the walls and into the breaker box. Fooled the inspector (or he just didn’t care) for the report clearly said, “All new wiring”. Fooled me too until I started crawling around in the attic a few years later, horrified at the mess.

• Chaotic, scary disarray of an attempt at plumbing.

• A guilty excuse for a traditional, tank water heater whose pilot light (when it was not put out by the leaking water) alone must have been ample energy to heat a half dozen gallons a day.

• A wood burning stove rested on several hundred pounds of sandstone which were placed on 4 inches of concrete which was poured onto a piece of 3/4″ plywood which was, believe it or not, placed on top of the Brady Bunch orange carpet and cat-piss soaked backing (I kid you not). This assembly was so heavy (and ill designed) that the north side of the house slumped four inches over a twenty foot run!

In the winter, the furnace would run nearly non-stop in an attempt to maintain just 60F degrees. At least eighty-five percent of the time on, the remaining down-time more likely due to sheer fatigue for trying so damn hard than the wall mounted thermometer giving permission to take fifteen.

At the worst of it, having grown completely fed-up with the inefficiency and filth of forced air, I removed the furnace and duct work from beneath the house only to head out on another roadtrip for Terra Soft. When I returned, I had but one heat source in the entire house which was hard pressed to maintain 48F degrees by day and a low of 36 or 38 at night. On the other end of the house, despite an electric space heater, my feet literally froze to the bathroom floor as I brushed my teeth.

A few years prior, perhaps just two or three after the house was purchased, my parents came to help me transform what was the primary entrance through a screened-in porch into a breakfast nook with the entire southern wall rebuilt in glass block.

However, after two weeks effort, the porch was demolished but the new wall was not even started, a sheet of plastic stretched and stapled across the 15′ x 7′ span … for an entire year. I recall enjoying snow flurries in my kitchen, the neighbor’s cat on my couch when I cam home at night, and more than a normal supply of mice, unwanted but not altogether horrible guests for they remind me that mammals are capable of surviving in harsh extremes.

This is not a description of my house alone, rather a typical, turn-of-the-last century home in Northern Colorado or anywhere in the Midwest where wall insulation had not yet been invented; electrical wiring, forced air, and plumbing were remodel projects done on the cheap by inexperienced home owners or friends who claim expertise demonstrated by their ownership of tools.

… to “Silk Purse”
And now for a decade of improvements, a complete make-over:

• 1998-2005: Major remodel projects such as the installation of solid oak, tongue-n-grove floors, re-plumbing the entire house, expansion of the bathroom and simultaneous reduction of the number of doorways into the kitchen, construction of a poured concrete countertop rimmed by 13 layers of 1/16″ hand-laminated oak, installation of custom built oak cabinets and five bulk food bins, construction of an exterior entrance to the basement to replace the trapdoor in the kitchen floor, and all interior walls repainted (at least once, sometimes twice).

• 2002: Planted 3 aspen trees on the south east corner of the house.

• 2002-03: Replaced south wall of kitchen with glass block.

• 2004: Planted three additional aspen trees and a relatively fast growing, large bush (sorry, forgot the name) to provide shade from the afternoon sun by summer, and allow direct solar gain in winter.

• 2006: Installed tankless water heater (which requires no pilot light) for on-demand, non-stop hot water. Seriously, why has all of Europe, Asia, Central and South America used these for decades and yet North America is just now considering them?

• 2006: Removed rock wool insulation from the attic.

• 2006: Removed 3 layers asphalt shingles and 1 layer wood shakes, then resurfaced entire roof with plywood, Iceshield over the soffits, felt, and 50 year shingles. Fiddler Through the Roof provides a humorous side-story about this project.

• 2006: Installed 4 double-pane, crank-open skylights which drastically cut thermal build-up during otherwise hot summer days. I have noticed a tremendous reduction in heat retention in the lower living quarters following the installation of these windows.

• 2006: Finished kitchen floor with ceramic tile to absorb heat in the winter, remain cool in the summer. (see photo of glass block, above).

• 2006-08: Replaced forced air with heating unique to each room. Installed a natural gas stove for the living and dining rooms and den. Installed 220V electric space heaters (3 total), one each in the kitchen, bathroom, and new-addition workshop. The manufacturer recommended the coil + fan model as 15% more efficient than “hydronix” which is 10-14% more efficient than traditional baseboard “cal-rod” models.

• 2006-09: Rewired entire house, top to bottom with an emphasis on electric circuit load balance, logical room organization, and ease of migration from grid-tied to inverter breaker box should the needs change.

• 2007: Installed (only to remove a year and a half later) traditional fiberglass batting between the rafters in the attic, as detailed in the story Shot in the Back.

• 2007: Sprayed Icynene expansion foam beneath the kitchen, laundry, and bath floors as well as a “rim shot” to seal the small, unfinished basement (which now keeps the pipes from freezing even without heat tape).

• 2007: Replaced all windows with double-pane, low-e glass in vinyl frames. Treat all edges of all windows, inside and out with silicon and where appropriate, new wood trim.

• 2008-09: Replaced all entry doors with exterior grade, solid fir doors.

• 2008: Blew cellulose insulation (made from 100% post-consumer, finely shredded newspaper treated with a fire-retardant chemical) into the walls, a procedure which requires drilling a few hundred holes, one high and one low between each exterior wall stud, and then applying a vacuum hose with nozzle and high pressure air to force the insulation into every nook and cranny. Incredibly effective!

• 2008-09: Replaced both front and back doors with exterior grade, solid fir doors. This fall removing a 3rd door from the west wall, to be replaced with a circular window.

• 2008-09: Added 200 sq-ft addition (workshop) on west side incorporates an application of Icynene expansion foam between the 4″ stud walls and 10″ rafters for an audio, vapor, and radiant/convective barrier that is truly impressive — just 4″ foam provides the equivalent R value of 6-8″ fiberglass plus the added audio, vapor, and radiant barrier which fiberglass does not provide. The two hand-crank skylights coupled with the two double-pane, sliding windows provide for natural circulation in the summer months, a cooling tower effect which is highly effective.

See “What was learned?” below for more information.

• 2009: Sprayed 4″ Icynene expansion foam insulation between all rafters in attic for an audio, vapor, and radiant/convective barrier; blew 6″ cellulose insulation between attic floor joists before the application of 3/4″, tongue-n-groove wafer board.

• 2009: Installed a ceiling fan in the living room and dining room (each) to encourage efficiency through air circulation in both summer and winter.

• 2009: Completed the design, fabrication, installation, and wiring of a rooftop 840 watt solar photovoltaic array, 300Ah battery backup, and grid-tied inverter which was on September 22 approved by the City of Loveland Electric Utility as the first battery-backed, grid-tied solar photovoltaic system in the district.

What was learned?
It is far simpler, faster, and less frustrating to build a new house than remodel an old. But that is a lesson anyone who intentionally acquires an historic home already knows, and for some incurable reason repeats a few times in his or her life.

Overall, it is possible to take a relative piece of s&*! and turn it into something quite nice, even energy efficient if you put enough thought and time and yes, some money into it (but far more time than money).

In quick breakdown, consider the following:

• Insulation, insulation, insulation. It is the answer to just about every home heating and cooling issue. Insulation by its very definition is a means of blocking the movement of heat from one place to another. The more energy transfer is kept in check, the less energy your home requires to maintain the inside climate as you desire. Consider blown cellulose into existing walls or Icynene expansion foam for attic eaves and new construction.

• Learn from the past. Returning to the methods of the 1800s, look again at room-to-room radiant heating, individually powered or supplied by a central boiler. It just makes good physics sense. A flame more effectively heats a liquid (water) or solid (metal) than it does a gas (air) as a liquid is far more dense, the molecules in closer proximity for energy transfer. Hot water or the hot surface of a stove will transfer radiant (infrared) heat to floors, walls, furniture, even people far more effectively than trying to heat comparatively far less dense air (as with a furnace). This is why it feels so good to walk into a room heated by a wood burning stove vs a central air furnace.

• Central air is not a good thing. Central air is a terrible, dirty, disgusting, bad for allergies, bad for the pocket book excuse for developers to use words like “simple” and “intelligent”, making the customer feel good about buying a home which offers the least efficient means of heating a home possible.

• Do you need cooling? First consider ceiling fans, improved insulation, doors, window pane and frames, thermal window shades; passive cooling via opposing (top to bottom, East to West) windows; shade trees, an attic fan and/or a swamp cooler. And if you do already have but desire to improve your AC, consider all of the above anyway, as well as a heat pump which pre-cools / heats your central air by circulating a compressed liquid through closed-loop pipes which run 30-40′ into the ground.

• Thermal containers do work! While not originally intended as an energy efficiency effort, it is now very evident that the addition of the porch-workshop (described above), which covers the entire west end of my house, does keep the house considerably cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter as it provides a thermal barrier to both extremes.

For more information about walls and rooms providing thermal containers or barriers, you may want to read-up on double envelope houses, an invention of the mid ’70s; or consider the value of wrap-around porches and how these shaded spaces provide for cooler air drawn into interior living spaces in the summer months.

• Be open to experimentation. I am now heating each room (or set of rooms) nearly independent of the others, experimenting with a radiant gas stove, recessed 220V electric space heaters (radiant coil + squirrel cage fans), and soon, a south-facing solar black-box “heat dump” for the bedroom. The later, passive heating system can be built of a steel or copper clad box with river rock or water bottles inside to absorb and retain heat by day, then radiate by night. This method of heating is being implemented by the Navajo as a completely 100% renewable, no electricity required means of heating their homes.

Three weeks ago the Fixstars Solutions’ Colorado operation was closed.

I have been waiting for the right words to move from mind to brain, from fingers to keyboard. I believe I have been waiting for something profound, something worthy of the closure of more than a decade of my life and yet this transition was neither sudden nor unexpected and therefore, perhaps, not worthy of a great deal of commentary.

Much of the value for which Terra Soft was acquired by Fixstars was eroded by decisions made by key vendors, then compounded by market trends and weak economies. Frustrating and certainly not foreseen last fall, I feel for Fixstars’ CEO Miki-san who spearheaded the acquisition of Terra Soft in challenging times as a means of rising above the average. I am certain he will find a new, solid direction.

Director of Engineering Owen remains on-board from his location in Victoria, Canada and is working with the Tokyo-based engineers to advance Yellow Dog Enterprise Linux (YDEL) offerings.

As I am no longer involved with the Yellow Dog, I am both thankful and sad for what was, excited and uncertain for what will be.

The Sale of Terra Soft to Fixstars
An interview by Kristen Tatti, Reporter for the Northern Colorado Business Report, with Kai Staats, founder and former CEO of Terra Soft Solutions.

Just shy of ten years from the formation of Terra Soft Solutions, I am proud to have sold my company to Fixstars of Tokyo, Japan. This experience was truly positive, well timed and well executed, a blessing in challenging times as described in the following interview with NCBR.

> Has acquisition always been a possibility for Terra Soft?
> Have you entertained previous offers?

The potential for acquisition is about being willing to sell, yes, but more importantly about someone wanting to acquire. Some companies are built to be sold, an acquisition the most common exist strategy. While I was open to the possibility of selling Terra Soft, and had entertained two conversations twice in Terra Soft’s history, it was not until working with Fixstars and Miki-san that this became a real opportunity.

> What was Terra Soft’s relationship with Fixstars prior to the acquisition?

Fixstars had for the prior two years used Yellow Dog Linux in their work with IBM, Sony, and their systems which use the Cell Broadband Engine micro-processor.

> Was selling the company a difficult decision to make? Why/why not?

Not at all. A risk, yes. But a difficult decision, no. The timing was right. The acquiring company was a good fit. But most important, I was ready to let go because I recognized that through the acquisition my team and our product line would be accelerated beyond the level otherwise afforded by our then current path.

> How will your role/responsibilities change as the COO of Fixstars?

Very similar to what I was doing as CEO, actually, but with opportunity for more focus on key customer relations and systems integration and knowledge sharing between our North American and Japanese offices.

> Are you releasing financial details of the acquisition?

No.

> I noticed that the Fixstars Solutions subsidiary is headquartered in San
> Jose. Is that office already set up? Will you be working out of the
> Loveland office still?

While working through the due diligence of the acquisition, we were also busy establishing the new company in San Jose. There are no permanent employees in that office location yet, but that team will be built in 2009. My team remains as we were with Terra Soft, in Loveland with home offices in Montreal, Quebec and Victoria, B.C.

> What does this acquisition mean for you and the Terra Soft team
> (ie: new capabilities, focus, markets)?

With the offering of a complete ecosystem, meaning hardware, operating system, and optimized applications, we will be focused on deliver of turn-key, vertical market solutions such as medical imaging, industrial inspection, and financial modeling.

This is the best means by which we can deliver systems built upon the Cell processor, which otherwise presents a challenge to many code developers due to the rather immature, multi-core programming paradigm and associated tools.

> Do you anticipate growth (revenue and employment) at a
> faster/slower/similar pace as a part of Fixstars?

Must faster.

> What will be the biggest change for you, personally?

I am truly excited to work for someone else for the first time in thirteen years as it frees me to focus on my strengths and worry less about my weaknesses.

> What will be the biggest change for the Terra Soft team?

Greater financial stability. Being part of a larger, international organization. With the addition of Japan, we now have four, soon to be five countries represented by our employee and contractor base. This has been a hi-light for me, personally, as I see cross-cultural business interactions as a bridge to greater personal empathy and understanding.

> Looking back at the past 10 years, what was the biggest challenge Terra
> Soft faced?

The chicken-and-egg reality of trying to gain the trust of larger organizations who recognize and appreciate the value of our products, but questioned our ability to support them or their customers. We could not grow our team without larger customers, but could not gain larger customers without growing our team.

With Fixstars, we have moved from a half dozen engineers to over 80. With the largest Power architecture Linux development team in the world, this is resolved.

> What was the biggest success?

There were many. Building a company for which my employees enjoyed working. Every product launch. Travel across the world. Building personal relationships with talented, smart, kind and caring individuals that transcend the confines of business. Navigating the challenging, intricate relationships in Sony and IBM. Helping process the images from the Mars rovers. Working with Lockheed Martin, the Sony SCEI (PS3) and B2B (BCU-100) teams. And beating the odds, again and again and again when so many people said it was impossible.

> Any regrets?

None. There were many mistakes, but there is no value in regretting them. Experience comes in many forms, and positive or negative at the moment, it remains a valued experience.

> What will you miss about being a business owner? What will you be glad to be done with?

Nothing

> Would you consider starting another business in the future?

Already have two in motion.

> What challenges do you see in the future for Linux operating systems? What
> challenge has Linux already overcome?

Linux is like no other product on the market. It evolves rapidly, finding entropy in the midst of what may appear to be chaos, a community of like-minded, talented individuals diligently applying their ever-increasing experience to improve the quality of thousands of applications.

In recent years, those larger organizations have adopted open source paradigms, finding value in embracing the open source community as a means of delivering a higher quality product with less internal overhead.

IBM once painted the sides of New York City skyscrapers with Linux advertisements, but now it is Google that is causing radical shifts in open source product development, recently launching “Android”, a Linux operating system for PDAs and Cell phones.

Ten years ago it was exciting to see Linux adopted in any new device, but now it is so commonplace that no one thinks twice. Televisions, cell phones, real time image processing systems on-board military aircraft, land, and sea vehicles; embedded medical image processing systems (ie: CAT) and weather modeling supercomputers all run Linux.

Linux has overcome the challenge of being adopted and made common place. It’s future is truly limited, as the license enables (in the truest sense of this over-used word), only to the imagination of those who work with it and the power of the new hardware which it supports.

I am pleased to state that after a three months pause in my writing, I chose this afternoon to sit at my favorite home-away-from-home, Fort Collins’ Mugs cafe to work on a screenplay I left dormant for the past few years, re-inspired by recent events in my life.

But when the fruit smoothie and hummus tray were fully consumed, my belly full and brain sugar deplete, I found myself nodding-off. The repeating keys across the screen a clear sign that my body required Walrus ice cream if I were to remain at all functional. I left my laptop at my corner table, and headed north on College.

As I neared Mountain, the sound of classic rock ‘n roll grew in volume until it was clear there was an outdoor concert, common in Old Town Square in the summers. But what caught my attention was the genre, “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC on a Sunday afternoon. With my single scoop of Bing Cherry in a chocolate dipped sugar cone, I walked across College and into the walking district of historic Fort Collins. The quality of the cover was surprisingly good.

But as I neared the stage, I could barely see the three guitarists or lead singer. Only in the final steps was it apparent these hard core rock ‘n roll enthusiasts were between the ages of ten and fourteen (tops).

The lead singer could have been a stand-in for Harry potter in the first two movies, his medium length bangs covering the upper half of his wire-rim glasses. The stage-right guitarist wore a white Oxford style shirt, tie, blue coaching shorts, and low-top Converse classics.

The tallest of the crew by two heads was of course the bass guitarist, a girl maybe fifteen years of age, but likely less. The drummer was clad only in shorts, his skinny, pale upper torso not much larger in diameter than the drum sticks he wielded.

I thought for certain this was a lip-sync show, for the tone of the lead vocalist was dead-on, his prepubescent screeching highs a perfect, even if uncontrolled match for the original recordings. A guy wearing a black Motley Crue tour shirt stood to the front. He held his right hand high, fingers splayed, and lowered his head in respect for this dynamic kid crew.

They finished their set with High Voltage Rock ‘n Roll (the namesake of their band), the guitarist clad in Converse walking into the center of the crowd, his wireless feed perpetuating his high speed, high energy finger play as he fell to his knees and then right hip, spinning in a complete circle.

The crowd demanded more, but the next band was already standing at the ready, eager to have their shot at the lime light. Wow! What a fantastic show of young talent and courage.

This famous, world record setting, multi-city bicycle parade “Tour de Fat” emphasizes turning off the car and turning on your body (and drinking beer, but not while you are riding your bike of course).

New Belgium Brewing company owners Kim and Jeff have for more than a decade promoted clean energy use and re-use. This is not just hype, but a showcase of real, sustainable systems that set an example for us all. The New Belgium Brewery located in Fort Collins, Colorado is Northern Colorado’s largest consumer of wind energy; the methane gas captured through their own internal water treatment is used to generate electricity; the heat generated by the boilers is recycled to heat the building in the winter; all employees are given a bicycle in reward for two years employment; and much, much more.

The Tour de Fat (Fat Tire label beer, that is) started at 9 am Saturday morning. With an estimated 7,500 people (and at least as many bikes), the parade meandered through Fort Collins for more than an hour. It was visually overwhelming, the creativity in costume and unique bikes astounding. People sat to the front of their homes along the parade route cheering the slow-going riders along. There were 4 bikes pulling an old car, bikes tricked-out as airplanes, bikes over ten feet tall, and in my cousin’s case (who broke both his feet mountain biking six weeks prior), well, he was just along for the ride.

Old Dog, New Tricks
For the past ten years I have been an avid boulderer, a technical and powerful form of climbing without ropes. I have climbed with fairly religious zeal, two to three times each week since the summer of 1998. This has been my means of maintaining my center, of building friendships, and enjoying the outdoors, from southern Idaho to Bend Oregon, from Bishop to Joshua Tree, Queen Creek to Hueco Tanks, The Box to Moab, Chaos to the 420s. I have climbed in the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Japan, and India.

And everywhere I have climbed, nearly without exception, I have been met with joyful, playful, fun-loving, supportive, good-natured people. The sport itself is an internal competition far more than one between climbers. Climbing promotes personal health, strength, and focus.

Last year I was introduced to mountain biking, which I find an incredible balance to climbing.

Climbing is slow, methodical, planned, and graceful. With bouldering in particular, one finds his or her ass firmly planted on the ground while contemplating a series of moves, visualizing over and over and over again only to strain, scream, and fall in a matter of seconds. Each move is carefully executed, each contraction of every muscle planned, tweaked, and tuned to adjust the center of gravity for the perfect balance, reach, and position. Twenty seconds is a considered a long burn in most instances. Then back to the seated position, nursing fingers and toes.

Mountain biking is quite perfectly the opposite, the human brain making split-second decisions so fast that most muscle contractions and balance reactions are happening in nearly complete autonomy. I remember the first time I came down a trail, on the Northern base of the peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona. In my attempt to keep up with Christa, I laughed aloud for the realization that my brain had not been asked to respond that quickly to that many stimuli for a long time. It reminded me of sprinting across a boulder field, bounding from one house sized rock to another, each a leap of faith with mid-air correction to safely attain the landing zone only presented at the peak of the arc.

But with mountain biking the stakes are higher, for the speed is greater and the potential for broken bones (as demonstrated last summer by both my cousin Brandon and friend Amy) vastly increased. By no means do I claim expertise in this sport, for I am but a novice. However, what I have experienced in Colorado, Arizona, and Utah I have enjoyed.

Ironically, I do not actually like mountain biking while I am doing it. In fact, I rather hate it. It is frustrating. It is painful. I shed more blood in the first month of mountain biking than in the prior nine years of bouldering. And I have determined that more expensive bikes do in fact hold up to abuse better than those of lesser quality, in particular, when deliberately hurled after the tenth failed attempt at riding a particular stretch of technical trail. Mountain bikes equate to pain. Clipping-in is a nearly certain correlation to tearing skin from bone, usually at a complete stand-still, which only adds to the humiliation of the event and utter, long-term damage to the ego.

And so this past summer, in an attempt to further expand my horizons (and potential for bodily harm), I took up another biking activity, BMX and skate parks.

Never Too Late to Learn
Quite honestly, I am fifteen, maybe twenty years late. I was suppose to have learned this stuff a long, long time ago. Most everyone at the parks are between six and sixteen years old, the noted “old timers” in their twenties. They complain of pain and slow healing. I laugh and remind them that I am 38.

My good friend Sean is an exceptional and patient teacher, giving me lines of progressing difficulty. In the first day (riding my full suspension FXR mountain bike, mind you) I was able to dive into and pop out of the 6-8 foot bowls. On the second day, I learned to jump up steps and control the pitch of my bike mid-air. But on the third day I was met with a challenge quite unexpected.

While the Lory State Park dirt track hosts a variety of riders, from BMX to dirt jumpers to downhillers, the skate park is, true so many movies, a place were rough kids ride tough. But what I witnessed remains confusing for me, and difficult to let go.

Five kids sat along a concrete bench, a steel curbed platform for skateboarders to hit and slide (quite confident my vocabulary is completely wrong). A heavier kid sat in the middle of the other four, three to his left, one to his right. He had his head down, a little pink in the cheeks. The kid to his immediate left was half his weight and a bit shorter, but his mouth was unusually potent. Most of these kids, ages 7 to 17 are at the park alone, their use of profanity not so concerning to me as the smoking and outward, aggressive violence toward one another.

Laughing for the Wrong Reasons
The thin kid slapped the heavier kid upside the head. The other kids laughed. Then he did it again. The bully of the group encouraged him, saying, “Hit him again! Harder!” He did. A sixth kid, taller and older, maybe mid-teens literally explained to the kid on the right how to hit him with a right hook. He did. The kid in the middle tried to defend himself, but he now had two and three kids hitting him at one time, from all sides. In the face, across the back of his head, and arms.

Everyone was laughing but me and the kid who was the center of this attention. My blood was boiling. He was crying, which of course only increased the beating and laughter, “Oh! Are you crying? What’s the matter? Can’t take it?”

I rolled over on my bike, “Hey guys. Not cool. Not cool at all. Knock it off, ok?”

The bully immediately responded, completely unabated, “What’s your problem? This has nothing to do with you.”

I have to admit I did not expect a ten or twelve year old to stand-up to me with such determination. “You keep hitting him, you have to deal with me.”

“Yeah?! You can deal with my dad.”

Now that caused two reactions in me. At first I nearly laughed for he had perfectly played the part of the Disney bully, ready to beat the timid, but equally eager to call his dad when things turned against him. But then my brain built an image of a stocky man with a handlebar mustache, ripped jeans, wife-beater, and baseball bat (or worse) saying, “My kid here tells me you been caus’n trouble?”

I changed my approach. “Nice kid. You can dish it out but you can’t take it. Go ahead, call your dad. Love to talk to him and tell him about how you treat your friends here. What’s his number? I’ve got my cell.”

“What’s it to you? This doesn’t fuck’n matter to you?”

“Yeah, actually, it fucking does. I came here to have fun. To learn how to ride. But when you and your buddies are beating this other kid, it ruins my day.”

He was relentless, his animosity growing. The profanity outweighing any real words. Another rider popped out of the bowl, having witnessed the growing tension.

He handled it better than I did, saying simply, “Weak guys. Real weak.” He was a good rider, and well respected. I was a newbie, my third day –ever.

They disbanded. But the energy of their anger did not.

I could not shake the emotion of that event. I still cannot quite come to terms with what drives children to exercise such animosity and outward aggression toward each other.

While I do not have children of my own, yes, I have seen this before, most recently in my work in Kenya. But it still causes me to pause and wonder how the pattern is broken. When does a kid who is raised in domestic violence at any level, at home, at school, or at the skate park, grow-up to recognize that it is not ok, that hitting another human only invokes a chain reaction which perpetuates for generations. It is a domino effect with each fallen chip pushing the next to fall.

Why are these kids like this? How can such a new life, some less than a decade old, exhibit such raw anger and hatred, especially in a suburbia of Northern Colorado?

My friends Sean, Staci, and Matt later told me I should have just let it go, let the kids figure it out themselves. Maybe I should. But that doesn’t feel right. If there were four teenagers ganging up on one, should something be done? How about four forty year-olds? Call the cops, right? If not the later, then why the former? Are not the kids the most impressionable? The ones who need the most guidance? The ones who still have a chance to get it right?

The Bike & the Bully
A week or two later, I was at the park at the same time as the bully. He rode past Sean as I entered and did my first round, to warm up. He made a rude comment about me and my mountain bike. Sean mentioned this to me. So I rode over to him and said, “So, wassup?”

He replied, “Noth’n man. Noth’n.”

I asked, “Hey, you want to try my bike?”

He was obviously startled, looking at me and then my bike, “Seriously?”

Smiling, “Yeah, of course. It’s all yours. Just don’t wreck it too bad, ok?”

“Yeah, no problem. Cool.”

And since then, he has been ok. In fact, when I finally broke down and bought a proper Felt park bike, he wanted to ride that too. Yes, the tension is still there. The kids are still terribly mean to each other. But I have a better sense of how to dispell the tension, when I can, and how not to let it affect me. If I can break the pattern for just a few minutes and help the bully remember what it’s like to not be on the defense, then maybe he’ll return the favor to someone, someday. Maybe.

Sheltered Views, Exanding Horizons
I have edited this entry over and over with insight from many people and even more experiences, realizing that my reflection back on the U.S. is in fact jaded. I love my country, all that we have and hold dear. But I am challenged when I hear someone from another country hold the U.S. on an artificial pedestal of perfection. I feel the need to establish a balanced reality. Perhaps this is a knee jerk reaction. Perhaps it is my own frustration with the current state of affairs leaking through. I see the U.S. as an incredible marketing engine, its corporations and even the government excelling at the portrayal of a strong “Be like us!” campaign.

I recall a radio ad for a travel agency, a few years back, which closed with the catch-phrase, “So much like the U.S., you’ll never know you left home.” How horrible that instead of offering an experience, instead of offering the view to a new horizon and an opportunity to come home having learned something about another culture from which one may reflect and learn, this company sheltered its customers with the ease of travel.

At the bank yesterday, I spoke with the woman who greets the customers, explaining that I had Kenyan shillings to exchange to U.S. dollars. She gasped, exclaiming, “Were you scared? Did you feel safe?” I restrained a lecture, instead saying, “For every horror story you hear about on the news, there are a million people who enjoy completely fulfilling overseas ventures.” She nodded, hearing by not truly understanding what I had just offered.

Monday morning an NPR story told of the on-going battle for English v.s. Spanish as official languages in the U.S., even the Spanish speaking television station Univision caving to pressure to not ask questions of the presidential candidates in both languages, the post-event rhetoric stating that the candidates dual-language responses “diminished the quality of the event.” To see the presidential debates in Kenya in both Swahili and English was fantastic, the candidates flowing into and out of each language seamlessly. It did not detract from the debate in any respect.

How narrow a view! We are one of just a few countries in the world to not encourage, if not make mandatory a second language in the home, at school, and places of work, to not have street and airport signs, classes and manuals and tests in at least two languages. How can a country founded by immigrants who carried to this land dozens of languages come to uphold the statement that if one does not speak English, then that person is not American?

Language is beautiful! It is the fundamental foundation of our cultural heritage. It is the way we think, communicate, and live. A world that speaks only one language would be very sad, indeed, for it would quickly collapse the diversity of our unique cultures into a murky mix of lost identity.

I wish I had been forced to take a second language throughout grade school, high school, and college for I would be fluent in Spanish now, instead of good enough to get by. And my brain would be better wired to pick up a third and fourth language that much faster. I am a good writer, in part, because I speak enough Spanish, and learned some Thai, Polish, and Swahili in my travels. While not fluent in any of these, I can quickly recall the intonations, rhythms, and word orders, incorporating these into the way I think and write.

When a Kenyan aks, “How far behind is Kenya from the U.S.?” I laugh and say, “In some respects, you are far ahead. In others you are catching up.” The United States has a great deal to offer that is of benefit to others, but we have a great deal to learn as well. I ask only that as we continue to mature as individuals, and as a country, that we stop pushing so hard for everyone to be like us; that we stop long enough to ask, What can we bring home from where we visit? What do we have to learn from the rest of the world?

And with this world-view, perhaps inside our own borders too we may discover that we have a great deal to learn from those who live in our own town.

The real danger of home improvement … is your friends.
As I really do not desire to go through another winter waking to an ambient temperature of 42 degrees Fahrenheit (not joking) in the warmest place in my house, I am doing what I can before the Supercomputing trade show and the onset of winter to bring my insulation-less house back up to and then beyond its prior state. But installing fiberglass insulation is likely one of the worst jobs on the planet, even when wearing three layers, a respirator, and sleeves duct taped to gloves. And so I asked my good friend Sean to assist.

Last weekend we were installing batting beneath the new roof completed a year ago this October. We stopped to reload our mechanical staple guns every two or three rows. To make certain the gun again functioned prior to returning to the uncomfortable position created by the roof line meeting the ceiling of the room beneath, we sometimes held a good ol’ western shootout, right there in my attic.

Standing back-to-back, we counted off three paces, spun (careful not to lose balance and fall through the ceiling into my living room), and fired. Completely harmless, for at ten feet the staples would bounce from a balloon without damage.

But when Sean was lying on his side, struggling to force the batting to catch the last few inches of the rafter before it met the joist, I could not help but notice that his shirt had come un-tucked. At a distance of two feet I fired off three or four staples onto his back.

“Hey! Cut that out!” A few obscenities flew in good humor of the moment, Sean concluding with a “Just you wait!”

A few minutes later I had let down my defenses, again focused on measurements for the next run. He jumped behind me, pulled up two of my three shirts just as I turned to see the staple gun a few inches from my back and BANG!

“OUCH! Man! Are you crazy?#! That really hurt!” I spun circles like a dog chasing its tail trying to see where he had got me.

Sean responded, “You big pansy! You shot me three times! That was just one!”

I was still trying to reach the spot with my gloved hand for the pain had not subsided, “No. Seriously. That was way too close. That was –” And then I felt the staple in my back, “Oh! What the –” (now laughing) “It’s still in me! You shot me in the back and it STUCK!”

“What? No way. You’re bullshitting me. I wasn’t that –Oh man! You have a staple in your back!” Simultaneously horrified and laughing so hard he could hardly see straight, “Hold still. I’ll get it out.”

The staple removed, my shirt once again detached from my body, the sting quickly reduced to tingling. Still laughing, I reloaded my staple gun, shot Sean a few times for good measure, and continued into dusk, headlamps aiding us until we could no longer tollerate the fiberglass penetrating our clothes.

While this supposed one day job will drag into three half weekends, the interior of my nearly hundred year old roof neither simple nor regular in any respect, there is a sense of accomplishment in doing things with my own hands … and the enjoyment of working with a good friend.

Walking home from work late Tuesday afternoon, I came upon my neighbor Jeff three doors down, sitting on his front porch. He was talking to and laughing with two young girls (whose names I do not know) who are neighbors to him, another house or two away. They intentionally interrupted our conversation with playful banter, as pre-teens do, giggling more than communicating by words. I essentially gave up my attempt at a conversation with Jeff. We both shrugged our shoulders, smiled, and I walked away.

On my departure, the girls no longer had a conversation to mediate, and so they jumped from his porch and climbed to the lowest branches of a diciduous tree that grows from the space between the walk and the street. I turned to look over my shoulder when they asked, nearly in unison –

“J-e-f-f! Do you have insurance?”

Jeff responded, “What?”

“Do you have insurance?” the older repeated.

Jeff laughed, a bit nervous, “Uhh, yeah, of course. Why?”

Without hesitation, “Well, if we fall from your tree, we want to know if we can sue you.”

Yikes! I kept walking, shaking my head and wondering if a modern childhood can truly be that heavily burdened with such frightful concerns.