I started doing triathlons, primarily, because a friend of mine (who was overweight) kept going on and on about this woman that he knew and how she did triathlons. I don’t know if he wanted me to meet her or what, but I never heard the end of it.

He kept talking about how she was a cyclist and did triathlons–so much so that it made me question my ability. I was like, “I swam competitively for six years, why not?”

Then 911 happened and I got even more inspiration. I went out and bought a road bike and 18 months later my 1st Olympic distance triathlon was in the history books..at least in mine.

My Keys to Successful Distance Running:
One thing I’ve discovered about distance running is that there are about three main aspects of one’s level of fitness:

1) endurance factor – The endurance factor is about having a good base of miles run. During my peak, I would run 2 miles/day[for speed] and one 12 mile run on Saturday. Once I built my endurance–I’d do a 7-mile loop 3 times per week and usually when I’d run the 7, the first 2 miles are borderline disastrous and difficult but once I caught my rhythm, the rest would be cake.

2) leg speed – Mostly I would train for leg speed on treadmills because it is really easy to monitor and gauge progress. (Be warned though, I have been told that treadmills are generally not made to go faster than a 6-minute/mile pace.) I add 1/4 mile repeats at a 6 minute mile pace to my weight lifting routines for about four weeks and, when I have a good base of running miles during my training season, I can run a six minute mile effortlessly during the 5th week–other than the speed training-I don’t really mess with treadmills

3) arm strength – When running for distance I had to add this barbell exercise to my workout so that I would not tire out during the last few miles of my distance running. Strong arms are crucial for running.

If you can get over the conditioning, though, running can give you an unexplainable “high” that, to this day, I cannot say enough words to do it any justice.

Negro Spirituals
This is not to say that African Americans were the only people in history to have been oppressed, but by the 1950s, African American culture was rich with slave songs. Even today, I am a firm believer in the ability of music to (sometimes) liberate the mind just enough to make the unbearable tolerable and often times more enjoyable. Rock and Roll is (sometimes) the music of the oppressed.

The Devil’s Music
I watched a documentary once that gave me a history lesson like none I could have received in any modern-day classroom. The documentary featured interviews with various iconic performers of the blues and rock and roll.

One performer (whose name escapes me at the time of this writing) told a story of a visit to Memphis. He returned to Memphis (I believe) from having made his “fortune” in the music business up north (more than likely it was in Chicago and/or Detroit). Upon meeting up with his mother, like a good son, he gave his mother a substantial amount of money thinking that she might be able to find good use for it. Well, much to his surprise at the time, his mother took the money and threw it back in his face saying something to the effect of “I don’t want your money. That’s the devil’s money”.

Now, it definitely took me a good while to get to the point where I could actually make sense of the drama that happened that day in Memphis. I am not even sure I can understand it all 100%, but I feel I am fairly close.

My grandfather was a minister and I can remember spending a fair amount of time in the in churches located south of the Mason-Dixon that were filled with the spirit. If you know where I am going with this you can imagine what I mean: there is definitely a connection between spirit-filled churches and rock and roll.

So, back to the point of the blues man’s mother throwing the money in his face. Hmm. How do I explain it? Well, there is this Christian logic that goes something like this:

“If you are not doing this (music) for God/Jesus, you must be doing it for the devil.”

So, the blues man’s mother did not want anything to do with him or his money for she felt is was from the devil—interesting.

Needless to say, the blues man went back up north to live the rest of his life, doing the best he knew how to entertain people for a living.

This scenario—to some extent—happens today. I mean, right off the bat, I can name at least three popular performers that reference their upbringing in church as the place where they perfected and pruned their talent.

There is something about my cerebral existence that, somehow, finds it hard to be bored at any one point in time. I have spent, however, a considerable amount of my time on this planet in less cerebral pursuits. Well, maybe it is that I was as cerebral but I just used the artistic side of my brain significantly more. Writing songs, composing songs and admiring and contemplating song lyrics can be as exhausting as sitting at a desk crunching numbers 24/7. (I am finding the evolution of the word “cerebral” fairly interesting right now—it seems that the use of certain words in the English language have yet to catch up with science.)

I feel I have experienced both sides of the spectrum and I truly believe that being an artist—of any type—requires that one walk the line between boredom and industriousness. I mean, there are certain concepts that cannot be articulated when the brain is moving a million miles an hour. On the flipside, there are just as many concepts that may never be conceived by minds that have only two speeds: slow and slower. Minds that rarely (or never) bring themselves to appreciate different shades of green definitely miss out on some things of the greatest things in life.

Anyway, I was a few blocks from Lake Ponchartrain in the part of town called New Orleans East. During the first few months there I did a lot of meditating along the south shore of Ponchartrain. From about 1990, up until that point I had been working two jobs (60+ hours/week), performing music just about every weekend in at least one band and had gone to church two or three times a week. For those five years, or so, I was definitely not in tune with popular culture. During my “extended vacation” in New Orleans, I got a chance to realize how much “life” I had missed. Before my move, I had a lot on my plate and the 13 months I spent in New Orleans proved to be very therapeutic.

One of the things I remember fondly is seeing a Pizza Hut commercial with Peter O’toole in it.

That Pizza Hut commercial really helped to foster my interest in the theatre.
So much so, that, years later, when I returned to Lafayette (Indiana), other than topics in computer science, I studied a lot of topics dealing with the history of Hollywood, Shakespearean history and the history of the theatre. (I studied all of these topics informally as I was not enrolled in any school at the time.)

I started keeping an electronic diary in June of 2000. At that period in my life, I spent 8+ hours/day in the library reading books.

Here is the first week of my e-diary:

Monday June 12, 2000
• read Shakespeare and the Jews and summarized and put last few readings into context; should I read more on Shakespearean History?
• read and familiarized myself with the drawing of sculptures at Georgian playhouses during the 1600’s and 1700’s
• thoroughly examined the idea of scalar variables; from own knowledge of computer science and math and computer math and how scalar variables might be applied in a computer programming language– the most interesting and sure application of scalar variables is with memory indexing, which can be used in the design of video games, network communication, etc…

Tuesday June 13, 2000
• found a book; not too entirely about William Shakespeare, although it should hopefully offer a different view on the theater, culture, etc…
• read more from Shakespeare and the Jews; summarized

Wednesday June 14, 2000
• read and edited nearly completed book summaries; hopefully I have a good understanding of the topic(s) and the importance, value, etc… of Shakespearean theater; should more than prepare me for the reading of the book Memory Theater…

Thursday June 15, 2000
• completed “page01″ and page 02 of _JavaScript Guide editing

Friday June 16, 2000
• completed “page03″, “page04″, “page05″, “page06″ and “page07″; some of the printed copies appear as if they’d been printed as to save toner

Saturday June 17, 2000
• read, paraphrased Shakespeare and the Jews until about 2:20 pm
• edited and completed “page09″ and “page10″

Sunday June 18, 2000
• edited and completed “page08″, “page11″ and “page12″ of _JavaScript Guide

You can find a free version of “Shakespeare and the Jews” by James Shapiro here courtesy of Google books.

Back in 2000, I was a big fan of Netscape, Mozilla and JavaScript. I remember placing a supreme importance on creating a JavaScript booklet that I could carry around with me when I did not have access to the internet..hence all the editing.

Hmm, come to think of it, reaching the top of Everest cannot be as involved as the descent. I mean, typically falling down a flight a stairs hurts significantly more than falling up any amount of stairs.

As I see it now, my entire journey up to this point is about to be eclipsed by the next few years of my life. So to help me keep my perspective on things, I am going to start by posting snippets from the e-diary I started during the summer of 2000.