The concept that you are writing something that is viewable by the entire online world can be daunting if you stop and think about it. Anyone - your wife, your mistress(es), your children, parents, boss - have the ability to type in your URL and in a brief span of time confirm that you are indeed a total doofus. I was thinking about this while out riding today due indirectly to a conversation with a friend via email the other day.
Appearances to the contrary, I’ve always been a fairly shy person - interacting with people has always been somewhat awkward and painful for me. But it has always been something that I have forced myself to do because for the most part, it is enjoyable.

My intent on registering the psychoticpineapples.com domain was two-fold; first, I intended to create a site that I could upload audio and video files of my old high school band for friends to download. Secondly, I wanted to create a site where I could publish the commentaries, stories, jokes, and such that I am (for better or worse) known for.

So full of high hopes I set everything up three years ago. And then, things stagnated. There is something in my personality that won’t let me do something unless I’m 100% sure of the outcome beforehand. That means that everything I wrote would just have to be perfect. So, at least half a dozen times over the first year of this site’s life I would go through the same process:

1. Write up a blog post.
2. Re-read.
3. Rip apart and rewrite.
4. Return to step #1.

The problem wasn’t just that I was a perfectionist - it was that I was a self-concious perfectionist. I would start to write…and then start to obsess over it. Does this sound stupid? Is this too weird? Am I just an idiot? Then I would go back and edit things, be happy for 5 minutes, and then go through the same process again. Finally, I would just push it aside for “later” which turned into “never”.

What finally enabled me to get over this were two very important (and, in retrospect very obvious) truisms:

• No matter what you do, someone is always going to complain about it or find fault with it.
• No matter how great or wonderful what you manage to accomplish, most people really don’t give a rat’s ass.

With these two thoughts in my mind, I took a deep breath, dashed off a quick post about Alex, and uploaded it to the site.

Then I did it again a few days later.

After a bit it became easy to write, just difficult to go through the gyrations to get the content to the web. And after I adjusted the way I do things using Ecto and WordPress even that became simple.

Blogging now has taken on more importance for me - first and foremost it is another way for me to communicate with my friends and family, but there are also other aspects to the process. It provides an important creative release for me, it lets me work on my writing in a very non-threatening environment, and it gives me a chance to express myself about different topics that I come across in my life.

Then there is the icing on the cake, so to speak. About a month or so into this I started to get emails and trackback links from other bloggers and friends. One of my friends found a post about him on my blog via a search engine and sent me a comment. I’ve also noticed an increase in traffic to my site.

So no fear or obsessiveness here now. Just trying to have fun.

Oh…and about those audio and video clips. They’ll be up on the site real soon now…..really…..

Alex and I just returned from a quick trip to Gettysburg this weekend - it was the third time for me, and the first time for him. We met up with a friend of mine from San Diego, his daughters, and his parents at the battlefield for the bus tour and a tour of the museum and the cemetery and then went back to his parent’s house over near Breezewood, Pennsylvania to spend the night. Alex conducted a small seminar with Dan’s daughters Ellyn and Claire in the intricacies of catching the elusive northern firefly (amazing what they don’t have in San Diego - in a small way it seems to make up for that year around 72 degree weather!). Everyone had a good time, but my son can be a bit….er, overwhelming at times - but we got through the weekend and he was fairly good for being eight years old and a de facto only child.

I brought Alex along on this trip because I wanted to be there with him for this first visit. As a child I can remember always wanting to go to Gettysburg from the time I was 9 or 10 years old, but it was never anything my parents were interested in, so I was 30 before I finally managed to visit.

That trip came together almost by accident - at that time a company we were doing work for had contracted for Disaster Recovery hosting with a vendor located in Philadelphia, PA. For our first test, I had flown out but once I realized how close Philadelphia was to Gettysburg I resolved to drive the next test so I could stop on the way home. So, for the second test I rented a car, packed up my wife, and drove first to the DR test in Philly and then stopped in Gettysburg.

Before the trip, I had read a great deal about the Civil War in general and Gettysburg in particular, from Edward Stackpole’s excellent historical treatment of the battle “They Met at Gettysburg” to the fictional “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara. Although I knew quite a bit about the battle, I was totally unprepared for the feel of the actual battlefield. Standing on Cemetery Ridge, looking down to Little Round Top, looking across to Seminary Ridge. Seeing the Emmitsburg Pike, picturing the men of Pettigrew and Picket marching (not running) across that expanse into the guns of the Army of the Potomac…..

Wow.

Beth and I spent the better part of two days there, and I have to say she was a good sport about the whole thing. Not very easy when your husband is gibbering like an excited child running from monument to monument, pointing out sightlines across the field, and in general acting like an idiot. Now, she did enjoy the Cyclorama and some aspects of the museum, but this wasn’t exactly her first choice for a romantic getaway for two.

Probably the most talked about and well-know part of the Battle Of Gettysburg occurred on the third day (3 July 1863) and involved a frontal assault by of Cemetary Ridge (the Union position) by Confederate troops jumping off from Seminary Ridge. This assault, which is known as either Pickett’s charge (or more appropriately) the Pettigrew-Pickett charge, has become the stuff of legend. During this trip, I walked the route taken by these men to get some sense, however small, of what it was like that afternoon almost 150 years ago. This excellent site served as my guide.

I was prepared for the walk being physically rough, as it was a very hot August day and I would be walking around two miles over fairly uneven terrain. What I wasn’t prepared for was the emotional impact of the walk. For me It wasn’t hard to think back to the penultimate scene from the movie “Gettysburg” or to think of the numerous descriptions and accounts that I had read of the assault. As I walked, I could hear the whine of minnie balls, the roar of the cannons, the dull thunk of bullets impacting flesh. I could smell the cordite and the sweat and blood. And as I came up and across the Emmitsburg road I reached back and tasted just a bit of what those men did.

Fast forward to the present. Alex enjoyed the trip, which was a big relief for me. Before I had gone I had reminded myself that he is only 8 and that I probably wouldn’t be having detailed discussions regarding troop movements or strategy, so I needed to keep it light and fun and let him dictate the pace. He did show a surprising interest in cannons while he was there - he asked the guide a few questions during the tour, walked around the display of tubes in the museum they have, and watched the demonstration movie at the visitor’s center at least 4 times.

One of the last things we did that day was to walk through the cemetery - Alex and I visited the Ohio section of graves and the Ohio monuments and we picked a few buckeyes from the trees that grew nearby. Responding to his question, I tried to explain to Alex why wars are fought. He got sad when we talked about all the killing, and sadder still when we talked about all the graves of the UNKNOWN that were marked only with numbers. We talked a bit about Iraq and Afghanistan and the friends we know that are or have been there. We talked about how sometimes you need to separate the warrior from the war, and how it’s OK to not agree with a war or a cause but to honor those who serve and who fall. In the end, he seemed to make some sense of it internally and cheered up.

It was in the cemetery that Dan mentioned something to be about how creepy it can seem at times with all the visitors to the battlefield. I’m not sure if he was referring to the cemetery specifically or the battle in general. Either way, it made me think of this quote from Joshua Chamberlain speaking at the dedication of the 20th Maine monument on Little Round Top on October 3rd, 1889

“In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field to ponder and dream; And lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”

Notes:

• There are some inaccuracies with “The Killer Angels” , as it is a fictionalization. However, with that being said it is an excellent read and in my opinion captures the feel of the time.
• Pictures included with this post are from Flickr and are licensed by their creators under a creative commons license. Pictures are from users A-Wix (top) and Green Destiny (bottom).
• The map in the middle is from the NPS’s website - I have taken the liberty of grabbing a screen capture, cropping it (badly), and converting it to a jpg format. Readers who want to see a good version of the map should go to this site

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It’s July again and that means it’s time for Le Tour De France, which has become one of my passions in the summer months over the last four years.

Most of my friends are a bit perplexed when I tell them that I spend three weeks watching a bicycle race in the middle of summer - add to that the fact that it’s in France (of all places) and the confusion grows much deeper. But as they ask questions about the race and as I tell them about the various awards given out during the race and the layers of strategy involved to position oneself and one’s team for these goals I usually begin to detect a glimmer of interest. A few of them maintain a mild interest (or just humor me), but quite a few of them have started watching in their own right (or are just humoring me to a more impressive extent).

I’ve always enjoyed bike riding so that was what first sparked my interest in Le Tour, but I was quickly became immersed in the history, the pageantry, and the simple excitement of the race. It’s hard not to be impressed with just some of the statistics alone:

• 189 riders on 21 teams.
• 3,607km of racing.
• 21 stages and 2 rest days, for a total race time of 23 days.
• 2 individual and 1 team time trial.
• 20 Category 1, Category 2, and Hors Category (beyond classification) climbs.

There are a few notes that I would like to make on those stats. Even though 189 start quite a few of them drop out of the race - either due to illness (it does run on for 3 weeks), injury (they do crash), or plain bad luck (riders are eliminated if they don’t finish within a percentage over the winning stage time), so it is quite an accomplishment to simply finish the race. The time trials can be brutal affairs - each rider or team trying to find the right level of energy to expend in order to complete the ride as fast as possible while still being able to complete the ride and not bonk out.

My favorite part of the race however, has to be the mountain stages. The Alps and the Pyrenees figure prominently in each Tour - in fact, the announcers and journalists will often say that the Tour is won in the mountains. Grueling climbs are the order of the day for these stages, with each climb categorized as to difficulty. The various classifications break down somewhat like this:

• Category 4 (300m)
• Category 3 (600m)
• Category 2 (1km)
• Category 1 (1.5km)
• HC Category (> 1.5 km)

The final designation - HC - is shorthand for Hors Categorie or literally Beyond Classification. These are the really nasty climbs - long, steep, full of switch-backs and other bits of excitement. These stages usually blast the main body of riders (or peloton) wide open. Of course, what goes up must come down - so the other part of the mountain stages is high speed descents down the sides of mountains. Crashes can - and do - happen, but the superb bike handling skills of these riders are marvels to behold.

One final note - the race changes every year and it is said that the organizers adjust the race to attack the weaknesses of the previous year’s winner (so far this hasn’t seemed to bother a certain Mr. Armstrong).

I’m sure that I’ll be blogging a bit more on this subject as the race goes on and runs it course, and I don’t want to write a book about it in this space so I’m going to wrap this up here. But - for those who may be interested to learn more there are a few good sites to check out:

• Le Tour De France Official Site
• Bicycling.com Tour De France Coverage
• Outdoor Life Network Tour Coverage

You can also tune your TV into OLN during the month of July - they practically run coverage (tape delayed) all day long. If you are hardcore (or work at home or have sick days to burn) you can watch live starting at 08:30 EST daily. Their primetime special starts at 20:00 EST or 21:00 PST nightly.

Finally - I have to highly recommend Bob Roll’s excellent book “Tour De France Companion 2005″. Bob Roll (aka Bobke) is one of the legendary names in pro cycling and a very, very funny guy in his own right and a very good cyclist. I’ll save my thoughts on Bobke for a later post.