One of the last good rides of the year

Last week I decided to go for a quick motorcycle ride to the cafe in Gorham. Maybe have a bite to eat with some good coffee. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by who I might run into at the cafe. This time as I rode by I all of a sudden had an urge for a long ride. Rolling past the cafe, I noticed no vehicles parked there despite the open flag. That did it for me, I'll hit the cafe later.

I decided to take loop that I'd never taken before. I headed towards Bethel, ME on Rte 2 East. From there I took Rte 26 North up through Grafton Notch and back to NH into Errol, where I stopped by LL Cote, the center of the town. Finally I decided to ride past home and to the cafe.

I was taking a chance with a 20% chance of rain. But the skies looked friendly enough. I was covered well in my heavy leather jacket, gauntlet winter leather gloves with fleece lining and my full faced helmet. Temps in the 50's, but my gear kept me warm. Roads were nice and clear. This time of year you especially need to be on the lookout for wet leaves in the road. I've picked up people that have been taken out by such conditions.

Grafton Notch was an excellent route. Riding through the mountains is beautiful any time of year, but the Autumn brings the best colors. Riding through made me want to check out the hiking trails at some point. Thanks to the internet I can get a good idea of what would do well for Marjie and I and possibly the little one.

Granted we're at the end of the riding season, but I'm hoping I have one more good riding day left before winterize the VTX for the winter. Maybe a ride up through Dixville Notch. We'll see. The weather's been wacky lately.

Our town...

Berlin, NH is a blue collar town. Always has been. This has been a place where people rolled up their sleeves to make a living. The biggest part of this town's heritage has to do with paper, thanks to the Brown Company and the mill. Lumberjacks were the backbone of this industry, which also gave our town a strong heritage. There was also a paper mill in Gorham, the next town over.

Some years back, the company changed hands, and then changed again. The mills tended to get worse each time. The market didn't help; amazingly enough it became cheaper to purchase paper from other countries. Eventually the mill in Berlin closed, and then the one in Gorham, although it managed to hang on a lot longer.

Thankfully the one in Gorhm wasn't closed too long. New owners came along just over the past year and have slowly been building it up again. The old mill in Berlin was 70% destroyed, with one spectacular day of all but one of the smoke stacks demolished. But there was hope; a company wanted to use the last boiler and biggest smoke stack and convert it to a wood burning biomass energy plant. There've been many hurdles on the way, but recently work to convert the boiler had officially begun. The plant is slated to have 40 full time positions, and expected to create other jobs in ancilliary  form throughout the area.

This is good. This is what Berlin needs. Also, recently there's the possibility of an airplane manufacturer that will use energy from the plant and create a factory to manufacture airplane parts next to the biomass plant. This place could produce up to 150 + jobs. 

Along with a state prison that came in about 12 years ago, and a Federal prison built not that far from the state prison recently, that's slated to open next year. More jobs.

All these factors make it an exciting time in the area. There've been talks in the past about what to put on the mill site: A mall, a casino, a resort, a four year college. All interesting ideas, but none of those ideas are distinctly Berlin-ish. It's created some arguments, particularly among some of my more hippy like friends. The four year college is the only one I really agreed with, but not on the mill site.

Some people were hoping with the mills gone that we could change Berlin to a tourist trap town like the Conway area. I just didn't see that happening. Expecting people that worked in factories to work in retail or hotels just doesn't make sense. The people in this town want to make stuff

Manufacturing jobs is exactly what this town needs. Looks like we're close to getting that kind of identity back. If (and I know, it's a big if)  this airplane parts factory pans out, then Berlin, NH a blue collar town, with blue collar people, will be on its way to getting back its pride.

So...

Well, training didn't happen. I think my mistake was getting my hopes up when Kyle called to tell me when they might be training. Yesterday I texted Kyle to see when and if they were still meeting. Kyle told me he tried calling but got no reply back from John. Oh well. But I can't say I was surprised, since I only heard from Kyle and not John on the matter. Next time I get my hopes up for any of this will be when I actually here from my old kung fu master.

Kyle has asked me about training with just the two of us, but there's really only so much I can teach him, especially being out of structured practice for so long. I like Kyle though. Has that same excitement at 19 that I had for the martial arts. I'm sure I could learn some stuff from him as well. Smart kid too. He's about to have a fantasy novel published. Looking forward to reading it.

Currently I'm reading "Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere". Excellent book focusing on basics/fundamentals of Aikido. A lot of excellent illustrations on nearly every page descriptively depicting the points in the text. The book was first published in 1970, the year following the death of Aikido's founder, Morihei Ueshiba, whom the book is dedicated too. It was written/illustrated by a couple practitioners of the art in the NYC area. I've been reading this book at home.

I have a different book I'm reading at work. We have some downtime on the less serious interfacility transfers we do to the bigger hospitals. "Passing Time" by Ron Roy is an interesting piece of fiction based on the author's time working in the local paper mill in my hometown of Berlin, NH. The name of the town and a few other spots are changed in the book, but anyone from the area will recognize what areas he's talking about. Good book. Fellow locals should check it out.

See how awesome I am at supporting local authors? Now if I could pressure Ray Coulombe some more to publish his "Night and Day" novel (should have been published years ago)!

On another note, this past weekend Marjie and I took Alice and her cousin Lilly apple picking at Gibson Orchard in Bethel, ME. Excellent weather. Good times. Later that day we used the appler slicer/peeler contraption my mom gave me to turn some of those apples into some scrumptious apple pies. Leane had a good pie dough recipe that uses vegetable oil instead of butter or shortening, and it helps that my sweety Marjie is an awesome baker.

That was just one of the four excellent days off I had until coming back to work this morning. Last thursday we went to the Fryeburg fair with my Marjie and little Alice Moon. Good times with my ladies.

Hope all of you out there are having an excellent fall season!

Training again...

I've been contacted by my former martial arts instructor. It looks like we will begin doing some training this weekend. I'm curious to see what this entails. I know I'd like to get some refresher instruction on combinations and forms I've somewhat forgotten, plus discussing possibly what his plans might be for teaching again. A young gentleman that took some private lessons with John last year will be joining us, and possibly Leane, a dear friend and fellow black belt from the old school.
 
Meanwhile, my basement has remained my dojo with it's lone practitioner. I beat up my body opponent bag (BOB), focusing on proper hitting in strategic areas.  Please keep in mind, I'm not a violent person, but hitting an inanimate object can be a great stress reducer. I recommend it highly if  so inclined.

I've only practiced one sword form in the back yard once. Somewhat aggravating to forget aspects of the form I was practicing. While doing this, I practiced slowly, as I don't have any wooden practice swords. Those real swords will cut ya if you're careless.

I look over where my black belt sits on one of the shelves in my basement, looking pretty much as new as the day it was given to me. I think about how cool it is to see pictures of martial artists with their belts frayed and worn over years of use. Mine, however, just sits there looking pretty. I've put it on a couple times while working out, having to laugh at myself at how much smaller it looks now around my spare tire. I was definitely slimmer at eighteen when I got it. Slimming down is a work in progress. That's another aspect of training.

So we'll see how this weekend goes. This has been a long time coming. Even if we meet only a couple times a month, it'll be nice to take some lessons again. We may have to do some planning on where we can train in the winter months (my basement?), but I'm sure we can figure it out.

Vegetarian cooking

Recently some friends of mine that were vegetarians went out to eat at a high end inn and restaurant. Unfortunately they paid good money for vegetarian meals that simply were not done well. Felt bad for them, but from past experience I know how absentminded high end restaurants are when it comes to vegetarian cooking. Some of the chefs carry a negative view of vegetarians, dumbfounded at how they could reject the delicious entree's they made with dead animals (seriously, good stuff).

In my last profession I was a chef. I was managing a kitchen that served "family style" dinners for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Pinkhan Notch Visitor Center. This was a place that catered to a lot of outdoorsy types: hippies, crunchies, but mostly yippies (yuppy hippies). In this crowd there's bound to be some vegetarians. These folks got their own prepared dish.

I went to college to learn all kinds of fine dining. My associate's in Culinary Arts prepared me for the world of classy places food that usually required a dead animal in some form. However vegetarian cooking was really not a concern for school. We trained mostly for fancy pants dining. This was a different kind of dining I was dealing with. The AMC provided me with a challenge: how do I make a meal healthy, delicious, and vegetarian?

I hit the books, and the internet, learning what I could about the different kinds of vegetarians, ranging from those that only abstained from beef, to those that ate no animal products whatsoever, including honey. The worst of these different groups were the "Fruitarians" that would only eat absolutely local food, preferrably from their own backyard. Had to tell off one of these folks one time when they demanded everything on their plate be from within 5 miles of the lodge, with none of the food provided by them. Told them good luck finding any restaurant that'll cater to such an obnoxious request in our area. They huffed, puffed, and ate their food anyway.

I decided the best way to go would be with vegan dishes, since about 25% of the vegetarians I met were vegans. This just meant no animal products. I could work with that. Spices, herbs, veggies stocks/bases, salt, good veggie oil and vegetables/starch cooked properly. I found some decent recipes, put them to use with some encouragement from some of the vegetarian staff members.

One of the big things they told me was that protein was usually missing in good vegetarian dishes. So each dish had to have kale, spinach, beans, tofu or tempeh (grain/tofu combo). I did pretty well with these, and since there's a nice variety of beans I could go with, it gave me options. I had a rule though: the dishes I made had to be something I would eat and enjoy. This lead to me being a vegetarian for all of three days. It was a neat experiment, but I decided that to be a decent chef, I still had to enjoy meat. And dead animal cooked right just tastes good!

If I hadn't worked at the AMC, I'm sure learning to cook decent vegetarian food wouldnt have become a priority for me. I'm glad it did though. At least whenever I have some vegetarian friends joining us for dinner, I can confidently make something they can enjoy. I promised my friends that I'd make them a special vegetarian dish sometime after hearing about their recent bad dining experience. I may not be a professional chef anymore, but I know I can make damn near anyone a satisfying meal.

and there it sits...

So this bicycle experiment has failed. I haven't been on it in months. Found I enjoyed walking to work better, but I still take the car or motorcycle more. I've actually spent more time on my exercise bike in my basement than on the mountain bike.

I think the novelty wore off quickly for me. Part of it is how I've enjoyed my days off this summer. I've had the project of painting the trim on the house from a horrifying mustard to plain white. House is already looking better. Other days off have been spent with my wonderful girlfriend Marjorie and/or her little 4 year old Alice, who lives with us half the time. Some of this time off has ironically been spent teaching Alice how to ride her bicycle with training wheels. Go Figure. I've also had a few very enjoyable days hiking. Love the White Mountains of NH.

Then there are the times where I just wanna ride.... my motorcycle. I still love my 2005 Honda VTX 1300. Great ergonomics, center of balance while riding. Also, it make me feel all kinds of macho. Most times when I'm riding, I find myself in an odd Zen-like trance; where I feel like I'm completely in line with my center. I think the ergonomics of the bike and my build might have something to do with this, along with the defensive nature of riding a motorcycle properly.

So my mountain bike just sits in my garage, next to my motorcycle, the obvious winner of my affection. I'm going to keep it though, in the hopes that Alice and I could do some riding together. We have an excellent playground across the street from our house with a large paved area that has worked out well for practice. We'll see how it goes. Next spring, the training wheels come off.

And it's autumn in northern NH. Love this time of year

martial thoughts

          I believe that when we're adolescents, we're at our most open for being influenced. Part of the reason why the music and artists we listen to tend to become our lifelong favorites. Other interests and activities can become a big part of our being. Sports, art, hobbies can become a core foundation for who we are.

          When I was in seventh grade , I tried my second attempt at being a student in the martial arts. I was a student at the School of the Silent Warrior in my hometown of Berlin, NH. I enjoyed my time there, but for some reason decided to take the summer off. A couple years later, I was regretting it. I felt like I had made a mistake of not returning. So, the summer following my sophomore year in high school, I went back, with the goal of being a serious student.

         Almost two years later, a couple months from graduating high school, I achieved part of my goal: I had attained my First Degree Black Belt in the art of Ninpo Chuan Fa. I was quite proud of myself, after putting in the work it took. I knew that martial arts would always at least have a small part in my life. The martial arts were a great help for the awkward teenager that I was, with my teacher/sensei John providing another mentor I could always talk to.

          The school was originally opened as part of a chain from Fred Villaire's Studios of Self Defense. John Schmaing was the owner/teacher. After a few years, John decided to format  his own system, based on his experience in Kempo Karate, Northern Tam tui style Kung Fu, and various other martial arts. He created Ninpo Chuan Fa: the Silent Warrior Fist Art. This was done with the approval of an overseeing body of martial artists that recognize mixed martial arts styles, seeing how the combining of certain styles/philosophies is the natural evolution for the arts. (Apologies to John if I'm getting any of this wrong, this is what I remember him telling me)

          I was a student off and on when I was back in Berlin, eventually attaining the rank of Third Degree Black Belt. Unfortunatley, the school closed eight - nine years ago, with John deciding to go back to college and teach in a regular school setting. Happy to say I'm still in touch with John, occasionally spending time with him and his lovely fiance Mona.

          Over the last few years, I've slowly been working out again in a martial arts aspect. I've had punching bags where I'd practice kicks and punches on. This year though, it's really started to nag at me.. I've been practicing weekly on my B.O.B. (body opponent bag) with a determination that I haven't had in quite some time.

          Simply put, I miss it. I miss being in the dojo, practicing self defense techniques and forms/katas with or without weapons from various swords to basic bo staffs. Hint of music from artists like Joan Osborne and Jethro Tull playing in the background.
         
          Lately I've been reading various books about or pertaining to some traditional martial arts like Aikido and Tae Kwon Do. I had some limited experiences with these arts during my one semester at Keenes State College, where I had enjoyed a free Aikido class at a local school, and was an "honored guest" with the college's Tae Kwon Do club.
       
          I believe it's these experiences that have garnered my interest in reading about them lately. A particular interest in the life and teaching's of the late Aikido master Terry Dobson has been nice. Very "warts and all" kinda writings/stories. Quite enjoyable, and I've always had an apprciation for traditional Aikido and it's stance on self defense while providing the least harm to an opponent.

           Just started reading a book by Tae Kwon Do Master Doug Cook on his experiences as a student and teacher of Tae Kwon Do. His book "Tae Kwon Do: A Path to Excellence" is so far an enjoyable read.

          I wonder now how long it's gonna be before I decide to start learning at a new martial arts school or bug John about possibly starting up the old school again with help. I get big thoughts in my head about helping to start the school anew with help from some former students with John overseeing the project. We'll see how I feel as the summer goes on. In the meantime, I'll beat on the BOB, maybe twirl my staff and swing my sword in the back yard (will the neighbor's mind?) and meditate on the matter while I enjoy some insightful reading...