Cody

I heard a story recently.  Can’t for the life of me remember where I heard it, think it might of been at church on Sunday, but my days are so messed up anymore working nights and only having one day off at a time (that I sleep through most of) doesn’t seem to have any sort of break for the week.  Anyways, the story was about a missionary from a time long ago who was sailing with a crew of unbelievers.  They found themselves stuck off of the coast of Africa outside an area notorious for the cannibalistic tribe that lived near by.  As the ship sat in the water without any sort of wind to propel them they drifted slowly towards the coast, where they could see people beginning to line up awaiting their new “guests” with baited breath (quite literally).  The captain ran to the lower deck and entered the room of the missionary, begging him to pray for wind.  The missionary refused, telling the captain that he would not pray for wind until the ships sails were unfurled.  Reluctantly the captain had his crew unfurl the sails and prepare to set out to sea then came back to the missionary who he asked again to pray for wind.  Minutes later the captain came back to the missionary to check on him, asking if he was praying for wind… the missionary said that he was.  The ships captain told him that he had better stop, for they had more wind than they could handle.  Right now, I feel like the captain… in the fact that I know God can do it, I want him to, I know that it will be miraculous, something inexplicable without the use of God’s name.  The problem is I don’t want to work for it… oh sure I don’t mind working once it comes… but actually working before I see the results?  Are you kidding me?

As has been the theme of my blog for the last few months (minus a slight derailment in my life) I truly feel God is calling me to be a missionary so to speak to the Ren. Faire crew of people (who are mostly Wiccan, or pagan) through my work as a blacksmith, and chainmail jeweler.   I just love that crowd of people though, it’s the group of people that never want to leave the theatre, so they make life their stage.  Truly being a Thespian myself I’ve never seen so many Thespians as you will at the Ren. Faire’s.  They really are a funny group of people though, last summer at the St. Louis Ren. Faire with Tiana and her family several girls were coming up to her with inquiries like “Who’s your friend?  He’s kind of cute.”  to which all Tiana had to reply to get them to not pester me was say “He’s a Christian, he’s a Republican, his name is Cody by the way.”  which turned all of them away… sometimes I feel like the black sheep around them… but it’s good because despite the difference they don’t shun me because I’m accepting of them.  I’ve watched other Christians come in and try to force their religion on them, or tell them how things should be… and they will rip them apart.  They exclude me from such bashings because I don’t believe in the religious aspects of Christianity, nor do I push them on anyone else, as Godfrey’s religious adviser said to Balian “I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of god. I have seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What god desires is here [points to head] and here [points to heart] and what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man - or not.”  Christianity is not a religion, so much as it should be a relationship.

Anyways… haha yes much rambling, and rabbit trails in the mind of Cody as of late.  You guys know (or if you read this regularly you do) that going on my bike trip was part of my great revelation to run my business, allow God to take care of me with complete trust and admiration that he would not abandon me, nor give me something that I could not complete.  Moving into the house here with Jordan and Zack puts stress on my finances… obviously.  Which I’ve been there before, and not minded one bit, I can take a little bit of pressure.  However when there are two other people involved you can’t be playing games… even if they are religious games.  So with what I thought was wisdom from an older Christian guy who said that it was unfortunate that artists cannot make a living from their art I went ahead and went with Jordan to get a job at Target working nights… And you know what?  God still hasn’t “blessed” my business with amazing miraculous inexplicable sales or anything like that.  The problem I think, is that the faith is there… there is no doubt that I have faith in God taking care of me… there is no doubt that I have faith in God leading my business to the next level… the problem is the action.  Faith without action is useless.  So I think we’re going to go at this again… with a bit of a different approach.  It’s a scary thought however… With this job (or one at LifeTouch) I make $800 more per month than I absolutely NEED to survive on.  So I get stuck on the money thing… my mind goes “With that money you could have a forge, anvil, and everything you need to start blacksmithing by this summer”  “With that money you could visit Joanna in a couple of months”  “That money is steady and guaranteed for a minimum of effort and you won’t have to worry about your bills”  Do you notice a trend with those statements though?  Shortcut, shortcut, and shortcut… God doesn’t take any shortcuts… nor do I think they’re right in any way, with anything you do.  So the question is… do I quit my job and sound like a crazy person when I tell my cousins that I quit my job because God told me to?  But gain back my soul, and peace of mind.  Or do I stick with it a little bit longer to fulfill those shortcuts before taking faithful action?  And lose my soul, and all sense of peace in the process.  When you look at it that way it’s a simple decision… but I’ve had to train myself over years, and years to see things that way…. because in all honesty it’s only a minor compromise.  Technically I’m still doing what I believe is God’s will (going to see Joanna, and taking up blacksmithing)… the problem is that it involves no trust, or faith in God.  It’s as if I’m saying “Sure thing God, I’ll do exactly as you say, everything is for you… I’m just going to do it my way because your way seems scary and dangerous… even though I’m sure there are many lessons that I must learn from doing things you way, and doing things my way will skip me over those lessons and leave me unprepared when I reach the point of doing things as you designed… I like safety and comfort a lot.”

Ok, so you guys can see I’ve got a decision to make… I’ve been putting it off, and I don’t want to… I’m just addicted to safety and comfort… and it’s a hard addiction to break… so if you guys are willing to pray for me, maybe some words of encouragement.

Alright… so in the middle of the night I was feeling okay about things… reading my bible and praying I felt a nudging from God… and acted on it. Sometimes those nudgings are there to get us to do something stupid though… I sent this to Jessica via YIM and got her response. If she really does have a new guy (or got back with Rodney) then we’re done… if she doesn’t and was just saying it to get me to leave her alone… that’s pretty rude, and we’re done.

cody sortore: Jessica… I don’t know what offense you hold against me… but I do know that I have a great offense against you, and against God that has to be reconcilled. I put you first in my life, even though we had only been seeing each other for a short time I put talking to you and hanging out with you even before God. I fell exactly where Adam did. The bible is clear that Adam was never decieved, but rather chose to live in sin with Eve over a life with God… he was also too weak to help her in her time of deception… What I did was unfair to you, and did nothing more than put pressure on your already hectic and increasingly pressured life… I’m sorry, it’s something that I must work on daily, I don’t blame you for being mad at me. I’ll take pastor Jesse’s advice now and give you time…
cody sortore: if at some point you want to be friends I would like that. Although I do understand if even that isn’t a possibility. I’m doubly sorry if this message is just another annoyance… I was reading my bible tonight and praying when I felt what is hopefully a nudge from the Holy Spirit saying “pursue her” which seemed a fruitless endeavor since for the last couple of weeks all I’ve managed to do was make myself out to be more and more of a nut in your eyes attempting to pursue your heart… I hope that before the problem was that it was me trying to pursue your heart for the wrong reasons…

Jesse Green: this is her man quit sending her mail bitch

Generally I only drink like once every 3 months or so… which isn’t any different from this time. The real difference is that I was distracted while drinking. Oddly enough… that’s exactly what I needed right now. Had I been paying attention I wouldn’t of let it go so far, generally I drink to intensify life, when things aren’t insane enough I’ll do like 4 shots in the time span of an hour and a half which gets me buzzed and keeps me that way for a couple hours. Usually sends both my mind and my body over the edge so that I feel everything to 1000% intensity and must either brake, or rise to the occasion. Jordan and I were playing some Company of Heroes after work… both have had a rough time lately and so his idea was that we should play a drinking game while playing… being that I can’t even take so much as a sip of beer without vomiting that wasn’t gonna work. So he drank the beer I got jack and coke. Started off with a shot to get the buzz started, then was sipping on probably 8oz of jack, and a can of coke. Normally I’m great about moderating my drinking. I know the exact point to stop, and I can feel exactly when I start fading and need a booster if I need the intense emotional state for a little longer. Problem is I was playing a game that when sober takes perfect concentration…. drunk it’s dang near impossible. Trying my best to concentrate on the task at hand all I noticed was how much I was slowing down, but kept sipping away at my drink until it was gone in about an hour and a half or so. It was pretty obvious that I wasn’t exactly sober when to start the game I went to build a set of engineers and missed clicking the correct button 6 times in a row (alright, it’s not as bad as you guys think. Most of you are using trackball mice, which are horrifically slow. The rest are using optical mice which have a 400 dots per inch resolution on average… my mouse is a laser precision gaming mouse with 2000dpi resolution so it’s literally 5x faster than a normal mouse). After finally winning the excruciatingly long game I stood up to realize that I was way more gone than I had ever been before. I also found that instead of intensifying my emotions… they were gone, euphoria the only thing left. It was nice… A little gift you might say, after several weeks of battle, I was trying to push myself to the breaking point just to have the pride in myself that I was not only able to make it, but I survived… instead I got relief… not exactly what I was looking for, but exactly what I needed.  It’s nice when God presents us with these little gifts in life, as it says in the bible all things good and beautiful are of the Lord… and also quoting my buddy Benjamin Franklin “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

I’m really not getting Jordan right now… Jordan is freaked out and off balance being forced to move out at a time with no job, no money, and no real hope for any sort of change… I get that.  They got screwed over by a guy who was supposed to move in with them, but decided not to or rather was delaying so long that Jordan and Zach decided for him.  Jordan calls me up and asks if I would want to move out with them… we had talked about it before anyways… of course I’m ready to freaking get out, and more so to get away from Brook.  Granted I don’t see him a whole lot everybody here in the house still lives in his wake.  The kid seriously does leave a wake anywhere he goes, he destroys everything and has little to no respect for other peoples stuff.  Obviously stuff isn’t the most important thing in the world, I’m the kind of person that buys quality stuff to save money so I only have to buy it once… he’s awesome at destroying the indestructible though.  Seriously if you ever just need something broken and unusable for whatever reason just ask Brook to use it for a week or so and you won’t have to worry about being able to use it yourself ever again.  Actually the part I love is that you don’t even have to ask him, so long as I own it he’ll gladly find it to destroy.  I have to hide my toothbrush and my shavers… who wants to use another persons toothbrush?  or shaver for that matter?  He’d much rather spend his money on booze and poker so never has a new toothbrush and rarely shavers…. so when he sees a new toothbrush in the bathroom, well it’s new so it is obviously his right?  Yeah, well that’s his mentality, anything brand new in the house obviously belongs to him, and I’m sick of buying good stuff that I never get to use because it’s broken, used up, or just plain violated.  My mom got another computer for them since I’m going to be “moving out” right… that’s another story that I’ll finish here in a minute.  Anyways, I was more than ecstatic to move my computer to my room as to avoid the daily ritual of spending 3-4 hours before I can get to work cleaning virii, spyware, adware, root-kits, and whatever other “fun” little programs Brook decided to pick up the night before surfing the internet… Generally speaking I usually get done cleaning up my computer in preparation to work right about the time that I’ve got a naggy guy sitting on the couch by me begging to use the computer.  So it was more than a joy to move the computer out of his grasp.  Unfortunately the 50 ft Cat 5e cable I had is very picky and seems to hate nVidia chipsets so it won’t connect to the internet.  It was a home made cable and for some reason the nVidia controllers won’t detect the connection… I went ahead and ordered one online that could read from my room downstairs so that I can connect to the internet and not have to share my computer with the destroyer.

Back to the moving out issue… Jordan happens to be a bit off balance, caught off guard you might say with being forced to move.  This is completely understandable, however his actions recently are not.  They need a third person in the house to relieve pressure from bills and such… obviously why they turned to me.  My problem is that I have no money… Jordan knows this and therefore doesn’t want me to move in until I do have some sort of income.  Recently he’s put in a proposal to work with a company that Joel has been working for a while now.  Jordan’s going to be making good money, but can’t exactly deliver everything he has promised without my mind numbing experience… and believe me if you had done what I’ve done for the experience you’d know how mind numbing it can be… Jordan hates that aspect of the job, sometimes I do as well, but oddly enough some of it that drives him crazy actually appeals to my obsessive compulsive nature and I have tons of fun with it (maybe that’s why I have over 1,500 blogs).  Therefore out of what he is going to be making he’s going to pay me as an employee… good stuff right?  Problem is that the proposal hasn’t been accepted yet, therefore there is no guarantee of anything yet… and that scares Jordan.  Because he’s unsure of things he won’t let me move in… which still doesn’t make any sense.  I can’t get a job around here if I’m going to be living out there… I can’t get a job out there living over here… I can’t get my car running without some sort of job… Now I have no problem with walking or ridding my bike to and from a job when I worked at Subway I rode my bike to and from work for 6 months with out any problem.

Now comes the other magical problem.  Do I trust God?  Seriously… It wasn’t long ago that I was putting up posts about how I’m going to do things how God designed me and stick it out as an artist of some sort.  So because of the car accident, and the bike trip all the extra money I had that was to be used in building a forge is gone… So that part of my art won’t be realized for some time.  Business with Archmaille Designs hasn’t picked up… at all… despite all the work I’ve done and getting onto the second page of google for big terms like “Sterling Silver Jewelry” and even just “Silver Jewelry” and traffic to my site more than doubling… there is still no business.  Luckily I’m a man of many skills also able to do SEO work, Website design, computer building/fixing/customization… and none of this is doing me any good.  Thing is I think I’m starting to get a little too comfortable with the idea of a “real job”.  Obviously the idea comes from a lack of confidence in my self… every time I start to work and think about getting something done for my little businesses I hear that voice in the back of my head that says “Dude what are you doing?  You know there is no money in that, you shouldn’t even bother.”  But when it really comes down to it the fear is much deeper than just listening to those voices who have said in the past that I can’t do it, it’s a fear and mistrust that God isn’t going to take care of me.  Now in the last 2 months I’ve seen God do amazing things, and even taken care of my finances down to the last penny.  Unfortunately in 15 days that last penny will be gone… exactly… and then 5 days after that I’ve got other bills to pay… If I got a job right now I could make things work and have the money to pay for everything… but do you see where the problem with that statement is?  If I got a job right now I could take care of myself.  The statement should be if I submit to God and allow Him to work in my life He will take care of me.  God has always taken care of me in the past… however he has always taken care of me before there was a problem… I’d be like “Sweetness!!! Extra money!!! I can do something fun and exciting with this” next thing I know I’m in a car accident that nevermind the fact that it wasn’t my fault I still have to pay a ticket, go to driving school, pay for the driving class… etc. etc. etc. God has taken care of me in the past before I could even see a problem… so why can’t I trust him to take care of me now that I see the problem ahead, and God has plenty of time to work?  I’ve seen God take care of months worth of issues in a day… now he’s got 20ish days and I’m worried He’s not going to come through?  The real problem is that it is true that I could take care of this situation… it wouldn’t be how I wanted things, and definitely a slight variation from what God designed me for… but I could take care of it.  The thing that really bothers me the most is that I know where my downfall is… and I still want to do it anyways.  Just like we were talking about in Mens Group tonight reading through Romans where Paul says that he hates what he does, and he knows that he hates it, but he still does the hated thing anyways…

In short I’ve been very anxious this week… Jess has seen most of this anxiety played out in irrational fears of mine… I just sort of needed someone to talk to, and with everybody busy, me not able to get to updating my blog (ok, so I could of, but I HATE the keyboard and mouse on this computer) so everything has just sat inside and made me more nervous and anxious.

Alright, I’m finally getting to actually telling the story of the trip… most of you have heard it, but for those of you who have not here it is. The trip started out really good, I followed Barry Road all the way into Liberty where it ends and I had to turn onto 152, followed that to N and went out that until I reached EE and was going to go all the way to Old 210 but that was closed off where I was so I had to take 210 out. Anyways it still worked out well because as you’ve seen in the pictures I got to stay outside of Cooley Lake (still don’t believe it really exists) on the shores of the Missouri River. This was the only time that I actually stayed in a designated camping area. After that I rode about 65-70 miles further east on 210/10 highway. I didn’t get as far the first day as I had hoped because I left at noon and had to stop by some places for some last minute food supplies and stuff. After a while 10 takes an abrupt turn north… which I didn’t want to go, everything I was looking for was south and east of where I was… so I kept going straight on some gravel roads… eventually I gave in and turned north to meet back up with 10 but not without getting a nice sized thorn in my front tire. I had to take care of it on the side of the road using the only spare inner tube that was with me. After which I went another 10 miles or so and stayed the night under the radio tower. In the morning getting ready to head out my rear tire was flat!!! so I patched it…. which was an all day event because you must allow the glue for the patches to dry for several hours. So I stayed another night under the tower and really didn’t “fix” the tire at all it was just a slower leak now. Either way I had to come back because you can’t ride 400 miles on a tire that must be aired up every 5 miles… Making it back about 20 miles or so the pressure from constantly airing it up got to the tire and the valve stem separated from the rubber… not exactly something that you can fix, and especially not on the side of the road. I used duct tape to create enough of a seal to hold 5-10 PSI on a light load. So now I was airing the tire up as I went along while walking…. I walked a good 20 miles or so and was resting at one point. I just layed down on the side of the road with my bike beside me… didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me, there was nothing to sit on, and my feet were killing me. After a little while I got back up and started to head out again… 3 cop cars flew by with their sirens on, then a fire/rescue truck, then an ambulance… I was just thinking it would suck to be out there in the country if you had an emergency because it would take FOREVER for them to get to you… heck there was nothing behind me, and the nearest town in front of me was another 5 miles (from the direction they came too). Then as I’m just rounding this hill the fire/rescue truck pulls in behind me… I stopped and kind of staired at them as they chatted away on their radio, but weren’t getting out to say anything… I was a little worried since it’s illegal to ride your bike on the highway… and although a small road 10 highway where I was is still technically a highway… After a while they finally stepped out and asked if I was ok and everything… still confused I just told them what was going on and that I was fine. Then they explained to me that someone had called in that there was a motorcycle accident or something on the side of the road. Alright first off what kind of jerk does that? “Oh hey, there might be someone dying on the side of the road but I’ve got to get to wal-mart so I’m not going to see whats going on or if they need help I’m just going to call 911 and let someone who’s a minimum of 5 miles away handle the situation that I’m right next to.” Thanks jerkoff… No seriously… besides the fact that I was fine and calling 911 was a waste of valuable resources that could save someones life what if I was hurt and bleeding to death on the side of the road? Even if you’ve got minimal knowledge of first aid just staying with that person and keeping them concious for the 5 - 10min that it takes for an EMS to arrive could save their life.

Yeah, so enough of my rant and back to the story. After the fire/rescue truck arrived and they finally got out and asked what was going on the ambulance arrived and they got out to see what was up as well. They kept asking if I needed anything and I finally said “well if you’re willing to give me a ride that would be awesome.” I figured it was a long shot but it never hurts to ask right? One of the EMS guys was like “yeah sure!…” *looks over at his partner* she just says “I don’t give a crap if we give him a ride” so they stuck my bike into the back of their ambulance and headed back to the town. They explained to me that if they got a call they’d have to dump me on the side of the road… and honestly I didn’t care, anywhere they dumped me was further than where I was at the moment After eating at the Subway, and waiting around for a while I had most of my strength back and started out again for another 10 miles or so in the dark. I said to myself that I would walk day and night until I reached home not stopping for anything and contemplated leaving my bike since the only thing it was good for was transporting my tent and sleeping bag which I wasn’t in need of anymore… a couple of hours later I stopped to rest and nearly fell asleep… unfortunately the ground wasn’t flat so I had to keep going until I found flat ground… any flat ground. The nearest thing I found was outside of this corn field there was a grassy area… which proved to be wicked comfortable too all the grass layed over under my tent was not only insulating from the cold ground but it was squishy! I woke up late that morning at about 7am since I got to bed so late in attempt to walk all night. After a bad start I started packing up quick and realized that I was also out of water… I saw a building nearby and went to it, it turned out to be a Jehovah’s witness church so I tried to sneak on get some water and leave before people started to show up… somehow it got to be 10am and as I was filling my many water containers (I carried about a gallon and a half of water at all times on the trip) here comes a couple of vans. They kept me around and were talking to me trying to convince me to come in for the meeting… I didn’t really want to and only finally agreed when one of the guys said that he would give me a ride if I stayed for the service… sounded like a deal to me! So that’s what I ended up doing, and I was glad to shave off the last 50 miles that would of taken 2 more days walking.

The journalings from the trip will be published later…. wish I could of gotten everything up faster, but seeing as I usually publish something on here once every 6 days or so seems I’m doing fairly well.  Now it is off to walk to the bike shop to get a new inner tube… I really don’t want to… I’ve been putting it off all week.  I need to go to the UPS store and send off my PSU so that I can get a new one (thank goodness for 7 year unlimited warranties!) and I also need to mail off a bracelet for one of my friends in Texas… which the post office and the UPS store are at opposite ends of the spectrum so I really need my bike… I just don’t want to walk… no problem with ridding my bike 50 miles to get some errands done… but walking just no fun.  That’s why I’ve been putting it off all week… don’t know if I’ll get anything other than getting the inner tube though since I still have TONS of work to do here online… and walking cuts a good hour at least out of my schedule.

There’s my organization skills for you… I pile everything I need up in the hallway then start filling the backpack… whatever doesn’t fit must not of been that important in the first place
The “plan” is still to ride as far as possible hopefully making New Franklin, MO before sundown (New Franklin is where I intend to meet up with the Katy Trail). Ride the Katy Trail to the end and maybe find a place to cross and go over to Wentzville where I’ll find Rotary Park and go to the St. Louis Ren. Faire site where Pirate Fest is going on! But if I can’t find it that isn’t really a huge deal. I’ve still got a bit of planning to do as far as the exact course I’m going to take, but it looks like I’ll be heading down Barry Road most of the way, cut up towards Liberty and head out with 210 and Old 210 Highway… Most of it is small enough roads to ride on past Liberty going East/North so it’ll be good.

Since I’ve still got to pack and tons of things to take care of before I go this is going to have to be cut much shorter than I wanted it to be… but I did want to say to Jesse thank you for being awesome! I’ll be honest I was sort of worried about what you’d think about me going… which is odd for me in the first place since I don’t generally care what anyone thinks about what I do. I do care what you think, especially when it comes to spiritual matters.

Despite the fact that I’ve had to delay my bike excursion for one more week this week has been fantastic!   First off I got a kitty!  The kitty is great, she’s really adjusting to the new home and is getting to fighting the dogs and stuff so she’s been great.  I could go on forever about how great the new kitty is… but that’ll be some other time.  For now be satisfied to know that her name is Hiei (pronounced he-ay) it’s a Japanese word that means hidden shadow!  And she is to become a ninja kitten in due time.  It has also been great that my business is growing and surviving on its own… which is still all good and fun… but not the best part of this week.

The best part of this week came also with a blindside to my priorities.  Still living with my mommy, and working at home doing something that pays rather well I’ve never had to put much priority on anything other than my little business, myself, and entertainment for myself (computer games mostly).  God does fit in there somewhere too…. I’d love to lie and say he’s at the top of the priority list, but I’ve gotten into the habit of being rather honest on here, and lets face it I don’t make as much time for God as I should… especially seeing as I have all the time in the world to do basically whatever I want.  Most of the time after working on the website, or saturating my mind with the numbing effects of working on chainmail for several hours I’ll hop online and play some games to destress, or regain consciousness.  Believe me if you’ve ever sat around for 8 hours putting ring, after ring, after ring, after ring, after ring, after ring, after ring onto a piece of chainmail (be it a necklace or a full shirt) you’ll know what I mean about losing consciousness.  I’ve found something else, much better than video games this week however to keep my mind occupied.

I always used to make fun of Jordan when we started up a game of CoH or WiC where you rely on your teammates 100% and he’d get called by his woman (as I often referred to her just to tease him I’m not sexist it was just fun to mess with him… I’d never say it to her). I’d get kind of frustrated with him since I was losing because he couldn’t concentrate… I’ve been more distracted this week than he’s ever shown… not in a bad way either; good distractions.  It sounds absolutely silly for me to say it now, but I’ve been waiting for 2 months for the game World in Conflict to come out (played the Beta 2 months ago and fell in love, since then have become addicted… until recently).  WiC was the greatest game for relieving stress because I am freaking good at it!  It’s a strategy game that I can just manipulate to my likings.  I can join a losing team and lead them to victory most any time because I’m good at organized attacking.  Anyways, I seriously played the game all the time… it officially came out Tuesday (mind you I had it pre-ordered 2 months in advance).  Now I wouldn’t mind getting my money back for it… because it’s not as good in the full release?  Absolutely not, it’s much better with many more maps which makes it much more exciting and engaging.  Thing is it went from being high on my priority list to dropping off the radar screen.  Thing is I only play games on the comp to get away for a while, some entertainment, and a little relaxation… that was replaced this week :-D  Now I have to say I don’t even understand why Jordan would stay in game to play with me… distracted as he might be, while talking to “his woman”  haha I can say that because she’s not really his anymore, they’re on a break right now… but looks to be breaking up… but anyways you guys don’t need to know all that.  Actually my distraction started as a MySpace friend request.  A girl from our church found me on MySpace (not that I knew it was her at the time, I was actually quite confused as to who it was when I saw the request).  We talked back and forth on MySpace for a couple of days and filled up each others pages with comments before starting to talk on YIM.  The freetime I’ve had where I’m not doing work for my business I’ve spent talking with her, and it has been great!  In fact tonight we’ve talked for nearly 8 hours straight now!  It’s been a great conversation the whole time though, we’ve talked about everything from her kids and how she’s raising them, to our lives, and pack rat natures.  I can’t even begin to put down how great it has been either… I love solid engaging conversations, and this has most definitely been that.

Ok… so not gonna be able to leave on the bike trip as I had promised this week… there’s always something isn’t there?  Luckily I did get to talk with Tiana and Pirate Fest will be next weekend as well.  So the plan (key word PLAN) is to leave next Tuesday.  What happened is that Tuesday I got a CRAZY flow of customers to my website (and when I say crazy flow keep in mind that the entire existence of the site I’ve sold a grand total of 5 items in 3 years that I’ve had it)  all asking questions, none buying yet.  One of them is a guaranteed buy, they talked to me at the St. Louis Ren. Faire and were going to pay then, I told them to wait because it was a custom piece and I hate taking money for something that I’ve not done.  I went home and made the item the next week… it’s just now getting back to them finally buying that item Still there is another order that looks promising that will total to about $300 unfortunately the purchase hasn’t been made yet… and haven’t heard anything from the person other than the initial contact email.

So that’s the real delay, I have absolutely no choice to leave my business in the dust when business is finally picking up… however I will still go on this trip, things only get more difficult as time progresses.  Maybe Jordan can come next week with me on the ride but who knows.  He had to say no to this week because he is doing a Quintiles study (he recently lost his job, and would like to do work as I do online but we all know that’s a double edged sword in itself when you have bills to pay).  Problem with working online is that unless you just get REALLY lucky like me and get hooked up with a killer job working for Viacom you work your butt off to see results 3 months down the road.  I know you guys all think that the internet is instant… it is much faster than a regular business, but the truth of the matter is that all business online takes 3 months to establish, during which time you must have 100% devotion or you make nothing at all in the end, and the site never launches.

A new daughter!  I posted a little bit ago (might of been my last post) that I needed a new daughter… well I getted one!  It was sort of unplanned but luckily I’ve got money running out my ears in excess right now so it really worked out.  Tiana found a lil kitty kat under the hood of her vehicle yesterday… being that it was a lil itty bitty kitty she couldn’t just leave it somewhere, so she called me up and asked me if I wanted her.  Got her this morning and she’s gorgeous.  A little black kitten.  She’s a little bit of a scaredy cat  so she spends most of her time hiding, I let her hide for the first hour or so that she was here, then I pulled her out and gently petted her until she was calm then got her some warm milk and continued petting her until she drank a little then she went off and hid again… gotta make sure she keeps eating so I do this every half hour… find her in the mess of a room she’s in warm up her milk (actually do that one first) pet her till she calms down and starts roaming around in my lap, then she gets a drink and sneaks off to hide.  She really is a sweetheart though, I think she’s going to be a lover kitty… which is good I like cats that will cuddle.

So have I ever told you guys that I love making lists?  Because it’s true I do.  Well as a fun little “hey I’ve been forced to wait a while in taking my bike trip why not use the money I have now to actually get something for the trip” I’ve spent quite a bit of time this last week digging through survival sites, and the like finding necessary equipment for the trip.   I managed to get a killer list together including 30 day food supply, GPS, shelter, endless water supply, portable recharging station for my AA batteries used for GPS, lights on bike, digital camera, etc.  I had it all planned out to a T!  Seriously I had about $15k worth of supplies on a $700 budget simply because I planned everything to coincide and work together perfectly so that with a little creativity every item served at least 5 purposes and could be combined with other items to go even further… Everything was made for longevity, flexibility, and integration… it was an amazing list of supplies and truly could have supported me on this bike ride nearly indefinitely.

So where does the fail come in?  Well, as it turns out behind Zona Rosa they are doing some construction, building some new buildings and… well… they built me a playground in the process.

Sorry bout the poor picture quality stupid 2 megapixel camera phone.  I was ridding along and saw the big dirt mount… and well… couldn’t resist.  I’ve been ridding for a long time, and do a lot of extensive off-road ridding.   So I know how to ride in order that I take my fair share of any bumps or impacts but also allow the bike to absorb shock where it is designed to… Obviously ridding out here I am standing most of the time to keep weight off of the seat.  After going down one of the large hills I sat down kind of resting ridding up to the next… but something was different.  Somehow my seat got moved or something because it definitely did not feel right.  I decided play time was over and that I should head home.  After getting home I realized that I had broken my seat, one of the support posts was bent/twisted… Did I tell you earlier that I had planned my trip down to the dime?  And that everything I was going to be getting pretty much is only useful if all the other components are available because they all integrate with each other?  Well it’s true, I did, and even this little hickup of needing to fork out $50 for a new seat is enough to throw the entire plan out the window… well funny thing is I never quit ridding.  I’ve gone out a couple more times since I broke my seat… just rest less
Coming home from Downtown Parkville this last trip I was noticing that my chain keeps slipping more and more… never a good sign, but the chain is 5 years old so what the heck my budget has been thrown out the window anyways.  When I got home and looked everything over there was something interesting about the chain… it’s fine… As it turns out the slipping, and also loud clicking I’ve been hearing is because my Cassette is worn out.  (if you don’t know what the cassette on a bike is it’s the large set of gears on the back tire)  When you stand to ride your bike it puts a lot of pressure on your chain, and in turn your cassette, which also has the chain moving back and forth to different gear sets.  Well after 5 years my Cassette is starting to wear out (pretty common).  Just that the last couple of days me keeping a consistent 150 pounds of pressure on it even when changing gears has just about done it in.  Alright… fine… fun part is when pricing a new cassette I ran into all kinds of fun little things.  My bike is a 24 speed bike, which means the rear cassette has 8 sprockets on it… nobody makes 8 sprocket cassettes anymore.  They’ve all gone in favor of the closer spaced sprockets and less jump for the chain on 9 sprocket cassettes.  Funny thing is that in going from 8 to 9 sprockets I’ve got to change over my entire gearing system.  On oldschool bikes you had the little lever that you pushed or pulled and kind of listened or turned back and looked to change your gears.  Newer bikes, especially high end ones don’t do that anymore.  Everything is done by the push of a button, you push a button to go up in gears, you pull another go go back down… problem is this system must be made specifically for what you’ve got… in moving from 8 to 9 sprockets you not only must change out the cassette you have to change out the shifters as well…  In short in order to fix my bike properly (new tires, gears and mechanics, shocks rebuilt, and new seat) it’s going to run me in the range of $700 almost to the dollar…

In short God has said, “I thought I told you to go out on this trip with nothing… so why are you planning all these other things?”

Ever since Snickers the warrior kitten died I’ve had a void in my life… a cat shaped void.  Which can only be filled with another kitten to be trained and brought up in the way of the warrior kitten.  There is one hopeful applicant to the program, a Siamese/Persian mix just becoming of age.  The real question is: do I name the new child of mine “Snickers the Warrior Kitten II” or come up with something else, just as unsuspecting and yet fierce as “Snickers” and tag “The Warrior Kitten” to the end of it?  Either way, I do need a new daughter, and I need one fast!  I miss my attack kitten…