Dan Action

Every Summer… July 15, 2009

… Has it’s flood of memories, all with a new perspective courtesy of another year past. I will still swoon to the same punk 7″ I did when I was 20 but with the added baggage of another year squeezed between when I first heard a certain set of songs and now, adding another layer of experience to seem even further from the time it first touched my emotions. It’s no joke, I can really be taken in by a song. It can do something as simple as solidify a moment, and even find a way to go as far as to be tranferrable to the feelings you might have ten or more years later.

I’m listening to a band I should’ve been friends with.   It’s how I think of bands, remember, I came up in the heyday of the D.I. Y. scene.

Well,  to be a little less esoteric, I am going to hit up a road race this weekend. The lure was cast but at a time where my legs feel leaden and the ligaments feel like beef jerky btwhat can you do?  Went for my first ride by my lonesome today. It’s a serious change as I can’t remember the last time I have. It was awesome. No one to charge the pace, No one to lift the pace on. Just riding and listening to R.Kelly and Ted Leo for a couple of hours. I stopped for a minute to pick a bunch of seriously ripe rasberries on the side of the bike path. I seriously feasted on these things. What is the point of leaving the city? If it’s not to come across a scenario such as a throng of un-picked ripened berries, I must be confused. Within a minute I thought I was going to have to resort to making the “shirt scoop” which is where you pull up the bottom of your shirt to make a suitable container for picked goods, but only after you’re full from eating hand full after hand full of whatever it is you are picking.

My next birthday comes up next week. I never took much stock in my birthday as a specific day honored to me in the past. I usually let it go with it’s fellow days, it’s importance maybe lessened, but acknowledged. Last year changed that. My mother’s birthday was June 25th. Mine is July 26th. Last year I was on the alert for that entire span between the two dates. I saw my mother on her birthday as I had usually made the effort to do. She was sick then. The point of someone getting  really sick is that you start to understand that whatever they are sick with is not going to subside, instead it will consume them. When I got the news that exactly that had happened it was my birthday. So forgive me if nostalgia runs wild on me in the deepest days of summer.

If you got some time, check out the feature on the Rapha Continental Site of:   “People Along The Way”

Isn’t it nice to see people presented in a genuine way? Isn’t it refreshing to see random folks not pesented as an inside joke to your peer group? I think so. Because of every person I recognize from these photos, I remember real and serious conversations. And if they weren’t exactly serious, they were a fantastic echange between travellers. The only distance being that of the mode of transport chosen.  These photos are no joke. look at them.