I don't want to drone you on my childhood activities again, but it all starts with the excitement of moving on your feet and implementing it into your daily activities.

Back then, I am not sure if it's same as today, but... in the 90's, the kids were safe. We could play on the streets and move around more freely. There was no worries about kidnapping or molestation, poisoned candy, or whatever is happening out there. I lived few blocks to my Elementary school, so I was free to walk back and forth everyday. There were landmarks, places where I memorized my imaginations to hide: the bushes with narrow space between itself and the building, where I can run and hide, wait for a sibling to walk past, and jump on them. Ah.

In High School, when I was a wee Freshman on my first day, I decided that I was going there on foot! I pulled out my bike and my brother looked at me: "are you stupid? your bike's going to be stolen or broken." Of course, he was a Senior at that time, so he had experience, but I had to try. Keeping his advice in mind, I arrived, noticed bended bikes, abused bikes locked up. Okay, for once, I listened to him, hid my bike under the stairs. Then walked to school instead.

How could I go to school on my own feet?

AH! Rollerblades! How did I get this idea:

I begged for rollerblades, my old rollerblades were tiny, I had begged for a full year when I was in elementary school for a pair. I finally got my pair at Christmas, I went ahead and started rollerblading in the snow. It was aaaaaaweesome!

Since it was too small to fit my adolescent feet, I begged my dad for a new pair.. again. My dad decided that since I'm a committed user and always a fugal spender, he took me to a skate shop and brought me a $100 pair.

JACKPOT.

I rollerbladed daily to school, basketball practices, my part-time job.... literally... everywhere.

I kept it up for straight 3 years, from my Freshman year to first trimester of Senior year. I had to stop commuting on my rollerblades in second trimester of Senior year because I was placed in Fast Track program which required me to take college classes on their campus. Unfortunately, I lived half mile to college which connects by hiking trails. My first attempt, I tied up my rollerblades, hiked up the dirt and gravel hill to the campus. Then I tried to rollerblade back down... not so smart. Even some days, I had classes all day until 7pm, so it was dark out and of course... gravel downhill. On the nights that I have a shift at work, I would hike down home, pull on my rollerblades and headed to work.

Until one day... they disassembled. It was a sad day.

 I continued commuting, on my feet by walking. Once it became summer, I started working Day Shift full-time, so I decided to switch to biking daily. It was aweeeesoooome!

Anywhooo: here's an photo series blog about attempting to commute via non-motorized scooter. Now that's creative!! My mom gave me one of those scooters when it was popular for Christmas 2000 (?), matching set with my two sisters, a metallatic gray, red, or blue. I took my little sisters scootering all the time when we head out for a swim. It was amazing. I went to retrieve it when I was visiting Colorado, but all of my sports things had disappeared, and like always, my mom hates it when I ask questions. Disappointed.

Back to the happy stuff. This video was taken when I took Bella out while I was rollerblading last Autumn. :) Ah, nevermind, unable to upload.

Happy commuting!

Hello Bloggers!

It has been a while since I last posted... *exhales*

Winter has been tough. It does not matter where you live, it's always tough in the wintertime. Do I need to repeat? I will say it again... Winters are Tough!!

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have Rain Season, or where I grew up-- Colorado-- the Snow Season. Both, are COLD, sometimes wet! The streets and sidewalks are... well... occupied with the climate. Same goes for any other paths.

Our choices of being outdoors could be limited. Sometimes we have to be creative to enjoy the quiet, downtime for Mother Nature... when it's taking a short nap so it can breath beautiful, colorful, and exhiliarting Spring.

What I have been doing to keep myself fresh during the winter:

Skiing anyone? Returned to beautiful Mt. Bachelor for another session

Snowshoe (Tillium, Swampy Lakes, Mt. Adams)

and... of course, indoor activities such as indoor soccer or basketball. When it comes to free exercise, it is limited. Snowshoe or Cross-Country skiing is best for people on budget: the only fees are those trails that require a Sno-Park. (I have learned that Washington State has expensive sno-park permit over Oregon. Oregon: $20 full year/ $3 day, Washington: $42 full year/ $22 day).

Although it is officially Spring, Mother Nature is not ready to wake up.

Hang in there. Hang in there... *drones* hang in there....

Learning Something New

Stumbled upon this article and thought it was great to share. Keep in mind, everybody starts off as a beginner. There is no expectation for us to immediately be a professional in something. No one excels without practice or frequent/occasional experience.

I love Elizabeth's motivation and I see similarities with her: it is always fun to learn something new!

 

The Importance of Staying a Beginner

Brendan Leonard (Semi Rad)

When you dismount a mountain bike going uphill, you end up doing a sort of bow. As you step off and swing a leg over the seat, your head naturally points down as you are admitting that the trail has you beat, this time.

After years of saying “I suck at fast/gravity/downhill sports,” I bought a mountain bike a few weeks ago. I have two goals:

1) I will not crash my new mountain bike hard enough to break anything on my body.
2) I will ride my new mountain bike enough times in the next year that its expensive-to-me-
but-apparently-relatively-inexpensive-in-the-world-of-mountain-bikes price feels like an investment and not a foolish endeavor.

I’m a climber, I tell myself. I’m no good at these outdoor sports that require fast reactions: tree skiing, mountain biking, kayaking. I’m in my early 30s, too, which is old enough to know I don’t have to do shit I don’t want to do, like eat cauliflower, get regular haircuts, wait 30 minutes after eating to get back into the swimming pool, or ride knobby-tired bicycles on steep mountain trails. That’s the great thing about being an adult.

Which is also the bad thing about being an adult: thinking you know everything. You know what you can do, and therefore you know what you can’t do, too. I’m a bad cook. I can’t fix a car. It’s too late to go back to college. I don’t dance. I’m not a mountain biker.

The last word you’d ever use to describe my friend Elizabeth is “arrogant.” Three years ago, I would have introduced her as a boulderer, and a good one. Every year since I met her, she’s tried something new: Two years ago, she learned to snowboard. Last winter, she learned to tele ski. This year, she says she’s going to learn to roll a kayak. I admire this.

I remember learning to snowboard when I was 26, falling on my ass, and my face, repeatedly, cartoon-worthy crashes in the middle of blue runs while 9-year-old kids flew by me carving the hell out of everything as I wondered if I’d just given myself a concussion. I was humbled, to say the least. That year, I was able to tell myself, as Elizabeth does every year when she takes up something new:

I am going to try this, I am going to suck at it for an indefinite amount of time, and other people are going to see me fail, repeatedly.

My friend Jeff Weidman started learning to play the guitar at age 46, and everyone said he was starting too late in life. He stuck with the lessons and kept practicing, as his career brought big changes almost every other year. Nobody said it was too late in life when he played Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison” at his first-ever open mic six years later.

The earlier you can admit you don’t know everything, the more time you have to learn new things and make a richer life. The later you admit you don’t know everything, the less time you have. And if you don’t admit it at all? There’s a song lyric that says, “The older I get, the less I know, and the more I dream.”

Is anybody inspired by the guy who knows everything? I’d rather talk to the fat guy at the gym who has finally decided to do something instead of slowly dying in front of his TV, the divorcee going on her first first date in 25 years, the shy single guy at the cooking class, all the folks bumbling through our first time in a foreign country and stumbling through a new language, and non-teenagers crashing our new bikes, skis, snowboards, and sheepishly standing up again and believing you can teach an old dog new tricks.

I’m 4-for-4 so far on rides on my new bike without crashing. A couple weeks ago, I swear I caught two inches of air off a small bump in a trail near Fort Collins. If you were standing there and acted quickly, you might have been able to pass a sheet of paper between my tires and the ground. One friend of mine says we peak as bicycle riders at age 13, after which you start to get afraid to jump your bike off things. Another friend says 30 is the new 13.

Go and FLY!

Enjoy this short commercial from Nike. I am not suggesting that you buy their product, but merely showing the surge of excitement from watching this. It shoots out ideas of fun expedited energy in jumping, flying, etc.

Also to remind ourselves: we are not to think of exercising as labor, but as a fun activity. Make it count!

P L A Y

Life is what you make it.

All it takes is a.... Bumper Sticker.

I wanted to share a good, inspiring story for all of us to... think positive in a bad situation. I often remind myself-- it will get better.

 

When Your Life Is Changed By a Bumper Sticker 

“You know, I was just thinking that three bumper stickers changed my life,” Dan said as we tromped down the trail a couple weeks ago. I laughed because I knew what he was talking about. Not “Obama/Romney/McCain/Bush for _________” or “Nuke a Gay Whale For Christ,” but the time someone says something and you hear it. Because you need it.
In fall 2001, Dan and his wife and business partner, Janine, were battling to get their photography business started, living in their Volkswagen Westfalia around Bishop, California. They had spent three days on the trail in the Sierras, shooting their first-ever assignment for Backpacker, which would get them their first big paycheck as photographers. They had less than $1,000 in the bank and had invested $150 in film for the trip.
On the drive up to the North Lake trailhead, the van’s engine blew up. They nursed it to the trailhead, just to get to the shoot, finish the work, and deal with the engine later.
After three days of hiking and shooting, they hiked back to the trailhead and their wounded van, which at the time, was their home. The curtains were closed, and everything looked perfectly normal. “In the Sierra, you always approach your vehicle hoping all the windows are intact,” Dan says — bears often rip off car doors like they’re opening a tuna can to get to the food inside.
Dan saw a piece of fiberglass on the ground. Figuring a bear had shredded someone’s truck camper shell, he flipped it over with his foot. Then,
Oh no.
The fiberglass was a piece of their van’s roof, the skylight. They jumped up to see a crater in the top of the van. The bear had pried open the skylight, then crashed through the roof into the van. Dan opened the door to see their home destroyed. The bear had done what bears do, digging through everything to find every scrap of food.

  

They started the van and rolled back down to Bishop, hoping the engine would make it. The wind pulled anything loose out of the holes in the roof and sides of the van. Things were grim. No money, no engine, no roof. No home.
They took the van to a repair shop, and started to walk to a friend’s house down Main Street in Bishop. They had hit bottom. Then, a car pulled up to a stoplight, and Dan and Janine, sullen, both read a sticker on its bumper:
TOUGH TIMES DON’T LAST
TOUGH PEOPLE DO
They looked at each other and laughed.
And then, they lasted. They fixed the van, getting a new top for free from a guy who’d just hit a cow and totaled his Westfalia. Work started coming in, contracts from Marmot, MSR, and other companies. Things got better.
Then their work took off: Climbing, National Geographic, Adventure, Outside, Backpacker, Patagonia, Trail Runner, and other magazines. They recently moved from the Dolomites to Interlaken, Switzerland and spend most of their lives working in some of the world’s most beautiful places.
I don’t know what exactly is the right way to make big decisions — I supposed spreadsheets, lists of pros and cons, and maybe even math are helpful. But I like people who find the turning points in their lives with bumper stickers, song lyrics, single sentences from long talks with friends, and other “signs.” Something in the mail on the right day, a story in an airline magazine, a conversation with a stranger, bad weather, missed connections, what we sometimes call serendipity. Life is more poetic that way, isn’t it?                                        --- Brendan Leonard

Something Fun

If you cannot take anything seriously, only exercise for the fun of it and to mediate daily on your feet...

This-- you will LOVE!

Both teams: Deaf Jam and Flying Hands & Feet throwing our color powders to complete the event

          
                    This is called THE COLOR RUN

They made a booming expansion across the United States this year-- attempting to establish one Color Run in every state. Portland hosted Color Run for the first time this year. I went ahead and established a team online so anybody could take advantage of the discount and be able to join in this colorful fun.

Not only that, it became a biggest sensation-- Portland hosted 20,000 participants! They declared it was the largest 5k event in the USA! Way to go Portlanders!

Not just that... but I hosted the biggest unofficial team for the Deaf community-- about 30 Deaf people had participated (some from Salem, some from Seattle).

MAX lines (Portland's electric public transport trains) were backed up for more than a hour carrying participants to the event.

IT WAS THAT POPULAR!!!

We didn't give a rat's butt! We still showed up regardless if we were late. People were still coming in and starting running and walking.

We rolled in the colors, we entered every kilometer stations with a different color tossed at us! COLOR US!!! We picked up every color we could! JUMPED! ROLLED! SPINNED!

It did not matter how we got to each station, we walked, ran, skipped, hopped.... we were having fun!

Full of White before getting Colored!

Colored!

To Power of Color!

If your town/state has already run the event-- please keep this in mind for next year. If it is still available and coming up soon-- try to catch it! (it usually raises fees as time approaches-- so if it's expensive-- try to catch the cheap fees next year). <3


                             Here's to fun adventures ahead of us!