New wheels

I finally broke down and picked up a new pair of skates. My last pair were blown out after about a season and a half. I was over due.

As I prepped the new skates to get broken in, I looked at the naked white housing that holds the skate blade to the boot. You see, when Anthony passed, I added a black strip of hockey tape that encircled the heel of the housing to my old skates. As a hockey player through and through, it seemed like the right thing to do. The same pieces of black tape encircle the seat tubes of my bikes.

Every time I put my skates on, I pause for a moment and reflect on memories of my friend. I often touch the piece of tape as my homage to my lost friend. And it isn't sad thoughts, it's just a chance to remember.

Remember him.

Remember friendship.

Remember that life goes on.

But with the new skates I began to wonder how long the mourning process really is. Anthony is still in my thoughts. We all miss him and are getting to the point where we can laugh, joke and smile when we conjure up his memory.

Quite simply, I'm not ready to stop mourning. A close, close friend...my spiritual guide...pointed out that mourning has to last for four seasons. Until you make it that year and see the circle of life, see the fact that life goes on, you can't let go of mourning for that spirit. And this makes sense to me. It is more than religion, it is simply a way to keep myself on track over the course of the next year. It keeps my eyes open to birth, growth, decline and death.

Most of all, it let's me miss my friend.

I saw him in Vegas at Interbike. Probably not more than a few minutes after a fleeting thought passed through my head that this was the first trade show he had missed and that I hadn't brought a part of him to Vegas with me.

Instead, one of our partners brought him. There was a video playing at the Fox Suspension booth. As I paused to watch it, I realized it was showing clips from a press camp that Anthony had attended earlier this year. I was seeing shots of a race truck he got to ride in and take pictures of. As soon as the realization passed, I saw a shot with the Yeti demo truck in the background as confirmation. And then, a shot of Anthony setting up a bike.

I sat stunned with my eyes welling up (they well up now as I write this). At the same time, I was so happy to have had a chance to see him again. I'm sure the folks who put together the video have no idea of the significance of those shots.

To me, they were a suitable memorial to our friend.

Late night thoughts....

A close friend and I recently had a conversation that culminated in these final thoughts that are well worth sharing.

When the days of your life are shorter in front of you than they are behind, do you really want to have wasted so much of your time arguing with your wife, spending time away from your children and avoiding those people who mean the most to you?

Shoes - Part Deux

Emi is developing an Imelda Marcos style fetish for shoes. She searches for her shoes as the first thing she wants to put on in the morning. She wears mismatched shoes because she can't decide if one pair is better than the other. The finds socks (ours) that she wants us to pull on over her shoes. And then she stumbles around because the socks catch her feet on the floor.

Last night, she picked up one of my shoes (after we pulled on one of my over sized socks onto her miniature foot) and held her foot in the air until I succumbed and placed my shoe on her foot. She then tried to stand up and walk.

Didn't work.

She then found one of Hope's cycling shoes in the living room. Picked it up and handed it to me. And then sat on the floor with one foot in the air until I put Mom's shoe on her foot.

She still couldn't walk.

Simply put, Emi is so damn cute!

Baby Squirrel

Two nights ago, Emi, Gibson and I headed into the backyard to play. As Emi and I sat on the edge of our concrete patio watching Gibs romp with his ball, I saw him nearly step on a small gray object on the ground under the tree. I pulled him away and saw a baby squirrel on the ground, so young that its eyes were still sealed shut.

Hope came out and we sat there wondering what to do. She commented that she heard a bunch of squirrel noise earlier in the evening but just assumed Gibson was chasing the squirrels again.

We moved Gibson inside, and let him out into the front yard later on to do his business. I did a little research on the computer about baby squirrel care and finally settled on simply warming the baby and waiting for Mama squirrel to come down out of the tree to pick up her lost young one.

We started off with a Nalgene bottle filled with hot water and a few old diapers for the baby to curl up in. I then tracked down our heating pad and ran an extension cord into our back yard. As the baby squirrel warmed, it began to move around and Hope said it cried out a few times. We left it for the evening, wrapped in its swaddling with the heater on medium.

The next morning, its movements had slowed considerably. But we left the heater beneath it and I uncovered it so Mama squirrel would be able to spot her young one from the tree.

As soon as I was home yesterday evening, Emi and I went to check on the baby squirrel and it was gone. My assumption is that Mama came down and picked up her lost youngster. Could a predator have come and taken away the baby squirrel? Sure. But that isn't the happy ending I need to hold in my mind.

Nature can be so seemingly cruel. But the simple reality is that this is life in the wild. We humans aren't really that far removed from it all, though we do try to mitigate the cold and heat with our structures. We try to stave off hunger through industrial agriculture. We slake our thirst with a wide assortment of beverages. But it simply is about life and death. Our human touch on nature.