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Today, it was a good day. I spent the majority of Friday and Saturday sleeping (as I had been keeping strange whopper-jawed schedules all week that had me at work until 2:30 in the morning and still showing up at 8:30 next… er… that morning), so today I felt refreshed and reckless. In channeling these key human traits I grabbed my bike and headed up to Meadow Camp to do a bit of mountain biking. I didn’t want to bite off too much, considering I had just regnarled my leg what, two weeks ago, but I needed to get out and do something because I felt myself getting terribly sulky again.

Here’s a thing about Danes, and by Danes I mean people who are Danish, as well as people who are Danes. We always need to be occupied with something, and by ‘occupied’ I mean completely engrossed by it. If there’s anything in the world worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Now, if a Dane is idle too long he (or she) will inevitably begin to busy him (or her) self with senseless hand-wringing. They worry about themselves, they worry about others, they worry about the state of the world, and they even fuss and fit over the typical epistemological and metaphysical quandries that haunt all of mankind. These are necessary thoughts for people to entertain, but most are decently able to keep them confined to a few minutes a day. Like sit-ups, pining away on these subjects will worry a person thin.

Unfortunately for Danes, we toss ourselves completely in the way of whatever cometh, and if we’re not busying our hands with something (whether it be work or hobby) we will inevitably take up hand-wringing full-time until something interrupts us, or we are able to interrupt ourselves. More and more I’ve been working on interrupting myself when these troublesome thoughts plague my head, and the best way to clean house has typically been through intellectual, creative or physical exertion. I get just about all the intellect I need from work, and stomping around in the outdoors always feeds all three. Being all gnarled up has really put a damper on my ability to run around outside, so it’s quite refreshing to finally get out and play again.

I started at Meadow Camp and followed the trail up the Deschutes River, and after five minutes I realized how out of shape I really have become. My last big outdoor shindig was when I traveled to the Coast, where my lungs were spoiled with sea level oxygen. In Bend I’m living at 3,600 feet, and if I’m playing anywhere up in the Deschutes Wilderness I’m probably at 4,000 feet or more, and since I’ve barely done anything more physically demanding than frisbee in the last three months, the terrain and hills really got to me. I stuck with the riding, though, and supplemented it with frequent snoozes in the sunshine, laying in the grass by the Deschutes or sitting on top of rocky cliffs in a burned-out forest. All in all I put in over three hours of biking/snoozing, which is a successful Sunday by any measure. I also took lots of photographs that really suck because my camera is a hunk of junk.

What’s more, I discovered that the Cascade Lakes Highway is finally open this season. The road has been snowed in ever since I moved to Bend, so for me the entire area was a blank space on the map shouded in mystery. Jumping at an opportunity to discover some uncharted territory in my back yard (literally, half an hour from Lava House), I hopped in the Subaru and gunned it up into the mountains. And let me tell ya, it is so beautiful up there my lower jaw is totally scraped up from dragging on the ground the entire drive. Around every twist in the road was a new discovery, from alpine meadows and swamps to lakes of turquoise and emerald, that completely blew up my preconceived notions of the size of my playground. It was like I had spent all my time perfecting my technique on the monkey bars and twisty slide, only to discover a tire swing, zip-line and giant plastic dragon just around the corner.

Wow. The rain was falling something fierce for the entire drive, and it was actually snowing up by Sparks Lake and Mount Bachelor, so I never got to get out and play… but it’s probably just as well. I really should pace myself as I’m healing up from the Great Regnarling, and I should be thankful that my morning bike ride went without incident. Well, no incidents beyond the fact that I couldn’t breathe ninety percent of the time, but even with that, there’s a bit of sadistic delight that comes with self-inflicted suffocation caused by physical exertion.

At work. And drunk. And listening to gut-wrenching metal. A wise man one told me that getting drunk at work was the worst thing to do ever, because, like, you were drunk, but you were at work. To him it was a waste of drunkedness, a prime example of the innately evil soul-stealing nature of any company. Like what, are you gonna get completely out of control when you’re drunk at work? Are you gonna throw up in a planter? Are you gonna get laid? Nah, probably not. Are you going to hop on your email and fire off emails to your clients or your boss or the FBI, and say things that you will regret as you nurse your headache come the morn’? Yeah, probably. But that’s the price you pay for infamy. And while it takes a truly talented person to achieve fame, any idiot can royally screw up and become infamous. Me? I know I’m barrelling down one track. Or the other.

I’ve made a few more tweaks to Brainside Out, if you will kindly refresh your cache and send me lots of money. I cobbled together some archive templates for Coolio, that piece of junk link-whore-fest over on the right there, so you can now peruse all sorts of crap sorted by category, date and… uhh… like, name or something. I also tweaked a few colors and added inner shadows to content areas, and everything looks surprisingly good. These days everyone’s gettin’ all hot on drop shadows and bevels and such, and while I’m all for following trends and shopping at Ragstock I felt like trying somethin’ else. Word.

In other news, we had thunderstorms today. These were my first thunderstorms since leaving Minnesota, and I completely freaked out I was so excited. My boss and I ran out the garage door and hooted and hollered and stomped in puddles, and whenever the thunder rolled we would bellow at the heavens. Then he stripped down and streaked our entire business district in the pouring rain, and in so doing he instantly became my personal hero. On his victory lap he pumped his arms in the air while singing the Rocky theme song.

Dude. Who honestly thought that web design could kick so much ass?

Hot new navigation. Kindly refresh your browser if what you see is not making you wet yourself. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

It’s been a weird couple of days. I spent the weekend all hot and bothered with intense Warcraft III marathons, which gives you some indication how up I am on computer game culture. I mean, Warcraft III. That was, like, so summer 2002. I used to be way into video games, but I gave them up my freshman year in college because I had forty-seven classes a semester and the first few weeks of school I had nothing to do so I just played multiplayer Half-Life against my roommate but that didn’t last long because we were both music majors and soon found our collective asses chewed inside out by the unrewarding academic rigors of the arts.

I’ve had a few fits and starts of game obsessions since then, I suppose, but nothing as sustained as my love for Final Fantasy VII my senior year in high school. I mean, damn. My entire group of nerd friends, we hardly ever crawled out of our troll caves that summer cuz we were so busy hammering away. Metal Gear Solid kicked major ass and bore many inside jokes (“Huh? What was that noise? Huh… just a box.”), and long-time readers will remember my stint with Final Fantasy IX, which was most appealing because the main character’s name was Dane and he was all tryin’ to get with the princess and stuff, and she was so totally hot.

The game Max Payne had one of the greatest storylines ever, second only to the captivating plot of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. I had my obligatory summer fling with Grand Theft Auto 3, and I picked up Grand Theft Auto Vice City when it came out, but I was whoopin’ ass trying to graduate and my roommate Doug took the helm, beating the game, finding the Apache helicopter and everything. I still play off his save games, cuz he’s got all the guns and the Miami Vice cars and everything.

So yeah, when I say I haven’t really been into video games since I left for college, I mean I haven’t really been into video games since I left for college. Playing Warcraft reminds me that I have no desire to become a raving video game fan, talking about scripting languages at work reminds me that I have no desire to become a full-on geek, and browsing the latest hot websites reminds me that short of going back to college to study 2D digital design I have little chance of ever becoming a notable graphic designer. Honestly, I have no idea what I wanna do. Except kick someone’s ass. And I’m okay with that.

So, thanks to Warcraft III and alcohol, this weekend I tried my hand at becoming nocturnal. I would stay up until 3:30 in the morning doin’ stuff, like gnarling my wrists gaming or shredding my fingers practicing bass, wake up at 11:00 in the morning, rinse, repeat. My friend Shane recently picked up The Sims House Party, so we spent the better part of Sunday night building houses and inviting people over to party. The hot tub would flood the living room. A police officer issued us a noise violation. Drey Carey dropped by. No one ever hung out in the den, even though it had modern art and a Tiki god.

Monday night I hung out with a friend and we grilled some meat and drank some beer and worked on transcribing songs. I figured out the bass lines to some Beatles, Elliot Smith, Beck and Weezer, and eventually the night degenerated into drinking PBR and watching Saving Silverman. I woke up in Sunriver at 7:00 and drove to work. That night I watched Finding Nemo and So I Married an Axe Murderer with my roommate, drank Red Stripe, and I rode my bike back to work at 9:30 p.m. to drink beer and help (hamper) the installation of a new T-1 line. Morgoth rocked the Euro Trash music stream and I rocked the Pabst and did a lot pf needed maintenance on this site (comment previews, comment listings, header hyperlinks, photolog index, hot navigation buttons, etc).

AT&T didn’t have its act together so the line didn’t get installed, but we were at the shop working, talking, coding and partying until 2:30 in the morning. I got on my bike and swerved home under a full moon, only to wake up five hours later for a morning meeting with a client. Tonight I watched the documentary American Pimp, revisted Warcraft III, and ever since I killed a spider in the shower this morning I have been convinced that I’m constantly being bitten by black widows.

With all the excitement it’s time to crash for the night, which is more exciting than it sounds because I’ve been having wacky dreams, lately. Last night I jumped out of a plane flying over the Cascades, riding a mountain bike. The night before I was flying the Space Shuttle, watching people kiteboard off the coast of Baja California.

And tonight, it’s time for Carnival.

So. Phish broke up. I actually had no idea until Shannon mentioned it in comments, and at first it didn’t really hit me. As far as I’m concerned, they never really came off of their 2001 hiatus. Their last show I saw was 09-24-2000 at the Target Center, which was fairly lousy. I never checked out Round Room because people were saying nasty things about it. I felt that Phish had run their course, and I was okay with that.

Then I thought about it. A world without Phish. My life without Phish. In 1999 when my enthusiasm was at its peak, such a thought would have been unfathomable. So much of my youth is so closely intertwined with the band that I can’t even make sense of my past without them.

My first live Phish show (actually, my first live concert ever) was 10-25-95 at the St. Paul Civic Center. I liked their song Bouncing Around The Room that was playing on the radio and I had heard that they were coming to town, so I called up my friend Willie and asked him if he wanted to go to a concert. He said yeah, so I got tickets and picked up A Live One and listened to the first disc over and over again, because I was convinced that they would play exactly what was on their latest CD, because that’s what bands do, right?

Well. They opened with Ya Mar, which fazed me for five seconds until I started completely digging it. I knew I was hooked right then and there. At set break I signed up for the Schvice and bought an eggplant t-shirt. During second set a guy sat right next to us in the aisle smoking pot, and I thought that was the absolute neatest thing. This show is so ALIVE! My shirt smelled like marijuana and I didn’t wash it for months, with the that fear it would lose that concert appeal. Years later, an actor at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival would rail me for wearing a faded pink shirt.

Throughout high school I played in a number of combos that played Phish covers, or attempted to play Phish covers, or were composed of musicians that worshipped Phish but didn’t play Phish covers. I remember sitting in Chris Hubach’s basement and listening to Junta at the first rehearsal for Pamplemousse. We weren’t really called Pamplemousse then; after numerous attempts we finally admitted that no one knew how to spell it. At Pamplemousse’s first gig at the Depot Coffee House, we played Gumbo. It was an ambitious undertaking for a high school jazz combo, what with lyrics and individual horn lines and everything.

Matt played trombone. David played keyboards. Together, the three of us started accumulating and trading Phish tapes with other fans. Matt and Dave had never heard Phish before, and they got way deeper into trading than I did, having been a spoiled rotten brat with my first Phish experience at the young age of 15. That summer the three of us caught their first (and my second) show on 06-30-99 at the Sandstone Amphitheatre in Bonner Springs, Kansas.

Before leaving Minnesota we got into a stiff argument over what time we should head for Kansas the next morning. We resolved it by leaving that very night, and we pulled up in front of Matt’s uncle’s house in Missouri at 3:00 in the morning. We slept in their living room until noon, and then ate Frosted Flakes while watching Blues Clues. We whittled away the rest of the day tooling around rural Missouri, buying fireworks and throwing pennies at toll booths.

Bonner Springs was an outdoor concert and it rained hard. Really hard. I was wearing sandals, but Matt and Dave were wearing shoes that got so totally soaked that the drive home was going to be miserable if we didn’t do something. The morning after the show we went to a Walgreen’s where Matt and Dave walked in barefoot and bought $5 pastel flip-flops.

The concert itself wasn’t anything special, but it was our first experience road tripping and it made an excellent dry-run for our next Phish show later that summer. In July we left for Wisconsin to see 07-24-99 at Alpine Valley, which was an absolutely amazing show.

Back in the Twin Cities we saw a few more shows at the Target Center, but those all kind of blend together. I know 10-02-99 was a great show, with an encore of While My Guitar Gently Weeps and everything. It wasn’t until the summer of 2000 that Dave, Matt and I went big, hitting up three Phish shows in a row: 07-08-00 at Alpine Valley, 07-10-00 at Deer Creek in Noblesville, Indiana, and finally 07-11-00 at Deer Creek. The last show at Deer Creek was the best Phish concert I’ve ever seen, with a vacuum solo, Chalkdust Torture ‘Reprise’, Hold Your Head Up, every song segueing into Moby Dick, etc. We also sold grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to drunk college students, made friends with a couple of carneys and saw a cowboy statue come to life at a KOA Kampground.

Other stuff pops in there, too. On 7-21-01 , during a hot summer of working as essay graders, Dave, Matt and I hit up Trey Anastasio (with his solo tour band and Jon Medeski!) at Alpine Valley, and we spent the night at Greta and Tyler’s new house in Madison. We saw lots of interesting things on that road trip, including a road called Cannibal Crest, the Nutting Doctor, Mr. Yuk stickers on everything, and a giant water tower with a happy face painted on it.

After the last song of the encore we literally ran out of the venue, as last time at Alpine Valley we got caught in a traffic jam for three hours and we had no desire to repeat that. As we were hoofin’ it back to the car we ran into two guys stumbling around the lot looking for whippets. We asked them if they had been at the concert, when was freakin’ RAD, and they said, “Nah, we weren’t in that Mexican fiesta!” We were the first car out of the lot.

When you tell me that Phish is breaking up, you’re not telling me that my favorite band is evaporating back into the ether. When you tell me that Phish is breaking up, you’re not telling me that they had a good run and they’re leaving on a high note. No, when you tell me that Phish is breaking up, you’re telling me that a chapter of my life is coming to a close. I have so many memories wrapped up in listening to that band, in seeing that band, in touring with that band, that the thought of them leaving is absolutely painful.

Phish was always one of those constants in my life. No matter what the world, Phish would always be in Kansas in June, in Wisconsin in July, in Minneapolis in September. Like the rising and setting of the sun these were all things I could count on. Their tours always started and ended with the phases of the moon. Even when I wasn’t eagerly holding tickets to an upcoming show, it was comforting just to know that Phish was touring. They were like the soothing hum of the city. You don’t notice it while it’s there, not until it’s gone, but when it leaves it wrenches open a hole in your gut.

Alas, all things come to pass, and I’m glad that Phish mutually chose to close it earlier rather than later. Nevertheless, 21 years of anything isn’t a bad run by any means. Thanks for everything, Phish. To everyone on the crew I send my best, and I wish you luck on whatever endeavors await you.

And thanks for the kind postcard. Though the need for roadies may fade, the passion for music lives on.

Today was definitely mail day. I swear those sorting ogres sit on this stuff in their post office caves, and every fortnight a band of elves has to be dispatched to slay their filthy hides and retrieve my subscription renewals to Outside, Smithsonian and Euro Trash Monthly.

It was all good stuff this time around, though. I received a magazine from my auto insurance company, which is always comforting. It had a child on the front cover, no doubt a ploy to make me think of my own children and buy insurance for them, too. Like I’d ever do something like that. I mean, if I had kids I’d probably get them caught in my garage door, or hit them with my car, and then my insurance company would be all trying to get money from my insurance company and that’d be a huge mess with me caught in the middle with a garage door knocked off its track. Too much hassle.

My credit card bill arrived as well, with the charge for my electric bass and amplifier. I also got my tax return today (more than 1,100 smackers), which was a welcome windfall as I need to pay for food, bass, amp, car insurance, utilities, cell, and my rental company’s own incompetency. They lost my rent check last month (this is the second time they’ve done something of the sort and they deny it wholeheartedly, of course) and posted a strongly worded resolution that resembled an eviction notice.

I had to stop payment on the old check (which cost me $25) and issue them a new one, which they greedily snapped from my roommate’s hands with their slimy tentacles. They were kind enough to waive their $xx.xx “late payment” fee, but were not kind enough to waive the $75 “non-compliance” fee. Thanks for the love, guys. If this happens again, you can be sure that you’ll receive more checks with skulls scribbled in the memo area.

I also received a letter from my best friend Mark, who will be moving out to Washington for the summer to work at an internship building biodegradable nuclear reactors, or radioactive windmills, or something cool like that. We’re going to the String Cheese Incident festival at Horning’s Hideout next month, and we’re totally stoked. As it turns out, the fellow who is living in my old room up in Hood River is a huge jam music fan as well, and with his crew he’ll be hosting a few shindigs at Horning’s that weekend. Rock.

Most importantly, today I received an invitation to my friend Chris’ wedding, who will be married to the lovely Barbara this July in Iowa. Chris was the svelte Apple geek of our Nerd Herd, a biology genius and a fellow champion of the bastu, and he’s the first person among my misfit group of friends to go ahead and tie the knot. I’m excited for their wedding, for the reception, for the drunken spastic dancing that is bound to occur when we spin all the Nerds back together again. I’m also looking forward to seeing my old stomping grounds, kickin’ around in Minnesota, catching up with old friends, diving into Lake Superior, sipping a brew at Sir Ben’s, making a cameo appearance at Camp Ihduhapi, etc. Time to get on that ol’ jetliner, again.

I haven’t seen home since September, and while I miss just about everything about it, Oregon has been seeping deep into my soul for the last eight months. There is so much of me still back in the Midwest, and there always will be. At the same time I find my West Coast existence slowly fleshing out, synchronizing itself with my previous lives.

In the Midwest I played the roles of camp counselor, Kentucky essay grader, windsurfing director, photographer, humor writer, jazz monger and Phish tourist. I’m still finding my place out here, but so far it has involved windsurfing gearhead, webmaster, Sambaist, kiteboarder, mountaineer, snowboard instructor, cripple, web designer, blogger, rock climber and mountain biker. That, and so much more that can’t even be categorized.

I do know this, though: Give me some crayons and I can draw a mean Tyrannosaurus Rex with a chainsaw.

I need to rest up for my big excursion this weekend. I’ll be ditching out of work early on Friday to zip on up to Hood River, pick up a few friends and roll over to Portland to catch Cowboy Curtis at The Tonic Lounge. This is their first trek out of the warm Wisconsin/Minnesota music-breeding cocoon, and we want to make sure they feel hot and welcome out here on the West Coast.

With any luck I’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday in Hood River, and I travel armed with my kiteboard, mountain bike and climbing gear. I’m ready for anything… that is, anything but whatever happened in the crash I took off my bike three minutes ago. I was practicing wheelies, and I’m to the point where I can get about three cranks on the pedals until I need to drop down again. I’m also to the point where I can flip off my bike backwards and catch myself with my bum leg. I jammed ol’ righty hard and the pain came back, though definitely not as sharp as before.

It dawns in the familiar way, with the sudden jam of limb against the earth, the instant mental realization, and the agonizing wait as the pain receptors struggle to register in the brain. Then the wave of pain slowly overtakes the body, travelling up the spine from the leg, rattling the skull, and flowing down again. The slight dizziness, the taste of bile in the back of the throat, the panicked apologies to the guy in charge.

Everything should be fine; I probably just stressed it. This body has knit itself back together numerous times before. One occasionally wishes that the spirit wasn’t quite so demanding on it, but then, where would be the fun in living like that?