On going being on and going.

I have a feeling of glee as I pick out what shorts to wear for work. This is especially whimsical during the winter months. I have my ankle socks and undershirt out on the bed ready for post daily hygiene ritual.

I know that sometime during the day someone will remark on how cold it is, wondering how I could be dressed this way. Truth be told, I really do not feel cold during my work day, dressed in this fashion.

Also, I have ridden a bike 5 plus miles earlier that day. This gets curious reactions as well. The entire trip, for me, is between 15 and 20 minutes depending on various factors. I am wearing a jacket, tuuk, gloves and my shorts. By the time I lock up my bike and enter the facility my legs have warmed up comfortably. Some people see my ride as one of necessity as I possibly have no vehicle. Others see me as a green warrior combating the evil oil cartels. And then I could be some fitness nut trying to hold back the wages of time.

Why do I ride? That is more complex then I have fully rationalized. I do enjoy not seeing $$$ go into the tank of a vehicle. Not to mention there is a lack of wear and tear as well. Also, being a tad eccentric in the eyes of others has an appeal to my Ego. The fitness reasoning has its place as well.

I recall, not to long ago, struggling up the 4% grade that awaits me. Now I have great satisfaction of power up that hill with aplomb. The traffic forces you to be very alert and possibly carves new pathways into my aging grey matter. By deference of probabilities I have avoided many a mishap. Also, many new skills of a near acrobatic nature have manifested in regards to jumping up curbs and quick redirection.

The underlying theme for my dressing down in the cold and riding my bike to and fro has to be happiness. I am really enjoying this particular time in this particular place.

Yet there is a tinge of guilt for having this much fun.

5:00 AM comes early!

On of my "Dad Jokes" is to tell the kids to go to bed because 5:00 comes early. Welcome to CostCo's 5:15 to 1:45 schedule! So I am hoisted by my own petard!

Actually, I enjoy the early shift quite a lot. It is highly physical and very busy. They roll the door sup at 9:45 and we have to be in ship shape by then. The Manager of "Hard-lines" (read: the right side of the building as you enter, prior to food) . Has trust in me with orchestration product moves. Following our marketing plan. Items in our flyer go on the end of aisles (end caps) and certain products we are obligated to have on those "end caps" as well. Major product shifts are always planned by management, but they graciously accept idea's as well.

Each Television needs to have a demo-model set up and running and there is an envelope with Support information as well as two stickers that go onto the carton. Then the facing of the product has to be considered. Sony pays a lot of $$$ for that box artwork and we want to make sure it gets a good exposure.

Brian, my hard-lines manager has a knack for making rows of product perfectly fit within the given space. It is a frustrating talent for me to observe, when I have tried to duplicate and fail only to have him waltz in and arrange it in five minutes.

My talent must be in the execution of complex tasks in an efficient manner. And the technical aspect of getting everything up and running.

Lately I have had Thursdays and Fridays off of work. Which allows me to attend the TOPs meeting with Tina and have two days off in a row. Tina and I have a date night after TOPs and we opted to have Pizza and soda at CostCo. I was informed that two banks of TV's were not working and after some attempts they were going to wait for me to fix the issue. They did not know my next work day was Saturday.

Anyways Saturday arrived and I was surprised to find the same situation existed. One of my co-workers threw some doubt into a repair because he had worked on the situation on and off for the last two days.

It took me less then five minutes. The composite cables that run from each splitter to each bank of TV's has the wrong colors. During the opening I had taken a small TV set and troubleshot this, writing the actual colors on the wires.

So I got to feel smug for the next five minutes...

I hate exercising but I love exercise.

I hate exercising but I love exercise.

Five days a week I start the morning with 20 hindu pushups. Even with regular sets I find that increasing the number is a challenge. In my mind I would like to do 50 per set.

Next exercise I like to call, riding my bike to work. I have two hill climbs that required me to get off the bike and walk initially. Now the first one gets my cardio up and I can cruise up without down shifting from my initial hill climb gear (front 2 and back 4). The next hill is more taxing a 4% grade for a half mile. I need to down-shift, the same amount but later in the climb. My goal is to keep consistent pedaling speed. This really targets my glutes, which I feel protest near the top. For the rest of the trip to work it is pretty much a rolling uphill and downhill course.

At work the exercise changes day to day. Most of the time it consists of 7.5 hours standing and walking with an occasional short running and lifting of an object up to 200 pounds. Sometimes there is a four hour period of lifting and pulling heavy objects.

Followed by a ride home that has another two hill climbs (or a longer route and one less climb).

Once a week I like to spend skating. This is for around 60 to 90 minutes and involves a surprisingly large amount of muscle groups.

When I go to a gym I find myself unmotivated and bored quickly. If I have someone with me I do better. Still, it is way down on my list of things I want to do. I think it is the open ended nature and a feeling that I am actually preparing myself for... well... nothing...

There is a lot of satisfaction with my current exercises. Every gas station I ride by gives me a little thrill that my money is staying away. Even the colder mornings now are more bracing then miserable. I am wondering about the occasional icy morning.

Werking at the Company of Costs.

For the last 11 weeks I have been gainfully employed full time. It is still a lot of fun. My title is Major Sales. I will greet people as they enter, field questions about electronics and diamonds, and give my best directions as to where a given item might be located. Our store is a warehouse in name and nature. Things are moved to make room for other things every single day. It is a treasure hunt atmosphere. Luckily my brain is wired well for recalling where items are located.

I have become quite versed on HD televisions, blu-ray adding to my knowledge on computers. Thanks to my sister in law Connie I got a laymen level of information on jewelry which I am supplementing. My goal in talking to our members (read customers) is to make sure they get the product that fits the need. They should be able to explain why they chose that computer or that Television. "Zero returns" is my personal sales motto.

I was able to fix the Gordian knot of component cables that run our Televisions. In general I am become the go-to guy for fixing frustrations.

Also, I passed the safety test on forklift driving, which will allow me to start training on them (woot!). Further the marketing folks have tapped me to do the front board pictures. This is a rather fun assignment with some frustrations on the slowness of our intranet printing (4 min 23 sec a page).

Then comes the unexpected new projects. Where they need to squeeze six pallets worth of new items into an area that has one pallet worth of room. It is a challenge and requires some creative solutions.

In the past I have worked at places where the management would sit in offices, hand down expectations with a vagueness that would set one up for failure. Or they would come out of their hovel, bark orders for seemingly no purpose then to display alpha dominance then walk away not caring about the outcome. This is not the case currently. I see management running forklifts, restocking product and sweating it out like the rest of us. Most of them have been with the company in nearly every position. It is VERY common to see them manning cash registers, sweeping up messes and pitching in during heavy times. This, to me, is inspiring.

What I find I enjoy is showing up, doing the job then heading home. When I hop on that bike I might have a thing or two about work to consider, but as the miles roll on those too fade.

Life is good.

Skating stuff happens.

Thursday last I was invited to learn more about the possibility of being a ref for the new roller derby group. They skate a session then have an hour after for practice. During the skating session, while heading into a curve, backwards, at higher speeds, about to transition to front skating using a "move" that I enjoy. I found out that the resurfaced rink is "tighter" then usual. That is to say I fell, and fell hard. As far as falls go it happened very fast. Balance lost, flying, impact, stars, realize what happened, realize I am not wearing my glasses.

I am fine, just bruised and strained with the aches and pains of folly. So I have attempted mentally to figure out what happened during the fall. the point of impact appears to be just above and to my left of where the spine meets the hips. This was either a small slice of time before my left forearm took the rest of the initial impact, quickly followed by my right which started with my pinky and ring finger and hand. I surmise I had tucked my head, chin to my sternum as the neck muscles on either side of the adams apple are very sore as well. I tried to keep my head from the impact but to little avail as the back of my skull did make a loud bounce and sling shotted my glasses across the floor.

It must have made a sickening sound and quite a production as they turned on the lights and the manager lady was heading across the floor towards. My first attempt to stand was unsuccessful. A second attempt found sure inline bladed footing. My glasses were handed to me and I skated off to the side to assess. Total elapsed time was less then 20 seconds.

Back of head: No bruising, forgetfulness, ringing, nausea, tiredness or slurring of speech. I had no problems recalling short term memory and I slept rather well.

Neck muscles: Trapezius was tight and slightly sore, a wifey massage helped that. The sternocleidomastoid muscles are sore to the touch but have a full range of motion.

Lower back: Bruised with some stiffness. Careful stretching and warm up counters this throughout the workday.

left forarm: Mild discolor from bruising. No ache or pain (I think I landed pretty good there).

right hand: Ring and Pinky finger are stiff. Careful stretch and warm up counter as well.

So all in all not a bad fall for an older guy.

File this under... Duh...

Thinking About God Calms Believers, Stresses Atheists:

Researchers have determined that thinking about God can help relieve anxiety associated with making mistakes. However, the finding only holds for people who believe in a God.

The researchers measured brain waves for a particular kind of distress response while participants made mistakes on a test.

Those who had been prepared with religious thoughts had a less prominent response to mistakes than those who hadn’t.

“Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs,” says Michael Inzlicht, who cowrote the study with Alexa Tullett, both at the University of Toronto-Scarborough.

“I think it behooves us as psychologists to study why people have these beliefs; exploring what functions, if any, they may serve.”

With two experiments, the researchers showed that when people think about religion and God, their brains respond differently—in a way that lets them take setbacks in stride and react with less distress to anxiety-provoking mistakes.

Participants either wrote about religion or did a scrambled word task that included religion and God-related words.

Then the researchers recorded their brain activity as they completed a computerized task—one that was chosen because it has a high rate of errors.

The results showed that when people were primed to think about religion and God, either consciously or unconsciously, brain activity decreases in areas consistent with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC is associated with a number of things, including regulating bodily states of arousal and alerting us when things are going wrong.

Interestingly, atheists reacted differently. When they were unconsciously primed with God-related ideas, their ACC increased its activity. The researchers suggest that for religious people, thinking about God may provide a way of ordering the world and explaining apparently random events and thus reduce their feelings of distress.

Not exactly a surprising result.

Unrest

I get in a state of non-relaxation. I sit down I feel the need to get up and do something. The somethings are usually trivial things that have no long term effect. Folding the kitchen towels and hanging them over the oven handle.

What I did on my Summer vacation.

Our yearly vacation consists of visiting my in-laws up in Canada. We usually have a mix of activities that include going to the beach, shopping, dining and visiting touristy places.

Connor looks forward to this trip, partially out of consistency. He has been ready to go a few months now and when the day arrived he was anxious for us to get in the van and get going. We had a few issues that prevented us from having a defined time to leave. This further played havoc with Connors sense of the universe. As with any Autistic, he has angst when things change.

When we did hit the road things went well. We stopped at the hotel in Kelso he preferred and went swimming. T and D went to the movies. We had waffles in the morning and made the rest of the journey. Connor was next interested in the water park (H2O centre), going to the beach and eating French fries at Jax. Sadly Jax had closed.

My running in the AM was a nice way to start the day. There is a number of foothills that made for a challenging run. I added a bit more to the beginning of my run and was soon just over 4-1/2 miles a day. I also got to run up mission hill. Something I had been wanting to do for quite some time. The plan was to make it a six mile run ending with the uphill portion. Sadly I forgot that odometers are in Kilometers and so I ran 3 miles (6k).

Around my mom-in-laws home there were some tasks that needed doing. I was able to hang up some plants extending the chains, replaced a handle on the sliding doors, re-ran the string to close the upstairs bedroom curtains and replaced the flapper on the up stairs bathroom toilet.

We got to see my nephew's martial arts classes and enjoy life in BC for awhile.

The concept of moving up there reared its head on a couple of occasions. There is a lot to like about the people and the area.

National Anthem Fail

I can fully understand someone who is an amateur performer choking during the performance of the National Anthem at a major sporting event. If I was in charge of said event I would have a back up ready.

What I do not get is when a professional entertainer fails at this venue.

Penn Jillette

I am a fan of Penn and Teller. Other then the colorful metaphors that get tossed out in an over done manner.

A while back Penn had a videoblog on his encounter with an Christian which was thoughtful and insightful. I posted it on my blog.

Anyways, last night on the George Lopez show Penn and Teller made an appearance talking about The Showtime show: Penn & Teller: Bullshit. This follows in the Houdini tradition of exposing frauds. Not being a Lopez fan I rarely see the show but as the serendipity that is channel surfing, I came across this segment.

I was able to find the dialog on Newsbusters. It was rather remarkable:

LOPEZ: And have you gotten any shit for stuff that you guys have covered that people have been upset about?

JILLETTE: Well, you know, we’ve done heavy stuff. I mean, we've done the Vatican. We've done Mother Teresa. We've done the Dalai Lama. We've done really, really heavy subjects. And I've got to say it was actually a shock doing the show, the religious communities in the United States of America are the most tolerant people worldwide. I mean, we did really aggressive stuff we believe strongly, and mostly got letters from Christians and Catholics saying we really like how passionately and clearly you put out your ideas. Very few nut cases. However, the nut cases were the 9/11 conspiracy people, who we thought, you know, they're kind of nerdy, they'll be okay. They actually showed up at the offices to attack some of the writers, you know, verbally. And the chiropractors, chiropractors, we did the show on chiropracty, and they went absolutely bug nutty, and like 75 chiropractors showed up at our show at Rio, watched our whole show, then came up after and said we want you to know because of your Bullshit show we are boycotting you. And I went, 75 of you have just bought tickets in order to tell us, I guess not only is your medical science bad, your math really sucks. When you're doing a boycott, you don't give the people money. You don't show up, give them money, and then say now we're boycotting.

As far as the Catholic show goes an expose was released by The Catholic League.

Connors World

(As stated before in my notes, Connor is my 12 year old son who has Autism.)

We have been informed of our travel plans this summer. The declaration was put forth by our 12 year old, stated in no-nonsense terms. This is what will happen...

School ends June 10th. Then we pack the suitcase, and drive to hotel called Holiday inn. We put on swim suits and swim in the pool, go to sleep. Then have waffles and drive north to Canada.

Pretty straightforward right? It does actually fit pretty well with what we are going to do, with good reason. Connor likes for things to be static, ritualistic if you will. He does not handle change. Everyone has different ways of dealing with ambiguity, some better then others. Connor has been able to see and be comforted by finding the static within the change.

He is adaptive in his reasoning. If we go to a Quality Inn, instead of Holiday Inn, he will accept the difference, because he can see that it is still a hotel. Now if the hotel does not have a pool or the waffle maker breakfast. Things are going to begin to get dicey. Yes, we can work him through the situation and he will emerge from the other side. The thing is this, we will probably have to help him through other things, so why not accommodate what we can, as it provides him a degree of comfort and control.

Communication is something most people overlook when it comes to kids. Imagine someone obviously hurting and crying. This person is not able to relate the problem. It could be physical, it could be mental, it could be emotional. As a parent it is paramount to help and without the knowing what is wrong, the knowing how to help, is nigh impossible. It can be heart wrenching. It is...

When Connor can relate to us something like vacation plans. We engage the communication fully. We will make corrections to his expectations. We have also, purposefully, altered plans in order to teach him he can deal with ambiguity. So when unforeseen events occur he has those skills.

No one is crazy about change. The more draconian the more we push back. It is our nature. Yet, our environment is one of near constant change. I suppose the human condition is one of conflict.

symbiosis

I do not enjoy driving. My wife prefers to drive (over anyone). It works out rather well.

Complimentary attitudes like this are nice to have. My Pop states the key to a marriage is finding things to do that make you have things in common. Mom and Pop played bridge, participated in square dancing and had many trips, outings and cruises. All of which gave them things to talk about.

I count myself very lucky that Tina and I, in a given Venn Diagram, have quite a large subset of similarities.

Athlete, am I?

Sometimes my mental definition does not seem to match a reality. Recently on Shoe's blog he announced that he had been an Athlete in High School. I recall thinking it would have been cool to have done that.

This totally disregards my two years on the swim team. Also, the countless hours playing little league baseball, skating, fencing and playing roller hockey. So what exactly is\was my definition? The more I thought about it the more I found I did not have a real definition, I just knew that it was not me.

Connor with special Olympics he is a recognized athlete. I recently ran a 10K. wouldn't that qualify?

So running down the definition: a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina.

Well I was trained in baseball, water polo and roller hockey. Those are sports. I have not done any of these activities in six years or so... Roller skating in and of itself is not a sport, although there are sports that require skating, it is not a game. Running is a sport and an activity.

I can easily say I am athletic... is that the same thing?

Personal best 10K time!

I ran my personal best 10k today. Not really all that impressive, as it was my first 10K run today. My video crew filmed a bit near the end, in which I have been running an hour.

Time: 1:00:06

Shoes: River shoes (see previous blog entry)

Style: Forefooted running style (aka: barefooted style)

Calories burned: 890

Distance covered: 6.21 miles (10k... duh)

Aftermath:

Cardiovascular system, no issues, I had plenty of wind. Lower back, Forefooted style is with a straight back and level head, no issues. Knees, no issues. Shin splints, no issue. Ankles, no issue. Feet, nothing structural. I did suffer some blisters on my big toe. Next time I will need some socks to wick away the sweat in the river shoes. Yes, I said next time. Calf muscles, strained and sore. In getting the running style down I have a tendency to not let my heel touch the ground at all. I believe I have this issue resolved.

I cannot recall needing to ingest food like I did after the race. In a good way. More to follow, I have to go ride bikes with Connor now.

Happy Birthday Tina!

I would have to say the second half of my life has been a very happy one. Thanks to Tina.

Byron and myself had a gig at a Catholic Church Group dance. The leader, Marty, had a limited budget and we took the job. We used a combination of his and my stereo systems, Byron had built a full set of lights and plug in modules that allowed us some limited FX abilities. There was strobe lights as well. We could have brought a fog machine, if we had thought longer.

It was a lot of younger kids. We requested people bring in records (much easier to get an idea of what they listen too). And I went through creating play lists and checking albums for play ability. Byron pretty much ran everything else. I recall him having a good time. I had a better time when a couple of girls closer to my age (by estimation) arrived.

There was one in a cute short black dress and another in some 60's\gypsy garb. I should mention this was a Halloween dance.

I found out later that Tina (the black dress) had been corralled into the dance by her neighbor Rick. She and her sister (gypsy) were a bit taken a back by the general youth of the attendee's. Neither of them would give up an opportunity to dance, which was good news for me.

At this point in my life I my knee was recovering from a motorcycle wreck. I owed lots of $$$ to the ER and I had a job with two bosses who would constantly countermand the other. I had given up on Collage, due to my own unfocused attempt at sublime laziness.

Funny to think that I almost turned down the job out of too much Hassle. Also, I was not sure Byron would be available to help. Interesting how the universe lined itself up.

So I was impressed with her musical tastes and surprised that she had a record that was not released in the USA. We danced and I recall it being a good, good night. At one point she vanished and I was a bit sad, my mind trying to figure out how to get back in touch. She had gone out to get a soda, and returned later.

I ended up asking her to join me skating that Sunday.

I love you very much Tina. Happy Birthday and Thank you.

Once upon a Mesa

The suburban housing tract I grew up in provided me with many wonderful memories. One such memory was unlocked yesterday through a series of scanned pictures dating back to the late 1970's.

Getting in front of a group of people and making a fool of myself is not a big deal. While I can get embarrassed I always figure my quick wit will pull me through. However, getting up on stage, pretending to be someone written by someone else and parroting out the lines like they are my own, tends to tie my stomach up. So entertaining good, acting bad... for me...

In my formative years (read: High School), I was involved in, yet apart from the Drama Department. There was any number of reasons. Primarily because I was a willfully distracted student and my folks saw drama as a greater distraction.

They did strongly support and encourage my singing in Choir and Madrigals, without which I might have not attended school as regularly as I should. I guess I owe my parents many apologies for the angst I caused.

So I knew the Stage Crew, I knew the Drama kids, I was the Usher at many, many performances and did swing a hammer and grab a paintbrush or two.

A drama friend from High School posted a group of pictures from those old days on her Facebook page. This lead me to find David, the kid from up the street. An old friend.

David M. lived a few houses down from an outlet from our tract that was supposed to be a cul-de-sac. His backyard was next to the drainage ditch and the layout of his home matched my own. We both liked Sci-fi, and played Wild Wild West in his backyard. He was always building, forts and stages and other wonderful sets. He made a tropical paradise at one point, complete with Hammocks. We both started doing magical illusions around that time.

Still it was one of those friendships that lacked consistency. Every few months we would hang out then time would pass between.

Come High School things changed. He did hang out with a different crowd then I. However, I would catch up with him when I was hanging around the Drama folks. He was an artist, the best one I knew. Come graduation divergence of life paths occur and like so many others, I never really kept. track.

It is one of those things you wonder "whatever happened too" followed by the hope that they made themselves a good life.

Dave Wilder did just that and kept. very true to himself as well. He changed his last name (from Meek) to something fitting and as you can see on his link, is still very much an artist. He is also a cowboy, which fits his nature.

Small goals

Since I started walking to and from work, I always wanted to be able to run. After learning how to run again. I was able to attain that goal. I did not put much into that achievement. It had a feeling of "wow I did it, glad thats over" and running less then a mile is hardly anything by my measure.

Last week I started a good 10 week low calorie cycle, to loose down to a more healthy weight. Being nearly 6' and at 207 pounds is not a healthy weight. Yes, I know that height weight charts are fraught with errors and everyones body needs to be what it needs to be, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Still...

I am carrying too much body fat. By my estimation about 20 pounds too much. ANY physical activity I do would benefit from not carrying around 20 pounds. (I am hoping to find someplace that can check my fat by immersion... but thats another deal.)

So today I felt was worthy of a self-nod, this was the second day in a row I was able to run 30 minutes total. While that is 2.5 miles I would note that includes 783 foot climb and descent. I would love to do that barefoot. Over the last seven days I have been running 20 minutes a day with a 30 minute walk.

With a bit of work I will be eliminating the walk and running the full route. I guess thats my next small goal.

Connor's Early Morning.

I guess this is not all that amusing. Until you take into account Connors Autism. When he responds to a situation it can take you off guard.

He again lost a tooth handed it to mom with strict instructions to throw it away, because that "tooth is trouble". This kid does NOT want some fairy with money visiting him! No-siree bob!

I have the duty of rousting him from a nights sleep. This generally occurs around 7:15 AM Pacific Time (GMT -08:00). The response given will run the gambit from nothing to a near leaping from his upper bunk!

This morning was an example of the former. "Good Morning Connor! It is Wednesday and Time to get ready for school!" Instead of the disheveled squinting, labored mobilization to a sitting position, instead a verbal response was issued.

"Dangit!"

Which gave me a chuckle, in all empathy!"

Pedal driven, human powered, single track vehicle.

Bicycle, I got to teach Connor how to ride one. That makes me three for three (woot!). Connors tutorial was very academic for me, due mostly to his autism by way of my earlier lessons with the older two.

We had two sessions. The first one, I'll call 'inner ear training', was learning that he can balance and pedal, turn and stop. Knowing how to set up the pedal to take advantage of that downward stomp, pushing power, is paramount. I find that working with Newtonian law is pretty difficult when starting out. We also had him 'walk' the bike while seated then glide to get the feel for balancing. After 10 minutes or so he was done and so we headed back home.

The next day I opted to bike ride to Burger King. This is a familiar route, we have taken many times, on the swing bike (kind of attachable tandem). Connor was quick to understand this familiar theme. Although he did keep asking if I was taking my grey bike.

When we arrived at the park (which is quite nice and quite large) I went over a few of the same lessons and we set off. Me jogging\walking and providing physical and emotional support. His ability had already jumped up from the previous day. I figure his muscle memory recall had taken over. We had several stops and starts with various degree's crashing, as expected. None were too bad. I was waiting for the inevitable big crash.

I noted he began to lean against me to ease the process. My response was to change sides. This was actually a good sign that he learned how to shift his balance. Around the five minute mark into the trip he put it all together and started riding. We covered some 100' to 200' long sections before going off trail. Around the third or fourth of these 'excursion' to the immediate right of the paved path, Connor was able to correct course and get back on trial by himself. He had that wobbly over-steering going on that is both amusing and dangerous to someone running alongside. I got to test my dodge a few times. While turning is something that we need to gain confidence on. The pedaling and general riding teaching was mastered. He did stop everyone on the trail to call attention to his being able to ride. People seemed amused and a bit later down the trail as we met two ladies a second time. The requested to watch his newfound prowess and heaped accolades. All good things.

We did have the bad crash. A sign pole over by our Wal-mart built wetlands (reclaimed). Like most poles to new riders it appeared to exert a some kind of attraction force and yanked him directly towards it, faster then I could respond, He let go with one hand and that was all she wrote. He went down pretty hard on his left knee. He had a bit of crying, which means quite a lot of pain was involved, Connor is not given to histrionics. He did not break skin and he was able to walk around without favoring or new pain.

Then the most important part. He got on the bike and continued. While I am not sure why this happens the way it does, it always happens. It strikes me as infinitely valuable in life, after crashes, you get back on the bike.

By the time we made it to Burger King Connor was riding very well. We took the road through the VA (also in the park) on the way back and I spent the bulk of the journey running.

It was a very good day.

Comic book Originals

Superman is arguably the most known comic book superhero. The iconic S and red cape has been around since that fateful day in 1938 by Siegel and Shuster.

Not really... You see they took their creation from Philip Wylie's pulp novel Gladiator. In that book our Hugo Danner had super strength, bullet proof skin and was able to leap tall buildings. He lived in a small farming community and pretended to be mild mannered to hide his secret identity and protect those loved ones.

DC Comics also has the Green Lantern which was a Creative Re-imagining of E.E. Smiths The Lensemen. Also, The Batman who's lineage is from Johnston McCulley's Zorro.

Not to say that DC comics has the lock on plagiarized characters. Marevel Comics X-men took from DC Comics The Doom Patrol quite a lot.

Also, Disney's Lion King has more then a passing resemblance to Kimba the White Lion.

Does it really matter? No, but I would say the source material deserves it's place in the sun.