Shuppatsu!

Yesterday was good.

I unfolded my bike and rode the up-down road to where Honoka is having her gallery. Then I visited an African art museum and after that pedaled over to an interesting outdoor gallery of which I showed you the thumb. An artist of yore bought the land and using the mountains, sky, forest converted the entire area into art. In the very middle of the place is an interesting round building of brick that is apparently a replica of an old winery in France.

I rode back to Honoka's gallery at 1715 but they had closed for the day. However she had her eyes peeled from above and called out to me from her friend's house a bit up the mountain when she saw me at the gallery. We borrowed her friend's car, tossed my bike in and drove up to this JazzBar Chandra where I made a booking to stay. It was a good 30 minutes to get here.

Both of us were hungry so we wandered to a restaurant in the surrounding woods and had a quick dinner, then came back for the Jazz. It was ... not interesting but our conversation was compelling and we probably annoyed the other guests by talking the entire time. Honoka went home about 10:30 and I had a shower and hit the sack about 11pm. As Honoka doesn't live in Japan (Bali, Columbia, NYC) I don't know when Ill see her next but I'm sure she will let me know when she is in the country again.

I'm just enjoying coffee now and then I must be off. I have to ride about 8km to the first geocaching spot. See if you can find Sanbu-ichi, Yamanashi Prefecture on google to get an idea where I am and what I'm doing. It is kind of a famous spot as there were water wars here in the past.

I love you!
Cam

Tokyo NoNo Chiba Geocaching 110814

http://youtu.be/zGFdgB_AxiA
The second geocache attempt on Monday...

Myoden Park Geocaching 110814

http://youtu.be/zYgPyp70vgo
The first geocache attempt on Sunday

Skate 1 (2011/04/10)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHJ9dL3aX5A
This is my second time on the skates. It was fun!

First Attempt @ Skating in X Decades: HARD!

OMG! I never would have guessed how difficult it is to skate! I went for my first time today. It reminded me of when I was a kid skating on the ice rink. All those years of lessons and how much I hated them (and sucked at it) all came back to me.

Wow... this. is. difficult.

What. a. challenge!

I think I was right to order that book (that didn't arrive yet), but I wanted to try something new (as Darrell suggested) so I put the skates on anyway and went out for a bit.

A bazillion thoughts ran through my mind:

"How do you stop? How do you go? How do you turn? How do you turn the other way? How do you stay standing? How do you sit down? How do you do this? Will I die if I get run over by a car? What should I make for dinner tonight? Is that dried dog poop I'm heading straight toward? Help!!"

I made sure there were lots of "things" around me to grab on to because for the life of me, I have no idea how pushing that rubber stopper on the right heel into the ground is supposed to stop me.

I bet my ankles are going to be stiff tomorrow, because they sure were burning as I was trying to simply stay upright. I sure was wobbly. (That will be a fun memory).

Twenty minutes. That's the best I could do today. Good thing I bought lots of protection, too. I just wish they had a bum protector that works as well as the hands, elbows and knee protectors. Ouch!

Think of a staircase, for a moment. We FEEL that we are progressing when we move up the staircase. But while we are horizontal, it doesn't feel like we are getting anywhere. This is the PERCEIVED Learning Curve. This horizontal period is also when many students decide to quit whatever it is they are learning, because they feel they are not progressing. 

However, the actual learning curve is a little bit different. Think of those stairs again, and draw a line through the tops of each step. Can you see now there is a graph that is continually moving upward over time? This is the ACTUAL Learning Curve. Even though we don't perceive we are learning, actually we are. We just don't realize it.

Last weekend I made a teeny step forward and up: I bought my skates. Today I took another step forward: I used my skates. If I continue to use them, I know I will get better; I know I will learn. Even if it doesn't FEEL like I'm getting better, as long as I keep doing it, I am pretty confident that one day I may suddenly realize, "hey! I'm doing it!"

This IS going to be a challenge! I got a snicker out of a couple of 9 or 10 year old girls as I was holding onto a stop sign to keep myself from falling down... At least I was able to make somebody happy from my adventure. Can't complain about that.

I love you!
Cam