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I ran into an old acquaintance at the coffee shop this morning, and heard yet another version of the recession blues. This guy is thinking about Korea, and teaching English, because he can’t find work here. Another friend, the J.J., landed in China this week to begin 10 months as an English teacher as well. If I was a rabid Ron Paul libertarian, I would take a moment to discuss the irony of us training people abroad to take our jobs, but I don’t actually believe that.

More interesting to me was this brother’s mention of a “golden thread” that runs through all of his work experience and life interests. I asked him what he has been doing, and what he is looking to get involved in, and his answer ran broadly from one thing to another. “I know it sounds all over the place, but there is a golden thread that runs through all of it that I see as my unifying theme.” I won’t share his golden thread here, but it started me thinking about my own golden thread.

Another friend, Kelly Boehmer, sews horrifically beautiful sculptures by hand, with red thread always. Red thread is her golden thread.

If I value anything, I value service and creativity. I am buttressed by one, and grab for the other however I can, but sometimes I wish it was the other way around.

Juancho

There must be something in the water down there in Martin and St. Lucie counties.

Ft. Pierce, Stuart, Jensen Beach, Ankona?

If I am a rich man, and I most certainly am, it is because of my wealth of friends. Not my wealthy friends mind you. If we all pooled our resources we might be able to purchase a time share on a small island, but there will be no common paradise where we build our walls against the world.

Jensen Beach,and its surrounding communities, produce a disproportionate number of these friends. These are not only the good people you meet out for dinner, but the ones you plan conspiracies with, hiding the bodies of your best misdeeds. Locals from this region act local everywhere. They speak a Khoisan patois that adapts yet remains fundamentally recognizable to all who grow up there. A mountain soda is an orange whip is a tall blonde.

My closest conspirator noted of one friend in particular, “He’s the kind of guy who is the beginning and end to a lot of stories.” The same could be said of them all. They are pirates for the most part, ingenious miscreants who find a way. There are some benevolent vandals and outlaws. They are black saints, sinner ladies, and citizens of Middle Earth. They maraud about the world buying drinks (or having drinks bought more likely.) Picking up shovel or sword, they are up for the task at hand.

So let’s hear from them if we may, what is it about that place?

Juancho

500 miles up and down U.S. Highway 19 and this is only Tuesday. You might think this is a picture of all of the deer we saw along the highway, contemplating a prance into the headlights. It might also be a view from the tree stand, where many of my old riding buddies are spending their days this winter. I might think it resembles the stares of my remaining ride buddies who wonder what happened to the old Juancho, man of a thousand excuses, as they search for a gear to make the pain go away.

It’s just a bunch of deer though, because I don’t truck in excuses and metaphors anymore. I just tell it like it is.

Now that every ride counts, every ride really counts. I take to the bike like a man afire and rack it reluctantly when it has to end. I think I need some bike church to take me down a notch, otherwise I am going to ride to the pole barn in Reddick or maybe To Hell and Back with Bicycle House.

Big talk for a man who ate BBQ in Dixie County twice in three days. I don’t care, come shut me up, that’s what I say if you think you got it.

I hear talk of a race at Munson. I’ve never done an official mountain bike race in my 23 years in the saddle, but then again every ride is a race- against someone, everyone, yourself, even death her own self.

Come and get me

Juancho

That’s what my friend, Montana Bob, would say when you whined or complained about anything. “Shut up and keep totin’.” Pick yourself up and shuffle along.

Our friend the Wrecking Ball took a slam and cracked his collarbone like a number 2 pencil over the weekend. The X-ray looks like somebody smashed a sleeve of crackers in his shoulder cavity. What can you say to a man named Wrecking Ball that he doesn’t already know? Nothing. He knows the only way out of this is through. Keep totin’ Wrecking Ball.

Our readers up north may not sympathize, but it is too damn hot down here. This state is a steam bath of hay fever and confused Camellias and we are deep in the heart of winter. I don’t like it much. Keep totin’.

My friend who suffered the horrific de-gloving of his scrotum on his inaugural mountain bike ride a few months ago returned to the trail on Sunday to lead the Robot Army, minus some ‘bots, in a victory lap. We stopped at the site of of the accident and raised a water bottle full of bacteria and soap residue to his resilience, at least that’s what mine tasted like. He crashed again, shoulder-checked a tree, and ran off the trail a couple of times, but the boy has the fire for riding. He’ll keep totin’.

With San Felasco behind me, I need a new riding goal. I’m looking slant-eyed at the Bicycle House To Hell and Back ride. That’s something like 150 mile round trip into Tate’s Hell and back. That’s a lot of totin’.

Life sets them up, we knock them down.

Keep totin’ y’all.

Juancho

I heard this Pablo Neruda poem tonight in a Yin yoga class, which is a sentence I never ever thought I would get the opportunity to write, but out of respect for all of the soldiers for peace the world over, I’m going to share it with you guys on this day. Tomorrow I hope to continue my takedown of the tour of San Felasco. -Juancho

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.