Pops: The Green Thumb Kuk-Sool-Gamingnerd

Full Name: Daniel K. Bergsma
Relation to Sacrag: Stuie's Dad, Robbie at alot of ice cream at his house in middle school
Robbie's Favorite Quality: Like's how he handles telemarketers
Stuie's Favorite Quality: His ability to get along with everybody. If you make him angry, it's your fault.  (unless you are a hammer, in which case it might be his fault you hit his thumb, but he'll hate you anyway...swine).
Sponsorship Status: 5-Star, for a cash donation and dinner at TGI Friday's, incluing Guiness shakes.
Superpower: Ability to look masculine while holding a Yorkie.

Dad and Lola

      The Poppadre. Daddio. Pops. Dad. Dan. He has many aliases, and wears many hats. Born in Nigeria, my old man landed himself in the great white north when my grandpa got hired at Lake Superior State University to start the education program there. He has been in the Soo ever since. Pops is a 4th-degree black belt in Kook-Sook-Won, a Korean martial art with cool black outfits. As such, his hands are dangerous weapons, but could not be attached to a more level-headed, peaceful individual. Never a hunter or a fighter, Dan Bergsma has the heart of a particularly friendly lion. Compassion and courage lead him down a friendly path.
    While Dad isn't keeping prisoners in line or tending to his rental houses, he is probably working in his massive garden or playing Magic: The Gathering, Squad Leader, Blitzekrieg, or D&D. He is a master strategist with stone cold poker face, a cheesy humorist with a pleasant laugh, and an encouraging father with a good hug and a son who loves him. I have maintained since kindergarten, and still do, that he can lift a semi-truck with two fingers.

Dad and little Stuie

Plowing his Garden

Games: Updates

First: We have posted our first update to our game stats. We have been keeping track in a notebook since Friday. Everybody gets to see the first update, and if you have not guessed yet or want to change your guess, post it under this blog. Because blogger was down for a few days last week, we will allow people to post a final guess by Monday at midnight.
Other game: Robbie and I have had to change some plans due to my right knee taking a dump. The left one is great, though. I have posted a poll on the right side of the page. Guess what we will do.
PEACE!

Going Going Back Back

Day 3.  We had a late start rolling out of Aaron and Ron's house, but we had the opportunity to preview Tron on their 3D television.  It was challenging to leave their cushiony living room after doing ninety miles the day before.  But we dug deep and got on the road at about 1 p.m.  We turned right onto Pico Rd.

It wasn't for about ten, downhill miles with the wind at our back that we realized that we should have turned left.  We passed a bunch of guys wearing yamakas, then we passed a bunch of Chinese restaurants, then we started passing some liquor stores, and Stuie said, "Whoa, Rob.  I'm going to check the map.  I don't think we're headed towards the beach."

We stopped.  I watched the action on the basketball court across the street while Stuie checked the map.  An old black guy wearing a beat up bowler cap walked up to me and said, "That ain't the way to get out of the ghetto, son."  He pointed to the basketball court.  I agreed with him, and Stuie and I rode back, uphill and against the wind.

Stuie's knee started to hurt after a while.  Shouldn't'a gone 90 miles yesterday.  We stopped about twenty miles north of our original location.  Didn't want to mess up his knee too badly. We ate a Clif Bar and went over our options.  We were too far from the city to walk back.  No campgrounds around.  Hotels in that area are too expensive.  We decided to walk up the road to the next town to try to hitch a ride at a gas station.  That town turned out to be Malibu--not the friendliest spot for hitchhikers with loaded bikes.  BMW's don't have much leg room.  Just give me a nice mini-van.

The gas station was lovely.  Six different people with a vehicle big enough for the four of us (Stu, The Mango Sentinel, LO Ryder, and me) turned us down before we found a ride.  A nice beach bum-type told us he'd give us a ride back to Santa Monica.  His van already had four people in it.  Cramped.  We held out for something better.  A few minutes later, we found a firefighter to give us a ride all the way to Sam Pavlat's home in west LA.  That's where we're staying tonight.

Here we are: back in LA and watching 8 Mile.  Stu's knee is hurt.  We're a day behind schedule.  And the insides of my elbows are sunburned.  What will we do?  Stay tuned...

3300 Miles to Bliss: The Movie

Just below the main header of our page, there is a new link that will take you to a Youtube playlist of all the videos we post on the site. Just click the link, and the whole playlist will role automatically, although you can skip past old videos by clicking the arrows at the bottom of that page.

We are going to try to be a little more consistent with our video-taking so that the playlist makes sense. Please, spam people's walls with the URL to the playlist. It is a nice alternative to reading all the time, which I know you kids today hate doing.

Peace and Love. We are going to get some LA breakfast.

Did we make the 97 miles to LA? Read to find out

Stuie here. Today was a much more productive day in some ways. Here is how it all happened.  Also below are several videos taken over the last few days, each about a minute long.

5:30 am: I wake up coughing, go hack up a bunch of radioactive-looking phlem. Go back to bed.

7:00 am: I am awake and can't sleep. I text Shannon because I miss her. Then fall asleep. Then wake up a bunch coughing and fall back asleep a bunch. Then, somewhere in there,  I take an cyproflaxin.

8:00 am: I wake up, as we had planned to do at 8am. Robbie says, "You are sick. Sleep in important. Take your time." So I did.

9:00 am: We get up, and start packing our stuff. We text people in L.A. and look up routes to figure out how we are going to get there. While we are doing this, Jerrod blasts into the intercom to our room that little ditty they play before raced. "DA da da-da da, DA da da-da da, DA da da-da da da DAAA DA. DA DA DA DA DA DAAAA, DA DA DA DA DA DAAA" etc. That made us laugh. We went upstairs to get some cereal. 

11:00 am: We leave Joel and Jerrods, hugging them and Harley and Rayray and thanking all of them for helping us out. We use their pump to inflate our tires, then we roll north on Pacific Coast highway back towards Camp Pendelton, passing the Top Gun House on the way (which is very run down and shabby now. It's sad).
11:15 am: We arrive at the intersection where, just one day earlier, the biggest moron on earth sent us climbing the bombing range mountains of CP. We turn left this time, and go on our way. The trail along the coast in Camp P is really nice. We must have seen hundreds of cyclists in racing outfits on that trail. Beautiful. There was also alot of roadkill. We saw a dead rabbit, and the rib cage was sticking up, plainly visible from out moving bikes. Also in CP, we decided to see how fast we were going, so we pulled out the GPS while moving and looked: at that point, on flat ground with a tail-wind--19.8 miles per hour. Neither of us were winded, and we were having nice chats about doing bike races in Michigan when we return (look out, Ben).

1:00 pm: We are in San Clemente and my tire pops. It took quite a while to unload my bags and my Uke from their bungied security on the rack, take of the tire, dispose of it, put a new tire in, and inflate it to a safe pressure. With my little emergency pump, we can only get about 90 pounds per square inch in my tire. I discovered why it popped while changing it; there was a jagged, metal thorn of sorts jammed in through my tire. Good I found it, or I would have left it in my tread, put a new tube in, and the metallic menace would have popped that, too. The needs more like 140 pounds per square inch, so we googled directions to "bike shop" on my iphone and found the nearest one was only a mile away. That bike shop: San Clemente Cyclery, selling and fixing bikes since 1974. They were extremely helpful, giving us a top-off with their full-sized floor pump, and selling me a few new tubes to have on hand when the ones I have now pop. Their number is 949-492-8890. If you are touring past, save that number in your phone and they will help you when shit hits the fan.

3pm: We roll through Laguna Beach. It wasreally nice. The hills along the coast, however, were hard to get up and down. Once, I got going as fast as I could down a hill to build momentum for the upcoming mountain, and my light blew off my helmet right at the bottom of the dip, so I had to walk my bike up the monster. my knees feel very tired. I'm icing them now, as a matter of fact. The pressure required to climb a big hill really wears on the knees, and the speed at which one climbs a hill like that isn't much faster than walking. Cost-benefit analysis. Walk. Laguna beach was super nice. There were lots of fancy-looking girls there, and lots of older ladies who had once been fancy looking girls but had passed their prime and failed to receive the memo. When I'm bald and fat, I will find a new style that works for a fat bald guy. That will reduce attention to my flaws, though people will still wonder why Shannon has settled for me, if she has indeed still settled for me. The hazard of being with somebody alot better looking than you: people wonder why.

4pm: I'm dying of hunger and losing energy to pedal very fast. We stop at Ralph's in Newport Beach, where I go into the store, eat some free-sample cheese and crackers, and buy oranges, bananas, protein drinks, a gatorade, and 6 clif bars. We feast outside, chilling with a funny security guard, who told us that we were about 40 miles from Santa Monica yet. Turns out we were 54 miles from Santa Monica. I looked at google maps, having learned my lesson with that piece of crap in Camp Pendelton. There were 4 hours between that moment and nightfall, and 54 miles between us and our final destination. We decide to go for it, as we have a place to stay in LA (3 actually. We are popular there) but not only part of the way to LA. Although we had already ridden roughly 45 miles, we hit the road, prepared to ride even farther.

5:30 pm: We have passed alot of boring stuff, except we went past a nude beach next to a power plant with two adjacent dome buildings that looked like boobs. Now, we are riding quickly across much flatter terrain. Rob had to tinkle, so we stopped at at grocery store so he could do so, and refill our water bottles (with water, not pee). It looks like we are on a good pace to make it to Santa Monica, on the northwest side of LA.

6pm: We rolling into Long Beach, our halfway point for part 2 of the days journey. The next 15 miles was in the ghetto or in industrial parks. It was not a fun place to ride. People were smoking weed on the streets, crackheads  were pillaging garbage cans. The green signs that said "Pacific Coast Highway Bike Trail" had bullet holes in them. There were dozens of taco stands (which would normally be a good thing, but it smelled really good and we weren't about to stop). The industrial parks probably gave us lung cancer. Gross places to be.

7pm: We have been hitting alot of traffic lights, which really adds time to the journey. It will be nice when we are passed Southern Cali into more wilderness where we can bike uninterrupted by cars and their needs. We see a sign that says, "18 miles to Santa Monica." I am very tired, but the adrenaline rush makes me pedal like crazy for the next hour. Robbie keeps up fine. He isn't tired at all, as he is in much better shape than I am. At times, we are doing 30 mph, at other times, we are stopped at lights or walking our bike up a massive hill. The scariest portion of this hour-to-the-finish was going through LAX (massive airport in LA). It was still a legally condoned bike path, and we had our headlamps on the back of our helmets, but motorists were not impressed with us. Rob got honked at and yelled at by some Pakistani cab driver. I was really cranking it through there. Lots of 4 lane tunnels of 50mph traffic. We must have been doing 35 for most of that stretch. Fear=speed.

8pm: It was dark, we had made it about a mile past the airport. It was also very cold. We were someplace close to Santa Monica, and all we new is that our place to stay was someplace close, so instead of going into the heart of SM, we decide to call Aaron and Ron, our hosts, and see about getting picked up instead of biking in the dark. Aaron says he'll come get us, and we are only about 10 minutes away from his house, 5 miles from Santa Monica (oh yeah).

8:30. We have been sitting by the shopping carts at a Ralph's, eating the rest of the tortilla chips we bought when we were lost in Camp Pendelton. Aaron shows up with a moving van. We throw our bikes in and peace out. We get to Aaron and Ron's house, which is gorgeous (all my uncle's friends have gorgeous houses, as does my uncle. It's a competition they have which has directly benefitted the bike tried, though we are now at the end of the hotel chain and must find alternative lodging from here on out.) We take hot showers and throw laundry in.  We go eat some Brazilian food, where the waiters were upset that we requested a pitcher of water. It was delicious. We walked back, and now I am typing this blog.

The Rainstorm and the River are My Brothers

The first day of the bike trip began in San Diego under overcast skies on Friday the 13^th.  Considering the conditions, I think we surpassed expectations.  We biked approximately seventy miles total.  Yaaaaheaaahass.  And, after about six hours of biking, we had a total displacement of thirty miles north.  Shoot.  I’ll explain.

We ran our errands and said our good byes and ate our last few cupcakes before we bounced.  So we were running a little late.  We had a beautiful ride for about thirty miles—passed a park full of families reenacting the final scene from Mary Poppins, saw a bunch of elephant-sized pelicans, biked alongside Professor Dan from San Diego State, saw Torre Pines golf course (what a hell hole), and sighted Santa Claus.

We stopped in Carlsbad for a sit down and got our tires inflated at a bike shop there called Carbon Connection.  The owner, Robert, pumped them up for us.  He was a native Michigander, grew up in Flint.    He said, "Well, all I can say is 'good luck.'"  We chatted for about fifteen minutes.

In Oceanside, we stopped again—ate “America’s Finest” rum cake and saw the longest wooden pier on the west coast.  Also, the beach house from Top Gun is there.  It’s run down.  Makes me sad.  But I think that I’m going to call Stuie “Goose” all day tomorrow.

Things went downhill as soon as we entered Camp Pendleton, a huge Marine training area base thing that we had to drive through, instead of around, because it covers about fifty square miles.  We rode up to the gate, showed the guy our ID, and, after a little small talk, he waved us through.  He was from Indiana.

We cruised for about three miles, then the bike path pointed left while the main rode continued straight.  Down the road, we saw a bicycler with a crew cut, and we asked him for directions.  Dude was real confident:

“Oh yeah.  You just go down the road there, take your first left after the airport there, and that should take you through.”

We did that.  About twenty uphill miles and two hours later, we got pulled over by the Military Police.

“You guys know you’re not supposed to be on this road, right?” he said.'

“Yeah, dude.  We were just trying to see how far we could get.  This is about four miles further than last time.  Tomorrow, we’re gonna try to make it across the firing range,” we should have said.

“We’re lost.  How do you get to the north exit?” we said.

“Well, you are going to have to turn around.  Take a right on Fencrest and take another right on Philbert, and that will take you out,” he said.

Philbert was the road that we did not take earlier, by the advice from the bicycler bastard with the crew cut.  That’s probably a euphemism for how my bicycling companion felt about the man.  Stuie was a little upset, already, because of the size of the hill we were climbing and the amount of hunger that he had, so the Crew Cut Bicycler’s failure in direction-giving rattled him to vexation.  I believe Stu said, “We should have gotten his number so that we could have prank called him every day for the rest of his life.”  

What a good lesson to learn from this experience, though: remember to sing with all the voices of the mountain.

By then, it was too late in the day to try to make it through Camp Pendleton.  So we rode back out of camp towards Oceanside.  We stopped at the grocery store.  Stuie ran in, bought chips and cheese, a V8, and a box of South Beach Diet Bars.  He came outside, ripped open a diet bar, ate it, and sprawled out on the pavement in meal replacement ecstasy.

Luckily, Stuie knew these guys, Joel and Jarrod, who live in Oceanside (just thirty miles from San Diego).  They are unbelievably, super nice guys, and they let us stay with them.  Also, they have a grill built into their countertop.  !   We ate some pizza and drank some beer and everything is lovely.

***

We’re taking The Game guesses until Monday.  Anticipate more road kill sightings than expected. Shooting for LA tomorrow.

                 

CD 7: Mama and Pop Guimond

Name: Mama and Pop Guimond
Relation to Sacrag: Parents
Sponsor Status: Seven-layer bar for conceiving one half of the biking duo
Occupation: … parenting
Rob's favorite Quality:  They encourage me to try new things with an open mind (On that note:  yesterday, I ate a chicken foot at a San Diegonese Chinese restaurant.  Chicken feet taste worse than lima beans.)
Stu's Favorite Quality: Their encouragement and sarcastic jokes when Rob and I play basketball in the rain

Super Power: Constraint; we could have received many more slaps in the forehead than what we did receive.

The existence of most of the things (excluding Stuie) that I brought on this bike trip can be attributed to Mom and Pop Guimond in some fashion.  Well, I feel like I can attribute my literacy to them, too.  So… understand that, behind all of these grammar problems and puns, Mama Guimond is metaphorically standing there with a dozen no-bakes and shouting “Go Stuie” and “Get your arms up Guimond” and Pop Guimond is standing there ready to remind us to put on sunscreen and stay out of the damn rain.

CD 2: Vitamin A

Name: Alyssa
Relation to Sacrag: Bookie, Girlfriend (Robert’s), Enforcer, Blissfest Organizer, Stinky Cheese
Sponsor Status: Chocolate brownie for existing, hating on buffalo wing dip, laughing, digging dry humor, recording guesses for The Game, taking a leadership role in organizing the Blissfest camp, and smelling like rice pudding
Occupation: Chilling
Rob's favorite Quality: Her head lice sings quite lovely, sometimes.
Stu's Favorite Quality: She is a direct descendant of Robin Williams and Xena.

Super Power: Her moles often scab over.

From my understanding (this could be wrong), Stuie was Alyssa’s RA a while back.  Alyssa and this other female named Shannon were Stuie’s favorite residents that year because they got down with most of the hall events, chilled real hard, and avoided flinging too much feces around the dorm.  Strong friendships emerged through all that shit.

Last summer, I didn’t have transportation to Blissfest.  Alyssa drove from Lansing to pick me up from Holland, and we drove to Bliss together.  So we met.  After that, we ended up driving a lot more places.  And through all those campfiresmoke-lackofshower-tired-drivingontherumblestrips-ricepudding-BrettDennen-earlyearlymorning car rides, I got to know how smelly she can be and how chill she is. 

At SVSU, Alyssa does some baking, some RA’ing, some writing columns for the Vanguard, some science-y stuff, and some rolling around on the ground and singing.  She has an impressive range of knowledge.  I noticed this when she correctly identified a vegetable that I have never seen before. (I don’t remember the name of the thing.)  And, sometimes, when she experiences glare in her eyes, she looks like a mix between Robert DeNiro and Edward R.Murrow.  And, sometimes, she has this look when she doesn’t experience glare in her eyes.  Winner. 

CD6: The Butterfly Woman: Fiberealtoblate Mom

Name: Pamela Marie Chipman
Relation to Sacrag: Stuie's Mom, used to make Robbie bran-muffins for basketball trips.
Sponsorship Status: 5-star, for donating road-IDs and Badger tickets
Occupation: County Assessor
Robbie's Favorite Quality: conversations with her are like going down a really comfortable waterslide
Stuie's Favorite Quality: she plays the hammer dulcimer
Super Power: Immune to Embarrassment, in fact, social disapproval sometimes encourages awkward behavior.

Sister Katie, Momster, Sister Sally

Pamela Chipman is a free spirit, no doubt. She is likely a 50-year-old version of Coop. She is loopy, bright, and energetic. The alias, Butterfly Woman, was created when she established her own fiber-arts studio in downtown Sault Ste. Marie, adding a great deal of woven and tie-dye goods to the world, and making it smell more like Renaissance festivals.
Pam has been a real-estate appraiser, a country clerk of some kind, an attendant at a sailboat shop, a county assessor in three counties, a fiber artist, an oblate at a Benedictine Monastery in Wisconsin, a producer of astrological charts, a single mom, in a band, and a cross-country ski champion for her age division in Sault Ste. Marie (an older lady beat her, though).
She went to high school with Tony Dungee.
Once, she slapped a Chinese man on the ass at a minor league baseball game thinking it was her husband. There was a significant height difference.

She claims that her dog, Mobley, peed her name in the snow once.  

I also must mention Becky, Durance, Page and Ben Paul, who ordered from the Butterfly woman a few astrological charts on Valentines day. The revenue from that endeavor went to the ferry tickets for Sacrag to cross lake Michigan. Thanks to all of you. Ben, good luck with your bike racing. I'm rooting for Sam Burtt in CC, though. I hope you finish right after him, if that's any consolation. 

If anybody would like to order an astrological chart that explains what the starry heavans have to say about the prospects of your relationship with somebody, you can order them here for $10. Just email your Name, birthdate, and time of birth (and the same information for whoever you would like to know your galactic compatibility with) tobutterflywoman54@gmail.com. She will let you know how to submit your $10 payment and send you your chart.   

Clarification of "The Game": And Sacrag's estimate

Hello All,

We want to make sure there is no ambiguity with the calculation of the points in The Game. So here are a few points of clarification: You can change your guess until Friday at 5pm.
1. Brian Thomas makes a ridiculous accusation that our point totaling won't be precise. Especially with fluid ounces drank. It will be precise, calculated at the end of each day. So no interval guesses will be accepted. Especially if you are a snobby Sociology 225 professor.

2. For all categories, remember that you must add points for both Robbie AND Stuie doing them. That is, a Sunrise will be witnessed by both Robbie and Stuie, so will be worth 2pts for each of them, so 4 pts go to the total.

3. Miles traveled will be recorded on our GPS, and therefor includes only our 'traveling' trip miles, as we will not record a run to the store on the GPS.

4. If we encounter some sort of hybrid, Apple-Orange, that will count as half an orange eaten for each of us. Or, if it's a Kiwi, Mango, Orange, that will be a third of an orange for each of us. 

And finally, here is our guess as to the final point total: 23,106.   Don't take that as any sort of authority. We are not eligible for the prize, nor are we invested in being right with our guess. In fact, Robbie doesn't care much, but I would like to score as many points as possible. It's gonna get real.

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage people to comment on our blog. We love to hear from our readers. It makes us feel like we aren't so far away from you all. So please, leave us your tidbits after you read. Each one is like a mushroom in SuperMario, floating across the screen to us to beef us up after we run into a spiky turtle or a lizard in football pads.
Also, we are curious how many people are following this blog privately. We have posted a poll. Please respond to that. It will help us understand why our hits are growing so fast.
We are going for a bike ride.
PEACE!!
 stu

"The Game": 3 days to guess

Here are the final rules to "The Game"

Look at the below categories. One occurrence of that category (for instance, one egg eaten) would be worth the listed point value (eg. 40 oranges eaten would be worth 80 pts). Each category is totaled between Stuie and Robbie. So if Stuie eats an egg, and Robbie eats 10 eggs, 11 eggs have been eaten.  The object of the game is to guess the total point value of all the categories as of July 7th, at the end of the trip. The closest guesser will get, "The Prize."

 

Posting guidelines: under this entry, post the point total that you expect will be achieved by sacrag by July 7th.  

 

POSTING DEADLINE: Friday, May 13th, at 5pm Eastern Time.  We will look at the blog at that time, and write down all the guesses. If you change your guess after the deadline, we will make fun of you on our blog.  

We encourage an ESPN-like debate over how many points we will actually achieve. Speculate and argue with each other about it. We aren't sure, either, so it will be nice to hear what you all think.

Good luck.

 

Sunrises witnessed: 2 pts

Miles Traveled: 0.25 points

State Lines Crossed: 25 points

County Lines Crossed: 8 points

City Limits Crossed: 3pts

Festivals Attended: 15 pts

Books Read: 10 pts

Eggs Eaten: 2 pts

Oranges Eaten: 4 pts

Ounces of Fluid Drank: 0.10 pts

Roadkill that we see: 5 pts

Roadkill that we create: 85 pts

Items of Clothing Worn-Out: 30pts

People Met (whose names appear in blog): 10pts

Poems Written: 10 pts

Songs Written: 10pts

$ Earned Performing Music: 2 pts

Tires Changed: 15 pts

Live Animal Encounters: 20 pts

Newspaper articles about our trip: 40 pts

Appearances on Radio/TV Shows: 150 pts

ThrowdownsWithBobbyFlay:1,150 pts

Celebrity Encounters: 100pts

Injuries: 50pts

Free meals: 10pts

Items lost: 20 pts

Ukelele/Harmonica concerts with more than 20 attendees: 20 points

Bike crashes: 50 pts

Crashes into each other: 130 pts

Bugs swallowed: 25 pts

Comments on our blog by readers: 5 pts

Number of different state license plates seen: 4 pts

Days of less than 20 miles of bike travel: 250 points

Bildungsroman fashion show in the woods

The momster

...which is meant to rhyme with 'monster', but rather just be a more exciting way of saying 'mom.'

Jim, Stuie, mominator

Shannonigan, Stuball, Momulus

retrieving the firewood for my lady

...fearlessly

...against all odds

that's how it's done.

I was ordered to stop moving to allow for pictures. Here, I comply

demonstrating how to jab a sleeping homeless person if all one has on hand is a branch with a piglet face.

This is how you break a stick in the U.P.

The smoke was in my eyes. I was weeping. Camera didn't pick it up

Still weeping but trying hard for a good picture. Something that Shannon does not have to try hard at.

I went camping, to test the equipment (it all works well), and to spend some much needed time with Shannon. We found a pleasant little spot outside of Mt. Pleasant, $10 per night with electricity and water and nice big bathrooms with ample shower stalls to leave some space between you and the spiders on the wall. The spiders are standard for every campground. If you find yourself showering at a campground and there are no spiders on the walls, get the hell out; there is definitely something fishy going on.

The Game.  On Tuesday night, we shall post a final update to the Game. Under that blog entry, remember to submit your guess as to how many points we will accrue during our trip. The prize will be amazing. You will have until Friday at 5pm to post your guess. Once we have started posting point updates, it’s too late. The running total of points can be found on the left-hand side of the blog at all times.

I love my mom, and her boyfriend Jim (because he’s a great guy and clearly makes my mom happy, two conditions either of which would be sufficient for my love), and I love Shannon. So it was nice on Sunday when my mom and Jim stopped by the campground for a bit on their way across the state. I failed to get any group photos on my graduation, so we pulled my wadded-up cap and gown and body-odorous dress shirt out of the back of the truck and had a little photo shoot in the woods. It made my mom cry tears of joy. A clear sign of success. 

We fly out at 6:20 a.m. tomorrow. It's about to get real. We have some tetris to play tomorrow at the airport with our luggage. If we can fit more stuff into a single bag of 50lbs or less, we can pay less in bag fees. Do you think we can do it? Post your prediction below. 

Poems: An instrumenal piece (by Sacrag)

Una Pieza Instrumental

“Todo el mundo es un escenario,”

Dice el escritor inglesa

Como si la vida diario,

pasado, futuro, amor y tristeza,

          Fueran páginas de guión.

Como las piratas locas de El Dorado

Los humanos van desesperado

buscando lo significado,

esta cosa que no se ha encontrado

          nunca; solo inventado .

De la vida, sabemos la melodía;

 conocemos el ritmo que no se para,

pero la letra no existiría

si cada letra no se creara

por nosotros, quien la necesitamos tanto.

Pero la vida es una pieza instrumental—

Solo una experiencia que escuchamos juntas,

no para comprender, sino para sentir.

          Sin embargo, busca significado en una riqueza de todas otras cosas.

Y cometimos el error fundamental,

De asumir que las finas puntas,

nos pegan a todos igualmente, mentir

          de esto ruina la experiencia.  

Deja de buscar mensajes en este concierto,

no vuelvas a formar más preguntas.

Toca tu papel para que puedas oír,

          tocar, y ver el sabor. 

 Translation:

"All the world's a stage," 

says the English writer

as if everyday life,

past, future, love and sadness,

     were pages of a script. 

Like the pirates of El Dorado, 

humans rome desperately

in search of meaning:

that thing that is never found

     only invented. 

To life, we know the melody;

we know that unstopping rhythm.

But the lyrics would not exists

if they weren't created

     by us, who need them so. 

But life is an instrumental piece,

an experience that we listen to together,

not to understand, but to feel. 

     But still, we look for meaning in a wealth of other treasures.

And we make the grand mistake

of assuming that the sweet notes 

strike us all in the same way. To lie

     of this, ruins the show. 

Stop looking for meaning in this concert.

Don't ask such questions anymore.

Play your part so that you can hear,

    touch, and see the flavor.

Crescendo: Running breeds butt splinters

I sat in my chair, starting to smell in my formal graduation layers, watching the grads from the College of Business and Finance proceed to the grand stage, which was decorated with a grandiose black shawl flowing behind a dark crimson SVSU crest with its little Egyptian symbols in a triangle.  Now, I chose the word "proceed" with care, because leading the line of future accountants and managers was a skinny black dude in a wheelchair. I thought back to all the people to whom I asked this question: "Are you walking in May?"
Indeed, the very coming-of-age ritual is referred to in shorthand as 'walking'. I wondered if it was a source of annoyance for this man. Unlike everybody else garbed in wizard clothes, he did not look happy. He looked quite the opposite of happy. He did not wave to his particular fans in the crowd, smile and laugh with the president during his handshake, or fist pump at any point during his stroll. I wondered if he was humiliated by the whole ordeal, or if something else was making him grumpy. Or perhaps he is just a scroogy kind of fellow. I don't know.
But it made me think about how different today must feel for each of the 800 graduates. It made me think how different today was for me than the day I graduated high school. I left high school feeling like I had overcome a sort of victimization. I had endured getting the short end of the stick, but not quietly. I worked hard, but I cannot say that I took the high road more than once or twice during my high school years. I bitched alot. Mostly about other people. Not a good game-plan.  But on May 7th 2011, I stomped happily across the stage towards Eric Gilbertson, shook his hand, gave a fist-pump to MJ Brandimore, did a fancy handshake with JJ Boehm on the way down the stage, and proceeded back to my folding chair in the Arts and Behavioral Science section. On most days, that chair is not a very pleasant chair to sit in for anybody. But for me on that day, bringing with me all the cushion of four years of fun, adventure, learning, and relationship-forging, it may as well have been a million-dollar recliner.
And that's what I learned at that moment. The headline of that epiphany was, "Bring your own cushion." It reminded me of Becky Miller's dad. Becky Miller was one of my older sister's friends when she was in elementary school. She was a very pleasant, nice, funny, gangly girl with a quite tall father with quite large glasses and a quite large mustache. He had a really nice, memorable folding bleacher chair that he would bring to every Sault High Sporting event ever. I don't know if it's called a bleacher chair. It was like a bleacher supplement. It just unfolded and had a nice big seat and a nice tall back, and sat right on the nasty hazardous wooden bleachers of Sault High's gym. Once, I fell onto those bleachers running full speed, sliding along them and filling my right butt-cheek with dozens of splinters. That's what happens when you run fast. I should have run with a bleacher-seat bungied to my bum, but that's hard.

Rituals and ceremonies are useful for many reasons, one of which is the taking of due time to reflect on what has happened around us and to us. I think we shall have a few rituals of this nature in the next 73 days, time to take it all in and practice some invaluable introspection.

My life is a nice musical piece, a familiar verse constantly repeating around a theme, with funky little variations. I think that I get the pleasure of looking back and writing the lyrics to each verse. The melody of this last bit was loud, fast, and sweet.

happy mother's day. Happy Rob's Graduation Day. When you go to Starbucks, ask for a Chai Frappuccino

Poems: to Awake

 

     to Awake

and, if there were a coffee cup,

We’d sit on the table;

wind’d blow; steam’d rise;

condensation would trickle and fall

to the table in little drops

staining the cotton cloth;

I would grab the handle, lift,

and dance in the coffee ring;

We’d dance in the coffee ring.