Ryan McFarland

In two weeks we’re taking a vacation.  It isn’t like last year’s month in Southeast Asia but here’s what we have planned.

Saturday, October 25th we’ll fly to Los Angeles and stay with Kevin Dean.  He’ll have to work the following week but we should be able to go to the beach and hit an amusement park or some of the tourist traps. (Hello Legoland!)

On the Thursday the 30th we’re renting a car and driving to Las Vegas and staying at the Polo Towers via a timeshare swap.  We’ll meet up with Karna and some other folks from Petersburg and Washington and celebrate Halloween in Sin City. I’m sure we’ll ride the rides while there.

On Sunday the 2nd we’ll check out of the hotel and Kevin will drive back to LA while we drive to Taos, NM and visit with Cena’s dad.  We’ll spend time in the area until the 6th when we fly from Albuquerque to LA, spend the night with Kevin, and then fly back to Petersburg on Friday the 7th. I was supposed to play music for a wedding on the 8th but that has been cancelled.

I hope to drive to Philmont while in NM and maybe even hike up the Vaca Trail.  I worked on that trail the summer of 1995 and would love to see what nearly 15 years of time and use have resulted in.  Anyone have any suggestions for other stuff to do in LA, LV, or the Taos area?

This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is poverty.

The poverty threshhold used by the US Census Bureau calculates that in 2006 a single adult under the age of 65 making less than $10,488 a year is living in poverty.  That was in 2006.  Since then heating oil prices have risen, gasoline prices have at least doubled, food prices are rising, and most people are feeling the pinch.  The Federal minimum wage is $6.55 an hour (individual states may have higher minimum wage laws).  Assuming a 40 hour work week someone making the Federal minimum wage earns $13,624 annually.

The last time i was making $6.50 an hour was in Utah in 1998/99.  That was working for an after school program run by the Parks and Recreation Department.  Even then that wasn’t enough to get by on.  At least not enough to pay back school loans and live a life outside of poverty.

I think it is important to have a poverty line but the reality is that poverty reaches far over the federally established line.  Sort of like calling something “wilderness” when that word has a legal description that covers specific pieces of Federal property as defined in the Wilderness Act of 1964.  Are there wild places outside of “Wilderness areas?”  You bet there are.  Are there poor outside of poverty.  I’ll go with yes.

For many of us it is easy to accuse impoverished of laziness.  A homeless person or someone that just breeds themselves into poverty seems to have a cloud hanging over — “get a job.”  Surely some are just taking an easy road.

I give change to the occasional beggar when out of town.  I donate toward the local charity that helps with food service for the needy.

But sometimes i wonder what it would be like to live on the street.  True poverty.

Then nights like tonight make me very glad to have a roof over my head as the rain pounds the metal roof.  The chill in the air is gone under my comforters and assortment of cats.  And i’m glad to donate my old stuff to an organization that is committed to giving to those that are less fortunate than me.

Flickr has a friendly greeting when you log on often teaching you how to say “hi” in different languages.  This evening it was LOLspeak.

When i was down in Prince Rupert my phone suddenly started acting funny.  I could text and check email and browse the web with my phone.  If i made or received a call it would seem to connect but i couldn’t hear anything and the other person couldn’t hear me.  I just figured it was some result of being in Canada because things worked fine when i was as far south as Ketchikan.

When i got back to Petersburg it still didn’t work.  I tried finding answers for the problem online but nothing seemed to fix it.  I finally called AT&T (the first phone in years that i bought with a contract so was covered by their warranty) and they walked me through some potential solutions — even a hard reset which cleared all of my data.  Still not working.

They agreed to send me a new phone.  But i was leaving for Las Vegas in two days so i had it sent to my hotel there.  Within a day of arriving i was able to put my SIM card in my new phone and could make calls again.  Over a week without cell phone service was cramping my style — especially trying to stay in touch with Cena.

Unfortunately i forgot to bring a sync cord with me so i couldn’t move my calendar, contacts, or any of that stuff from one phone to the other.  For a few days i carried the empty but functional phone around.  I’d get texts but have no idea who they were from and couldn’t call anyone because i have so few numbers memorized now.  I finally downloaded a program that would backup my old phone programs, settings, and even photos to my 2 gig micro SD memory card.  I emailed the program to an account i could check with my old phone and installed it to the memory card.  I then backed up the old phone, moved the card to the new phone and then ran the program and restored the phone.

Finally back to my usual technology-dependent self!

I guess i’m feeling old suddenly.  Petersburg elected it’s youngest councilor “in recent memory” yesterday - Sara Stoner.  She’s one of the original FFF regulars.  I was listening to the regional news that announced election results for other SE communities and heard that Janine Gibbons was elected to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly.  Cena went to school with Janine.  And i also heard that Scott McAdams was elected as the Mayor of Sitka.  Scott was the student body President at Sheldon Jackson College the year after i was.  He was also like me - a transfer student that lived in family housing.  As a coach for the Sitka High School football team he tried to help me get a team started in Petersburg quite a few years ago.

Nice to see my peers getting involved in the local politics!  Congrats to all of them!

I was amused by the “paint by number” toilet paper that was in the restrooms at the Interbike show.  Note the palette.

In 1994 i was the Northeast Region Chief of the Order of the Arrow.  At that year’s National Order of the Arrow Conference we had a small gathering for people from the Northeast and i invited Elizabeth Andre (Miss Teenage America) to come to our region’s rally before one of the conference shows.

I knw that Steve, Kevin and mom were there - but i found some old pictures and scanned them and thought this would be neat to post.  I had a horrible zit that day.

Having successfully eliminated debt (for a little while) i have set my sights on another goal for this year.  100 consecutive push ups.  I meant to start the routine two and a half weeks ago but just didn’t take the time to write up the required reps and sets in my phone’s calendar.

Two and a half weeks ago i tried to do as many push-ups as i could in a row.  I hit 20.  Supposedly if i follow this routine i can hit 100 in a row (without resting) at the end of the six weeks.  So last night after the Petersburg Centennial Committee meeting and while Cena was watching Sex and the City with a group of girls i entered a bunch of alarms in my phone that look like this.

10, 12, 8, 8, 12+ @ 90 sec

So today i did 10 push ups, rested 90 seconds, 12 push ups, rested 90 seconds, 8, rest, 8, rest, and then as many as possible but at least 12.

A ten minute work out every other day with weekends off!  I suspect I’ll be keeping you posted on my progress.  There are a few benchmarks where you see how many consecutive push ups you can do along the way.

If you read the comments on my page you probably caught the one on the post about Mike and I heading to Interbike and the comment from Arleigh saying she was headed there too.  I sent Arleigh an email with my cell phone number after checking out her website at 650b.  I warned her that i’m not much of a bike geek anymore (there was a few years back in ‘87-’88 that i knew about every part and manufacturer of freestyle bikes) but that Mike and i would be around and to send me a text when she wanted to meet up.

I did some more web snooping and found her online persona on Flickr and then on to a few other blogs that she writes for.

Arleigh sent me a text while Mike and i were winding down from a day of riding bikes and wandering exhibits.  We bounced messages back and forth but didn’t commit to anything.  Just that Mike and i were going to get some food and drinks and that I’d keep her posted. After the dirt demo i was back in the hotel room for a shower and to cool off and rinse the dust from my throat.  I uploaded a few photos that i took earlier in the day and saw that Arleigh had also uploaded some.  I browsed through them, commented on one, and we soon took off to find some food.

Mike was in the mood for Mexican but we ended up leaning toward a Brazilian style steak house by the time we were in the cab.  We changed our minds 3 times before settling on a Gordon Biersch.  I told Mike that i had eaten at one in Seattle a few times and the one in D.C. before.  When we arrived i realized that i also had been in this one.

Sidebar: a few years ago Cena had a trade show to attend and i walked to a Kinkos or MailBoxesEtc. or something to mail something out that needed to be sent via FedEx.  We can’t mail FedEx from Petersburg. I walked in the 100 degree weather until finding it, mailed the package, walked back into the scorching weather.  I glanced up and saw this Gordon Biersch across the street - slogged over and went right to the bar.  The place was almost empty.  The bartender slid a menu in front of me and said she saw me walking across the parking lot and could tell i needed a cold drink.  Anyway - back to the original story…

We sat down at a table near the bar, ordered samplers and food.  After an hour or so i thought i saw someone from some of Arleigh’s pictures from the outdoor demo walk by.  I brushed it off.  Then moments later someone that looked like Arleigh walked by.  She stood and talked to someone at a table 25 feet away for a while.  I sent her a text: “We settled on gordon biersch.” And i watched to see if she’d pull her phone out.  Nothing.  Oh well.  She sat down with some people and after five minutes i got a reply “We’re there!”  Now things were kind of strange.  Out of the 23,000 attendees at a show like Interbike what are the chances that she’d post a comment on my blog?  Certainly a good number of bloggers are cyclists.  Technorati finds over 2,500 posts that mention Interbike.  There must be thousands of places to eat in Vegas.  What are the chances that we’d end up at the same place?

I didn’t know what to say.  I sure didn’t want to come across as a stalker.  Mike and i laughed about it and i kind of decided to just ignore it.  A few minutes later she called.  I told her to turn around and then waved at her.  She came over, intoduced herself and we were able to clear up that she was the one stalking me.  Just kidding.

Unfortunately, my big luck was used up by ending up at the same restaurant as someone that i only knew from a few pictures on Flickr and a couple of text messages.  Despite best intentions, we didn’t end up socializing with Arleigh any further - partially because i lost her phone number in the Great Cell Phone Switch of ‘08.

Pai Gow Poker at the Golden Nugget

Originally uploaded by zieak

Kevin slayed the table playing Pai Gow. We both started with $100. I ended with $25 and he finished with over $475. it’s a nice slow game that’s very friendly with the other players.