Let's make a Burton DIY Throwback snowboard!

To spice things up a bit this winter, rather than, you know,  just going out to snowbike on the Pugs, or just doing your basic cross-country ski loop out in the woods above my neighborhood, I determined to try to find a few other fun things to do when I'm out in the winter snow when I'm not skiing up at Snowbowl, 'cause, well, I'm 53 now. I really do need to find new innovative ways to hurt myself.

Mounting a Cooziecage™ to the downtube of my Pugsley made beer-drinking in the winterwoods possible and, so, that was a great and rewarding first-effort in this regard.

I've also been doing some fun multisport snowbike-to-xc-ski excursions up Schultz Creek toward Schultz Pass.  Probably got the first-ever ski descent of Kentucky Waterfall in the process. Wasn't pretty. Hellno! But it definitely happened.

Let's build a Cooziecage™ [UPDATED]

The original Cooziecage™ and the Cooziecage™ II are both tested-and-perfected on-bike beverage-transport systems.  Follow the step-by-step DIY instructions below to make a Cooziecage™ of your very own.

*A Creative Commons License

has been applied to these instructions.

 

Afterwards, I hope you enjoy many a lovely bevvie

all alone
in "silent lucidity"

(ride the whims of your mind)
or when hanging out with your pals
whilst sitting atop big rocks,
or blown-down trees,
or in grassy meadows,
or on snow-covered stumps out in the woods. 

In my experience/opinion, these are things almost everyone likes/needs to do.  

I hope these free* instructions help to make all your rides more enjoyable, and this crazy world we live in a little bit better, too, one beverage and one bike ride at a time.

---

I like beverages!  I like bikes!  And I think bike rides and beverages go well together.  

Thanks, Cooziecage™

If you do too, you should build a Cooziecage™ (or a Cooziecage™ II) and conveniently take a beverage with you on your next ride. 

Heck, you should take one on every ride!  I do.

Tired of waiting until your ride is over to enjoy a lovely beverage? With a Cooziecage™ attached to your bike you'll be able to crack open one of your favorites the next time, and every time, you get to the top of your ride.  

Just imagine how refreshing that will be!
 

past summer

This past summer was filled with good music, good rides, good books, good dogs, and, most especially, a whole bunch of really, really good people.

adiós buen invierno

A winter Eden...

...lifts existence on a plane of snow

One level higher than the earth below,

One level nearer heaven overhead

- Robert Frost

Request for reassignment

It has been one year to the day, give-or-take, since I sent the email reprinted below to my school district's superintendent after a "long dark night of the soul," asking to be released from my job as an elementary school principal, a job that I did not seek or apply to, but rather was quite unceremoniously drafted into. I nevertheless worked hard at the job of school principal (as hard as I've truthfully ever worked at anything) for seven school years, each one filled with its own special sort of arduous labor, and replete with seemingly unending rancor and contention.

Being granted a reprieve from this work was followed by an immediate and confirming sense of relief which has not abated in nearly a year.  Unequivocally, I was never meant to be a school leader.  I am a teacher by training and teaching children remains the principle domain of my heart.  On one of my last days in office, I wrote these words to the faculty and staff of the school I struggled to shepherd adequately for years,"[W]e all know, I was really only ever the interim principal [here], holding a spot between [the principal I succeeded] and the next "guy" while trying not to break the place in the meantime.  I'm glad we've come to a point where I can step away, confident in knowing that I really did work super hard everyday to do my best by [this school] while you needed me to, to return to a role that's far less contentious and much more in line with what I feel I've actually been called to do with my life: teach."

Looking back today, on the first anniversary of this thoroughly consequential, life-changing decision, having now spent the better part of a full year back in the classroom contentedly teaching fifth grade as I did for so many years before entering the principal's office, and despite the nearly 40% reduction in salary I incurred, I nonetheless still feel only an abiding sense of well-being in my soul about all these things, which confirms to me that stepping down as principal shall forever be charted among the best decisions of my life.

I have nothing to say

I have nothing to say

and I am saying it

and that is poetry
as I need it.

 -- John Cage 

Mid-summertime and the livin' is easy

Left my shoes under my desk on the last day of the school year, just found them there yesterday, and hadn't missed them for even a minute.

Thus far, with some three weeks to go, summer has been just what I needed it to be: the opposite of work, filled with good rides with good friends, time spent together as a family, visits each week from faraway friends and family passing through town, and ample quantities of cheap hot grilled food and cheaper cold Tecates consumed in good company, and a bit of new ink for good measure.