Nope...

The 40 mile bike ride wasnt too bad. It wasnt even that hot. Before we were about to leave, a front had rolled in and we thought it was going to storm, so we left anyways haha. But it really cooled things down. But unfortunately, we did run into a little bit of rain, just some sprinkles. We only stopped one time, one purposely. We did hit a few snags at the end when my chain fell off my bike, twice. Oh well. Good times. Im tired. And sore. Farewell.

In Over My Head?

Today Trent, Todd, and I are going on our 40 mile bike ride, tonight at 5:30 we are leaving. Im pretty confident that this is gonna suck. Me and Trent went on a bike ride tuesday, about 20 miles or so, and Im still a little bit sore from it. And I have to go twice as far tonight! Maybe Im getting in over my head. The thing about this long bike ride is that if I feel like I cant go any further.....I have to, because its the only way I can get home! Plus, today it is about 170 degrees outside, so thats not gonna feel good.

Im hoping that Todd and Trent are feeling the same way. I dont wanna be the weiner of the group haha. But although I am a little worried about this trip, Im also pretty excited. Its just one step closer to 50!

The Puddles of Life

So a couple of years ago I lived in a dorm that was one of the furthest from campus. Almost everyday, I would have to trek just short of a mile to class on these crumbling, sunken sidewalks. And every time it would rain, the sidewalks and roads became havens for puddles. Puddles everywhere. And I hated walking through the puddles. Everytime I would walk to class after a rainfall, I would get there and my shoes and the bottoms of my pantlegs would be soaked from the wet ground and large puddles. So what do you do when you dont want to get wet? You avoid the puddles, right? So thats what I attempted, to avoid the puddles.

Well, on one particular day, I was walking to class once more after a rainfall, trying to avoid all of these puddles. Its such a pain sometimes walking around some of the gigantic ones, walking through the grass, walking through the street, or sometimes I would even have to cross the street, walking far out my way to get around a puddle. Then I got to thinking, why am I putting so much effort in avoiding these puddles, it seems like more of a hassle than if I would just walk through them. Then, of course, I thought of how it related to our lives.

Why do we always put so much effort in avoiding our puddles in life? I think that we should trench through our puddles, without fear. Yeah, sometimes the puddles are actually deeper than they appear, or sometimes they seem to stretch for ages, but we eventually get through them, right? We eventually get to the other side, to dry land, is this not true? I think that we should embrace our puddles. We should try to enjoy walking through our puddles. But it will be hard to walk through them, knowing that we are getting wet though. But we will eventually dry, won't we? So get wet. And like it. How can we go through life being scared to get wet, never knowing what its like, even though we know we will dry?

Now, I hope you realize that this is a metaphor. But, nowadays, I do enjoy literally walking through puddles, with no fear of getting wet. I like getting to class with my shoes and pants wet and saying, "Yep, Im a puddle walker." But sometimes my fears of dampness in life are harder to overcome. But Im still trying to enjoy feeling the soginess of life, knowing that I will eventually be dry.

Oh My, What a Weekend

So this weekend I drove down to Indianapolis to see the Brickyard 400 with a few friends of mine from Purdue. It was a pretty enjoyable time down there. And it was pretty much free for me haha. We planned on buying some tickets at the gate and parking in the infield, but when we got there we found out that they weren't selling tickets at the gate for the Brickyard, they only do it for the Indy 500. So they made us turn around and park in the big grass field where all the tailgaters park. We got there at around 7:30am and the race didnt start until like 2, so we had a long day to tailgate. We had brought something like 60 cans of beer to drink and a bunch of food so we were pretty much set for the day. I ended up having a few beers than becoming rediculously tired so I slept in the truck for a while (and some random guy walked by and tickled my feet...I was so confused). But anywho, after the race had started, we decided that we would wait a while, then try and sneek in. So when the race was almost half over, we tried it.....and succeeded. Not-a-one person tried to stop us. So we ended up sitting in the infield for the rest of the race. Mission accomplished.

But thats really not the interesting part of my weekend. I kind of hesitate to write this, only because I know that my mom and grandma read my blog. But I need to write it because it happened. I cant only post profound thoughts and wonderful experiences that make people think that Im a saint, because I am not. And Im not trying to be. Im just me, and Im just trying to live an adventurous life.

So anyways, Adam and Rob took me to a strip club Saturday night. It really wasnt what I thought it would be. I even told them on our way there that I would probly just hang around the bar most of the night, but the bar was minute in this place. There were girls EVERYWHERE. I figured there would be like two or three up on top of a pole and the place would be really run down and dirty with old men hounding at the girls. But actually, it was a pretty nice place, clean, nicely decorated (only I would notice that), with a lot of young guys.....several of them with their girlfriends (I thought that was extremely odd). Now for the first couple of hours, I thought the place was really strange and awkward, and I didnt really want to be there. But after a while I started getting used to it, i guess.

But on this particular weekend, they had a feature girl dancing from Penthouse. She did like three dances all night, and she was kind of a big deal in that place. She was also selling pictures and selling private dances in the "VIP room". So obviously, Rob buys me a dance with her....a $50 dance. He likes making me feel awkward. But I am pretty amazed that my friends spent so much money on me that night, I guess they thought I needed to experience this. So anywho, me and Rob were talking to her before my big private dance, and Rob was telling her that its my first time in a strip club and that I still held the V-card. She didnt believe me for a few minutes, but I confirmed and eventually convinced her. Then she thought I was gay, I told her that I fancied the ladies, and from then on she kind of took a liking to me. She gave me a couple of free pictures (she was selling them for $25 a piece), put some flattering comments on them, and then she gave me a job offer to be her "lawnboy" haha. She told me that I was a pretty good looking guy and I would have to mow shirtless, of course. Then later on she gave me her email address and told me to email her if I seriously wanted to be her lawnboy. Now, Im pretty confident that she was just doing all this because its her job to make guys feel special. So Im not really expecting to be working for her. So yeah, Saturday night, I met a stripper. (I did email her by the way, pretty much saying "Hey, whats up". I do think it would be interesting to get to know her, because she was really nice and fun to talk to, and ultimately completely different than me. But Im not really expecting a response.)

But overall, I did have a pretty good time. Im really not cut out to be in a strip club though. Sometimes.....actually most of the time I was there, I would just laugh at some of things going on in there. So there you have it, I have been strip club devirginized this weekend. (I hope I havent disappointed you too much mom and grandma)

Heather

Today I was working on my moms house, doing some painting, building a cellar door, tearing down a swing set, just doing some repayment because she bought me tires for my car. At about noon, I had to go over to Lowes and buy some stuff, and I figured while I was out I might as well get some Wendys because its close. There is this one intersection over by Wendys that is sometimes occupied by one or two homeless people, trying to get money or food or something. And everytime I drive by them, I have this feeling that I should stop and talk to them. Im not so much interested in giving them food or money, but I just want to talk to them, get to know them. But I think that Im always scared that they will be mean or get angry. So today, of course, there was a woman standing at that intersection with a sign saying that she is stuck, struggling, and hungry. Instantly when I saw her, my stomach began to feel sick. But it felt sick for me, because I knew that it would another time where I would drive by and try to forget about avoiding them. So today, I drove by, went to Wendys, and ordered some food. But today I found myself ordering two meals. When I got my two meals, I drove back over to her, parked my car, and asked her if she would like to have a meal with me.

I tell you what, this is one of the more enjoyable experiences this summer. I got to know her. Her name is Heather, and she is a really nice woman. We sat there on the curb of the Wendys parking lot for about 20 or 30 minutes chit-chatting away, talking about where shes from, her kids, how she ended up in Plymouth, we talked about me going to college, me being jobless, how "nutritous" our meal is, stuff like that. She is different than me, almost an opposite, and I like that. I love meeting people who are different than me. I hope she enjoyed meeting me as much as I enjoyed meeting her. And it makes me feel good that I accomplished something today.

A Shared Journey

I love the word Journey. It sounds like there is so much adventure involved. The Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Journey of Mankind, and so on. I've been thinking about the word a lot lately. Now, I'm the kind of person that focuses more on the destination. I wish I didn't. Whenever I go somewhere, say I'm driving to Indianapolis or something, I always try to make good time, go about 10 over the speed limit, drown the time out with crazy-loud music, just simply killing time to get to my destination. Even when I go on bike rides, I most often think about the destination, think about how much quicker I could get there if I just peddled a little bit faster. I think that most of us think this way; we are so concentrated on the destination that we forget to enjoy the journey. Why do we think like this? Why do we always want to make good time? Why can't we see the things around us, take it in, turn off the music, hear the sounds, see the sights, make the best of the time that we are trying to waste?

I think that this could also apply to our lives. Especially to Christians' lives. Many Christians are so focused on their destination, whether they are bound for heaven or hell, that they forget that God wants us to experience our journey called life. We are here to live, not just participate in mind-numbing activities, waiting for an end. We do things like watch TV for hours on end, sleep 12 hours a night (I am 100% guilty of that), go to work everyday just to come home, go to bed, and wait to go back to work the next morning. As a young Christian, I used to think that life is pointless when I could just die now and go somewhere far better (I'm not saying I was suicidal, just impatiently waiting). When I went to Vermont with some people from my church, it really opened my eyes when we talked about life and what it means to live.

We are the God's gardeners. What do gardeners do? Gardeners ornament gardens. To ornament means to lend grace or beauty. Our garden is this earth. Gods garden is this earth. We need to lend grace and beauty to this earth, make it fit for God. You can't do that by inactively waiting to die. This is our journey. This is what God wants, to experience the journey of life. I hope this makes sense. It does in my head.

30 miler

Well, tonight was interesting. Trent, Todd, and I went on a 30 mile bike ride through three counties. WOW! In case you didnt know, 30 miles is far on a bicycle. It was awesome though. Although we were all pretty much beat by the end, it felt great to accomplish 30 miles. We did have a few incidents though. To start off, the first few miles were brutal: against the wind, bumpy gravel roads, hills, we almost gave up just then. Then we almost got hit by a car.......it wasnt a four way stop, no more blowing stop signs......then we saw a guy in a truck lose a trailer of hay......and didnt realize it. Good times. One of the things I love about biking is that you get to see things you usually dont in a car. In a car, you are most often moving too fast to take in the scenary, and you are enclosed so you cant smell the smells, feel the warmth and breeze, taste the bugs........I actually had a butterfly fly into my mouth while we were riding tonight........seriously. Now generally that doesnt happen to me in a car......but every once in a while.....ha. Here are some pics of our adventure.

Next is a 40 miler, coming up next week.

The Glory Days

So last night I was rummaging through my junk drawers in my bedroom that are full of pictures and.......just plain junk from high school. I was flipping through all of the pictures thinking, "yeah, those were the days...," although Ive only been out of high school for three years. But I did find a few things that I had completely forgot about and had no idea I had saved. I found a few letters and notes and cards from girls that I had dated back in high school. I can't believe I used to be such a stud back then (thats possibly a huge overstatement). I was reading these notes that were saying things like, "Thank you for being that special person and always being there for me" and "You are the best friend a girl could have" or "I hope to get to know you more", yeah, stuff like that. I remember back when used to work at Kmart, I would get these notes stuck on the windshield of my Jeep after work. I dont know what I'm doing differently these days, but I just dont get that kind of feedback anymore. I can't keep a girl interested in me for more than a week anymore.

Now, Im not saying that I was Gods gift to women, actually, quite the contrary. I am really not good at dating. Im not really sure whats good etiquette for dating and whats not, and Im pretty shy around people I dont know, so im not sure why these girls were that interested in me. But once I start to get to know someone, I start to be myself more. Which, if you have ever met me......Im really not would you wouldve expected. I've been told by.....actaully every girl Ive dated, that I'm not like other guys. Now, I'm not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. They say its good.......then a week later stop talking to me. But I stay optimistic. If someone doesnt like me for who I am, then they arent worth dating anyways.

But, most of the time, about 99.2% of the time, I am single. And I enjoy it. Most of the time I feel sorry for people my age who are in long-long-long term relationships. But, sometimes I do get jealous of them. Now, I am a pretty independent person. And I am a slight introvert. So I am alone a lot of times, which, I like to be left alone most of the time. But like everyone else, I also get lonely. This is when I would like to have a girlfriend, someone I can talk to, someone I can love and who will make me feel loved.

But like I said, I feel sorry for people my age in long term relationships that will end up in marriage. Actually a few people I graduated with are already married. Now, I have two problems with people getting married so young.

NUMBER 1. I am only 21. I have been out of high school for three years. Thats three years that I have been on my own, free to do whatever I want. ONLY three years. If I get married right now, I will have only had three years of freedom. Right now, if I wanted to, I could leave everything and move to China underneath the Great Wall and live off the land. If I was married.....yeah right. I need a lot more than three years to LIVE ON MY OWN. LIVE. Im not saying that marriage is death........but close. Death to individualism. Death to choices.

NUMBER 2. Generally when someone gets married, they say things like,"Well, we have decided to wait two years before we have children...." Why do you need to plan your life out like that? When you say stuff like that, who is in control of your life? You are, right? It shouldnt be like that. God should be in control of your life. Now if God is saying,"wait two years" then you know its right. But I guess sometimes it is hard to decipher between Gods voice and our own. In addition, If you have children at 23, you are still a child yourself. A child cannot raise a child.

Wow, I really bounced around in this post haha. But these kinds of thoughts comfort me. I used to think that if I havent been in a long term relationship by now that there is something wrong with me. But I dont think thats the case anymore. I think I'm right where I need to be. I'll know when the time is right to settle down. Now as for my committed relationed friends...I think that if you are in love, truly in love, and you know you are going to spend the rest of your life with that person, it would just be plain stupid to call it off, just for freedom. You already know what its like to be with that person, obviously things are working if youre still together, so all the better to you. Now, if you are someone who is getting married just to be the first to get married, or for its pleasureable benefits, thats retarded. Thats a divorce waiting to happen.

But to end, Ill head back to the glory days and post a couple of pictures I found in my junk drawer of the ladies and I.

Dark Knights and Cycling

Last night I went to see the new Batman movie, Dark Knight with Andrew and A.J. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but it was SO freakin long! Just when you think its about to come to an end.......theres about an hour left, unbelievable. But the highlight of the night had to be on the way home. I was driving A.J.'s car, its a VW Jetta I think, taking some backroads to avoid the traffic, and next thing I know, I hear a THA-THUMP underneath the car. At first I though it was a huge rock and I was afraid I had ruined AJs rims, but AJ yelled from the back "Oh my gosh, you just hit a cat!" I never even saw it run out. He said it had taken quite a tumble and was struggling pretty bad in the road. So, of course, we had to go back and look at it. So I turned the car around in the middle of the street, stalled the car, almost rolled into the ditch, and eventually made it to the cat, which actually turned out to be a kitten. Yes, I am a horrible kitten killer. It had quit thrashing by then, and I thought it was dead but they said it was still breathing. So obviously I said "well should we run it over again?" You know, just to make sure its dead. I guess they thought that was a bad idea, and I guess I'm a horrible person for saying that. But anywho, those are the happenings of last night. I do feel bad that I hit the kitten right in front of the peoples house too. The kids probly walked out of the house this morning, saw the cat, screamed bloody mary, and are now scarred forever. All because of me.

Well, this morning was a little less grimm. Trent, Todd, and I went for a 20 mile bike ride around the area. I thought it was great! I always love taking bike rides. It's even more fun when you get to ride with your friends. I've ridden my bike SO much this week. I put just over 94 miles on it and have spent 6.5 hours on the Red Racer this week alone! I told you, I'm a bikin fool! But this morning it took us about 1 hour 29 min. to ride just over 20 miles (20.11 to be exact). Its amazing to me how time flies when I'm on the bike. We are all in such a hurry to do things. We all think we need to get somewhere as fast as we can. It takes me about 20 min to get into town from my house on a bike. Its about 7-10 in a car. Really, it doesn't take that much longer on a bike. While we were on our 20 mile trek today, I asked Trent how much time had gone by, when he said it was about an hour I thought, wow, it only felt like 15 or 20 minuntes. Then, with about a mile or two to go, it started to rain. Then it started to pour. So, we got wet, but it was actually pretty refreshing. Next up, we are going to do a 50 mile excursion. Well, I am. But if Trent and Todd want to, that would be even better!

Let me just leave you today with this quote: "No matter how long you shake and dance, the very last drop goes down your pants."

-Abraham Lincoln, 1926

...I may have made that last part up....

Summer Happenings

Well, i'll like to take some time to talk about my summer happenings and adventures, and yes this might be a long one. I'll say that the beginning of my summer kind of sucked. I had come home from school kind of depressed because I was ending off my junior year of college without a major. I had spent two years in the Industrial Design program, but after two years they only allow 16 people to continue. Long story short, I didn't make the cut. So my future had now become very hazy.
Then to add to that, I had a couple of summer jobs that never followed through. The first one was the job I had last summer working at a factory, making trunkfuls of money (well, for a college student it was good), but they wouldnt hire me back because they weren't doing well and weren't hiring. The second job was working for Ribfest, traveling around the country going to festivals cooking ribs. I was really excited about this job just because I really didn't want to come back home, I needed to get out of Indiana for a while. Now this job was about 99% guarnteed that I would work there. BUT, alas, they eventually said they didn't need me...........because the economy is bad. So I applied to a couple of other places in the area and, of course, no one is hiring. So I am left jobless for the summer.......and still have no job. So the start of my summer, I feel, really really sucked and I couldnt wait till August rolled around so i could go back to school.
So with all this happening, being jobless and such, I knew that I would have a lot of free time to do whatever. So one thing I wanted to do was get back into shape. During school I had lost a lot of weight because I quit working out and hardly ever ate anymore because I was either busy or the food that our chef made looked like vomit. So I started biking everywhere, lifting weights three times a week, and wrestled with the high school wresters twice a week. This is pure bliss for me. I love being active.
I also started reading a lot. And one thing I really wanted to do was to get back in touch with God. During college, its very easy to lose yourself in your studies and the social scene and parties, and eventually lose touch with whats important. And, as much as tried to not to, I too eventually got caught up in everything, mostly my studies, which you probably think is a lie, but getting into the ID program was my number one priority for me last semester, everything else was on the back-burner. But anywho, so at the beginning of the summer, I had borrowed some Christian books from Trent, my sisters bf, and started off with Blue Like Jazz. I thought that was an amazing book, it really opened my eyes to a lot of things.
But as I was reading these books, it got me thinking about my relationship with Christ. Now we all know, or should know, that Christianity is all about Christ. And, as Christians, we have the ability to have a relationship with our God through Christ. So I was thinking about my relationship, and realized that I really didn't know much about Him, just things I had heard in church. So, for the first time in my life, I started reading the Bible. I started in the New Testament (jumped straight to Jesus) to find out who he is. Now, there is so much I could say about the things I read, and how I felt while I was reading, and my thoughts on Jesus......but I'll just leave it at, I'm glad that I started reading the Bible.
Now, there have been a ton more other things I've done this summer, trips and such, but these are the major things. But one thing I have learned this summer that I think everyone should pick up is simplicity. I have been virtually broke all summer, I have picked up small jobs here and there: mowing, one roofing job, taking pictures of foreclosed housed for the bank, you know, odd jobs. But for the most part, I'm usually broke. So, being broke, I have no money for gas, so I can't drive. So I bicycle it up when I need to go to town (5.2 miles away). I never go shopping anymore, I'm not picky about what I eat anymore (I'm basically living off of Ramen Noddles and Chef Boyardee), I'm actually really enjoying being broke.....most of the time.
But recently I did take a trip to Vermont with some peeps from church, but I'll elaborate on that another time. It was a good spiritual journey........also a good learning experience. But this post is getting long enough so i'll end it here.


-Life's not about having what you want, it's about wanting what you have.

Haiku

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refridgerator

Mohawks and such.

Well, today I cut my hair into a mohawk. I think it was kind of a big step for me, I've been wrestling with the idea for a while, just because I had never done it before, and i like to do wierd stuff like that. But on the other hand, I kind of didn't want to do it because first of all I just got a haircut last week (which was a very good haircut if I say so myself), and also I'm kind of worried about what people think of me, which I think is retarded. As much as I hate it, I still worry about what people think about me, BUT I have been working on it lately.

But I do think that too many people worry about their appearance too much. Some people base thier whole lives around the idea. I sort of used to be like that though. Never wanting to change my haircut in fear that I might look silly, wearing only certian types of clothes, wanting to have the tallest Jeep with the loudest exhaust and the biggest tires so people would look at me and say, "Wow, I wish I was him." Some people even go to lengths where they spend thousands of dollars on things they don't even use, like a motorcycle or fancy jewelry or whatnot, just so people think they have money, when they should be spending thier money on more charitable things. Well, I was fed up with trying to look good, you're never happy anyways. Plus, it's selfish. So in the last couple of years, I've been trying to change that, trying to move to a place where I'm stepping out of the norm, trying purposely not to fit in. Trying to look good is too much work and worry. I could easily be a Bremenoid robot like the rest of them and never leave town and try to build a great reputation, but you know what, I'm having so much more fun stepping out of the bubble. Riding my bicycle everywhere when I know the Bremenoids think I lost my liscense from drunk driving, sporting the mohawk when I know people think its childish, growing a long beard when i know I'm scaring people when I walk into a building, I like doing these things, its fun to me.

Now I know Im kind of rambling, and it might not even make any sense, and it probly jumps from one topic to another, so Im sorry about that. Let me just leave you with this, I took this picture when I was in Vermont last week, maybe it will get your mind off of the craziness I just wrote.

First Generic Blog

Hey everyone, this is my first blog so im just gonna type some random jargon. Im Ben, its kind late at night, im getting kind of tired, watching Scare Tactics, and im not really in the mood to put something profound here right now, so ill get back at it later. Im out for now.