Thursday, October 25, 2007

Catching Up with Ironbabe Jane

Meet Ironbabe Jane. I think you can figure out which one is her from the picture I stole from her blog!



Jane and I go way back - to the 4th grade! It's sometimes frightening to think about how long ago that truly was! Anyway, I haven't seen Jane since we graduated highschool, or perhaps a couple of times at LSU. That was a long while ago too! Through about 4 degrees of blog-o-sphere separation I ran across Jane's blog – Born Again Athlete. It turns out we both ended up in Houston. Trust me when I say, where we grew up was way different than Houston! We made contact, and met up last night!

It's really cool chatting with Jane. After such a long time, it’s intriguing to “re-meet” someone. It's impressive seeing the evolution in Jane (the blog name makes so much sense) and yet also see the core that has remained throughout the years. Sometimes life isn't predictable - but isn't that the beauty of it?

Beautiful weather, good beers, interesting conversation sums up the evening. It was fun recalling things such as grade school memories of playing typing games on (if I remember right) a Commodore 64 computer!

I even got some great cooking tips: for example – don’t use bacon fat to make a gumbo roux!

ALL THIS TALK OF THE OLD DAYS...
... makes me think about getting older. We often associate aging with the negative. But if we make the choice to evolve, grow and improve ourselves - getting older is actually an advantage. Think about it. When you're 8-years old...you pretty much have to be who your parents tell to be. But as we get older, we get an increasing ability to make our own choices. If we choose correctly, we can become more true to our unique and often latent personalities. (Although, observation shows having a domineering spouse, or children sometimes stifle this from happening.) Sometimes the results are surprising even to ourselves! Maybe we should never "grow up"? "Growing up" implies a completion - a stop in growth. That doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

MAYBE THAT'S WHY WE LIKE TO COMPETE?
I think there's a common misconception about athletic and motorsport competition. People have the perception that it's all about winning. That really isn't true for most of us. It's about the constant improvement of ourselves: physically, mentally, emotionally. I could probably list 20 things in my life that have improved since I started cycling. It makes the time, money, and effort dedicated to cycling seem like a bargain!

Does there ever come a point where we cannot improve any more? I hope not. That would be pretty boring.

IT’S HLLE BEING DYSLEXIC
The sad part is I drove by this sign three times before I figured out what was wrong with it. It was up for almost the entire week…

2 comments:

Jane said...

It was great to see you! Nice write up. You put such a positive spin on your reflections.

Gumbo party? can you make a good shrimp etouffee?

Dave said...

Back at ya!

I've never tried a shrimp etouffee. I've done crawfish a bunch, but shouldn't be too differnt? Actually, shrimp might be really good. lighter if you did it up right...Ok now I'm hungry... ;-)