Last Sunday I went to the Peace Rally which took place down town. This was my first rally in arguably the most liberal and protest oriented city in the United States. San Francisco takes a lot of heat from the conservative media and talk show hosts for being a melting pot of hippies and left wing radicals. And truly, those character assassinations are unfair, biased, rude and for the most part……pretty true. In fact I live with hippies and left wing radicals so how can I really take offense.  But I think to shrug off this particular protest and this particular issue as a group of radical fringe protestors, or as our President so tactfully put it, as a “focus” group, would be naive at best.  I don't believe what some of the protestors believe. I think the phrases like “No blood for oil”, miss the point. But I also don't see why after 12 years of defying UN resolutions WHY we have to go to war right NOW, this instant!  Surely we can spare more time to get the rest of the world on board with us. Yes yes, we can do just about what ever we want and in the long run we will get away with it because lets face it, we are the emperors of the world. But in being that, can't we show some patience and restraint before we throw the rest of the world in turmoil in order to make us safer…if in fact that is what a war will do.  So you see….a peace rally is many things and the rally this past weekend, where over 2.5 million people all over the world stood up to say….HEY!  We know Sadam is bad, we agree he probably has weapons of mass destruction, but show the patience of a superpower. We KNOW you're willing to go to war…LOOK AT ALL THE FRIGGN TROOPS you sent over. But WAIT damn it. Wait until we have exhausted our diplomatic efforts. You may get your way yet, but wait.

At this point, and especially after the president's speech today in which he outlined his agenda for a “post war Iraq”, I don't see any way to avoid war. Once we are committed, once we go, I hope and pray that the best case scenarios put forth by our government come true. That most of the Iraqi army lays down their weapons, that the Iraqi people embrace the U.S. as friends and liberators of their country. And that Tony Blair and George W. Bush are proven to be visionaries. It's unlikely, but I wish our country well in its endeavors to clean up the world. And hope we don't make a bigger mess of things in the process.

January 5, 2003

The first week of the new year and I am happy to report that I am keeping all of my resolutions. I have two of them, 1) wake up in the morning and 2) go to bed at night. I have a pretty good chance of having a 100% success record with those. Why set yourself up for failure so early in the year right? At the end of 2003 I'll be able to look back with pride and announce that I kept ALL of my new years resolutions this year. As for goals, well those are different and transitory. As you change and grow, so do your goals for the year. Those….I'll keep to myself.

So my first SPINNING® class of the year was eventful. I had mixed a new CD with a good hard ride in mind. Talked to my class before we started and told them not to make up for a year of slothfulness in one class. “Pace yourselves” I said. And off we went on our ride. About 20 minutes into it and right at the end of a particularly intense portion, one man in the back of the class passed out. Unknown to me at the time, he was on heart medication. He fell sideways, hit his head on a bike on his way to the floor, cut his head and lay on the floor unconscious, convulsing and in a pool of blood. It was pretty intense. I ran over to him and unhooked his feet from the pedals. They class moved the bikes out of the way. There was a pool of blood on the floor and after a few seconds all over me. We raised his head and feet and in about 10 seconds he came to. Very lucid, knew exactly what had happened and was very embarrassed. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly but not before a few fresh white towels and large portions of me were red with blood.  He's ok…..but the moral of this story.   Know your limits….don't try and make up for a year of bad habits with one day of killing yourself. It took months, maybe years to develop those bad habits. It's going to take half that long to develop good ones. Pace yourself. it's not a race. And if you're taking heart medication perhaps some brisk walking?

Happy New Year!

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