The middle controls the ends

Today, I was listening to an interview with a woman who was talking about having her baby die 2 days after birth. She said that the happiest moment of her life was at start of her relationship with her husband, and the saddest moment was when her baby died. Her observation was that although those two moments were the high and low of her life, her actual life is lived in the middle.

My (admittedly boring and conservative) opinion is there is a bit more to it.

Everyone has highs and lows in their lives. Some people's high points destroy them. The high passion at the start of a love relationship can lead to a lot of problems: getting pregnant when it is not the right timing, being unable to recognize that the object of your infatuation is treating you like dirt, the plot of Romeo and Juliet. Quickly reaching the high point of a career, which should be wonderful, can also ruin your life: too many celebrities to mention, as well as very successful business people who end their career through drug overdose. While the high points of life don't lead people to intentionally commit suicide, then can lead people to make irrational decisions which do lead to their deaths.

Likewise, the low points in life can lead to depression and suicide. That's fairly obvious.

So, why do the high points and low points destroy some people, but not others?

I think it's the middle. The way you live your life in the 99.9% of the time when you aren't at an emotional extreme decides what happens to you when you do reach those extremes.

That's my very incomplete theory. Now all I need to add is some details on exactly how the middle will affect your reaction to those rare high points, and maybe how to live the middle of your life to be prepared for the edges.

Floating man-made island home

I've seen some very complicated and ambitious engineering plans for a
floating city to deal with overpopulation. It is all very futuristic, and so complicated that it has very little chance of actually happening.

On the other hand, here's a simpler and less futuristic version.

I don't quite know what to think of this, but I do know it's cool.

Summer 2008 Bike trip: Day 1-7

In June 2008, Robyn and I took our trusty BMW F800ST motorcycle for a trip down the west coast.

Day 1, Sunday, from Vancouver to Seattle. We drove highway 1 from home
to Mission, BC, to pick up a hat (the store was closed, so we didn't get
the hat). We then went through Abbotsford, BC to the border crossing,
and into the USA at Sumas, waiting about an hour at the border. From
there, we went down hwy 9, 544 to Bellingham, then 11 from Bellingham
to Burlington. We took I-5 to Everett, then 2 to Carnation, just for
fun. After leaving Carnation, we went into Kirkland to meet with Brian
and Rhonda's place. We spent the night there.

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Day 2, Monday, from Kirkland to Portland. Next morning, we met up
with Beth, Stephan, Anita and Tim (you don't know them) for breakfast.
From Kirkland, we went down 405, then got off the freeway at 167
through Summer, to 512, to 161, to 7. We went through Morton, onto hwy
12, to Randle. At this point, we wanted to take state road 25 south to
go around the East side of Mount St Hellens, but it was closed because
of a mudslide. We turned around, took hwy 12 to I-5t, and then went
down to Portland. We spent the night in Portland.

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Day 3, Tuesday we stayed in Portland. We saw the zoo, police museum,
and I had some work done on the bike.

Day 4, Wednesday, from Portland to Lincoln City. We drove up highway 30
to get to Astoria, then met with highway 101 (the famous coast
highway). Once we were on the coast, we noticed it was a lot colder:
around 15 to 20 degrees, where it was 27 to 31 inland.

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Day 5, Thursday, from Lincoln City to Florence

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Friday, drove from Florence, OR to Chemolt, in the interior. We started the day at the Sea Lion Caves, which was really good. It is a stellar example of private commercial conservation. The owners of this (entirely private) site know that if they do anything to drive away the sea lions, customers will stop showing up. They put a huge effort into striking the perfect balance between protecting the wildlife people are there to see, and making the wildlife accessible to the people. After the caves, we're started on our way to Crater Lake.

There was a cabin available at the fancy lodge near Crater Lake for only $230 per night (or something like that), but for some reason, we thought that the motel 20 miles away for $43 per night was a better idea.

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Saturday, we spent much of the day at Crater Lake park in Oregon. We
went on a boat trip around the lake, and did some small hikes. Then we
rode to Medford OR, where we found a Super 8 with a really fun indoor waterslide.

We came dangerously close to The Oregon Vortex, several times this trip, but it was closed each time we drove past it.

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