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Natural

Posted on Jun 5th, 2009 by Eric : Poet/Author/Entreprenuer Eric
This friend of mine
is so blissed-out
blessed, like a Taoist monk
without at all trying

a balanced being
perfectly beyond
with eyes that see through
making him the wisest
one I know.
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Tagged with: Eric Vance Walton, Poem

My Great Biking Adventure - Adam Sandler-Style

Posted on Jun 7th, 2009 by Eric : Poet/Author/Entreprenuer Eric
I rode my bike to work for the first time this season a few days ago.  It was an ideal day.  The weather was perfect, in the low 70's and the sun was shining brightly.  

I work in the downtown area, which means that you have to be both alert and agile on the bike at all times because you never quite know what challenges you will be presented with. 

After a long and taxing day of work I jumped on my modified moutain bike to speed out of downtown.  I rode up the sidewalk to take advantage of a short-cut between two buildings when I suddenly realized that up ahead people were walking side-by-side and blocking my path.  As I jumped off of the sidewalk it felt as though I was riding in two inches of grease!  What I didn't notice was they just had planted grass seed where I rode off and my tires sank about an inch into the mud. 

Luckily, after putting deep ruts in the ground, I was able to keep my balance and get out of the quicksand-like trap.  That's when things got really interesting.  After a few seconds I saw that my knobby mountain bike tires were caked in a thick black mud and, to my dismay, they were flinging it on everything within a 12-15' radius. Cars and business people included.  

This continued for what felt like and eternity.  In hindsight, I realize that the proper thing to do would have been to get off of the bike and walk it but I was way too embarrassed to think about doing that in the heat of the moment.  So I put my head down and pedaled as fast as I could as my tires continued to rain mud. It was like a scene straight out of an Adam Sandler movie.  

When downtown, now I feel like a marked man and hope I haven't aquired too much bad bike karma through this whole incident.  I've given some thought to spray painting my bike a different color.  Maybe next week I'll purchase dry cleaning gift certificates and hand them out randomly to people along my route to try to balance things out.

In any event for the next few weeks anyway I will have to steer clear of that shortcut and I will certainly pay much closer attention to freshly planted grass.  
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Tagged with: Eric Vance Walton, Humor

The Kindness of Strangers

Posted on Jun 16th, 2009 by Eric : Poet/Author/Entreprenuer Eric
My friend and I go on one trip a year to blow off steam and decompress from the last 365 days.  This year, in Chicago, we were astounded by how big the portion sizes were in the restaurants and how much food people wasted!  Most people were leaving at least half of the food that was ordered on the table to be thrown away.

First we discussed how the restaurants should give you the option of choosing to receive half of the standard portion if they would donate the equivilant of the other half to a food shelf for the less fortunate.  

The idea blossomed and morphed from there.  We decided to, "cut out the middle man" and incorporate a new ritual on our annual trips.  We started having our server box up whatever of our meals we thought we couldn't finish and we gave them directly to homeless people on the street.   This little idea ended up being the most rewarding part of our journey this year.

One small act can lessen the worries of someone who might not know where there next meal is coming from.   To see the look of such gratitude in the eyes of someone who doesn't have access to life's basic nessesities was more than enough thanks. 

I urge you all to try this on your next vacation.  You'll be surprised at how good it makes you feel.  Afterall, as the recent economic downturn has made glaringly apparent, with but one simple slip any one of us could be praying for the kindness of strangers. 

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Tagged with: The Kindness of Strangers, Eric Vance Walton

Finally Forgiven

Posted on Jun 28th, 2009 by Eric : Poet/Author/Entreprenuer Eric
As any animal lover would tell you, pets come with their own personalities and set of quirks just like us humans.  But our one and a half year old beagle, "Amstel" just isn't any other animal.  Amstel takes just about every imaginable thing in life to the next level.  

Amstel, true to his breed, is pretty much fearless, very determined, and has the demeanor of a prince.   Both he and his grandfather, "Bud" (now deceased and yes they were both named after beers) go absolutely crazy when we cooked bison meat at home. So we, very creatively, imagined that a few hundred years back large packs of howling beagles dotted the Great Plains in pursute of the thundering buffalo herds.  It had to have taken at least 100 of them to take down a single buffalo but as I said they are determined little buggers.  If you have known a beagle this isn't a far stretch of the imagination.  So I digress. 

I recently went on a 4-day trip out of town to Chicago.  Amstel is typically my constant shadow so when I leave he gets the blues.  My fiancee read where leaving a shirt that you've worn for the dog lessens the separation anxiety a bit so we tried it.  She said that he curled up on that shirt every night that I was gone.  She said he became noticably depressed but much easier to handle.  Normally he's a handful.

I came home from the airport at the end of the fourth day and Amstel greeted me at the door with his tail wagging a million miles an hour.  After the initial exuberance a look of disgust quickly flashed across his face.  Where ever I was he came into the room and turned his back to me.  I threw his favorite chew toy, he played with it for roughly 10 seconds and then walked away from it looking angrily over his shoulder at me as if to say, "Hey, I'm supposed to be mad at you". 

We're going into the third week since I came back from my trip and Amstel is, at last, getting back to normal.  He's only shooting my and angry glance every now and then. The bison steaks may've helped but, afterall, that was a small price to pay for finally being forgiven.



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Tagged with: Amstel, Finally Forgiven, Eric Vance Walton