DECIDE NOTHING

Upgrade to paid to play voiceover This is chapter 06. You can find the table of contents in this post.Do me a favor, and if you enjoy listening to this, click the little ♡ to help other people find this piece, and be sure to subscribe as well, so that you'll get all of my new writing and audio when it comes out.

Having celebrated a birthday earlier this month, it always helps me to remember that we cumple años folks, so turning (in my case) 53 means turning the page on that one and beginning the 54th year. I also got Covid! Finally! I mean, I was starting to believe it just wasn’t going to happen. No surprise, all it took was going to see a Tom Petty cover band (I know) on a Saturday might (I know, I know) in exurban Marin County and… I know, I guess I was kind of asking for it.

Today, I'm speaking with Galen Kirkpatrick. Galen is a professional paraglider pilot and coach, and the 2022 FAI Women’s Pan-American Paragliding Champion, which means that she’s a world-class practitioner of the exceptionally rarified and extraordinary sport of sky racing! Racing paragliders is a lot like sailboat racing in that the object is to complete a given course in the shortest time possible, racing around marks or “turn points”—but it’s all in 3D, up in the sky.

Just a couple of months ago, I wrote about a horrible attack of a sciatica⁠1 (links below) that laid me out for two weeks straight and reminded me how devastating it is to be even partially physically debilitated. That episode had its roots in an injury that I sustained more than 20 years ago, the reason for which I knew just as well then as I do now: a lack of enough real physical strength to do the things I was doing without injuring myself.

This is chapter 01. You can find all of the parts of the book published so far in this post. Grey San Francisco light seeped through the lone window of the attic, just enough to rouse me from where I lay tangled in the covers of a mattress on the floor. Everything hurt. I ran my hands slowly over my body, checking for damage.

Today I'm talking with Bill Maeda, a very humbly self-described "54-year old married dad," a lifelong athlete and personal trainer, and, more recently, something of an accidental TikTok star.

For the end of 2022, I’m offering my first discount on this newsletter. Through the end of the year, you can get it for just $33 a year (33% off).Here’s the link to subscribe with the discount. The price will go back to $50/year or $5/month starting January 1, 2023. So far I haven’t chosen to paywall any of my content, but that will certainly happen in the coming year.

That fucking email that I sent. I wish I could delete it, like that scar on my leg from where I ran backwards over the Rain-bird at summer camp when I was ten, and the fact that I’m hungry even though I just ate lunch. Now I’m feeling better though, having had some almond butter and a can of carbonated water while I dig out the tools from the back of the van here in the parking lot of my storage unit in San Rafael, which is just eight miles to the north of San Francisco. Where I was born.

Today I'm speaking with Kim Stanley Robinson, a true legend of a writer, and also as an advocate for better stewardship of planet Earth and for sustainable cohabitation with all the species that inhabit this unique gem of a planet. Stan has published more than twenty books and has received great recognition for both his creative work, his advocacy, and although he's quick to qualify it as the work of a novelist, the fact is that he has made quite a mark with his science as well.

This is the home page for my memoir in progress, entitled Freedom, At All Costs. This is to introduce a new component of my Substack, and also of the accompanying podcast: draft chapters and voiceover audio of my memoir in progress. The working title of the book is Freedom, At All Costs, and the book is about redefining what “freedom” means. You can listen to the podcast either on Substack or on any of the usual podcast apps.