Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Driving to the Oval for practice this morning, I heard these words on the radio from NPR:

If you flew in a dirigible over Austin in the dark of night, you could probably find the city just by listening for a huge airborne column of amazing guitar music.

I almost shouted out loud, HEY! THAT’S MY FRIGGIN BROTHER YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT! My brother is a professional musician who lives in Austin, Texas. He is a guitarist, frequently gigs with the well-known Austin band Allison Thrash, runs his own recording studio, plays in pit orchestras, and completely rocks. He is as serious about his music as I am about skating, but with one crucial difference; David makes a living playing music!!!!

David had a friendster blog for a while but he really liked how mine looked, so I spent a few days working my web designer voodoo, and set him up with his own cool looking blog, it is hosted in the same place as his music studio, LoveMonkey Studios.

Even though brothers share genetic similarities, they usually have drastically different personalities; this is evident in our topics and writing styles. But music concerts - pickles – dive bars - and the stuff he writes about is also much more accessible than what I obsess & ruminate upon.

For example, current obsession/rumination: I have worked hard at rounding my back more as I load up for each stroke, and you can see that is working in this series, but now I am not really extending my leg fully at the end of the stroke… hmmmm… what did Paul Marchese tell me once about speedskating, something like “skating is a strange sport, fix one thing in your technique and something else breaks”.

Anyway, keep it real bro, and next time I am in a blimp and see a huge airborne column of amazing guitar music, I will know I am getting near Austin! (What writhes through the air in a swirling vortex of atmospheric disturbance over Salt Lake city?? Mormon missionaries? Amazing Mexican food? Or the hundreds of winter athletes in multiple sports training their souls out for the upcoming winter Olympics??)

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