This morning, I had a simple, but I think profound realization. Wealth creation is not a zero-sum game. For me to be wealthier, I do not need to make you poorer. Now, I’ve known this before. You probably have too. But sometimes it feels like it, because of the exchange of money, and the erroneous conflation of money with wealth.
Wealth has been in the back of my mind for some time. While I’ve not read Secrets of the Millionaire Mind 
I like Virgin Airlines. I particularly liked my transcontinental business class trip on Virgin America. I like the Virgin lounge in Heathrow. And I LOVE business class when east-bound transatlantic. I’ve had worse nights of sleep in hotels than on that “red eye” (I’m looking at you Barcelona Pensione!) Obviously, I’m a Virgin flying club member.
That was then. This is now.
Now, each transatlantic flight comes directly out of my own pocket and I’m in uncertain financial waters as I try to start a transatlantic business. We’re in floundering early stages. We’re on the prowl for the cheapest office space that will keep us working together and out of the home. We’re taking jobs because they’ll bring income, not because they’ll play to our strengths. And, I’m looking to get across the pond at rock-bottom prices. For my next flight (planned for mid-March) I’ve been comparison shopping. BA is $50 cheaper than Virgin flights, and while my BA flights have been quite nice, and they offer more flight choices, there are other reasons to avoid BA: [I like Virgin Airlines. I particularly liked my transcontinental business class trip on Virgin America. I like the Virgin lounge in Heathrow. And I LOVE business class when east-bound transatlantic. I’ve had worse nights of sleep in hotels than on that “red eye” (I’m looking at you Barcelona Pensione!) Obviously, I’m a Virgin flying club member.
After much humming and hawing, I signed up for broadband in Virginia with Comcast. I’m wary of them based on their filtering, and other subscribers talking about their dropping idle connections (sometimes, long-lived SSH connections are handy). But I wasn’t able to get much bandwidth from CenturyLink due to my location. So far, speedtest looks downright awesome. Here are the results from my new connection in Virginia.
I had a dream last night about a statue. That’s all I remember about the dream – the statue. The statue was titled “The Many Muses of Flight”
It was all white as if carved from white marble. It had a man in Dickensian garb complete with top hat leaping up, but he was only partially distinct from the white marble mass which was primarily shaped like the plumes of smoke from the early stages of a rocket launch. Further up the column of marble smoke – about head-hight and taller to the man, all manner and size of bird arced out of the plume in all directions.
I was thinking recently of things I’ve done, places I’ve been. At forty, I still feel young. New to the world, even though my body isn’t capable of what it once was. Looking back though, I’m astonished and overwhelmed at the people and events that have found their way into my lives.
Sometimes at Thanksgiving, the holiday has just come and gone. Good food, good friends and family. This year, though I spent a little bit of time reflecting. I count myself genuinely lucky for the breadth of experiences I’ve had, people I’ve known, places I’ve been.
Thank you.
If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
I don’t recall if that was formally part of my upbringing, but for the most part, I take it to heart. I’ve been pretty quiet lately.
In part, it seems to be the norm for social media too. It’s OK to be momentarily frustrated by something, or to need help with a task, but if it’s not funny, engaging, or a bit of over-sharing, it doesn’t belong in your tweet or your facebook update. So I’m blogging this instead — an environment I expect to be more real, and more conversational.
Saturday: Ditchling Beacon to Devil’s Dyke (route) (photos)
Sunday: Lewes Castle to Brighton (route) (photos)
Originally, this weekend, we had planned to train up to Gatwick and from there to take a trail along to Pooh Corner and the Hundred acre woods. We had that queued up for Sunday so decided to go for a walk on Saturday. Only we slept in on Sunday because Saturday’s walk tired us out, so we gave up Pooh Corner in favor of Lewes Castle. We took the train up to Lewes, spent some time in the castle, had a pub lunch and then found our way home on our bicycles.
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Two weekends ago, I went out with Simon and we tooled around in the woods and on bridle trails (usually!) for 20-odd miles. My rides with Simon have been a delight, if not exactly purposeful. Like any riding, it’s only a matter of making the time for ’em. Cycling remains for me the one form of exercise that I don’t think of as exercise, but as fun. We mainly find our way up into the downs. This time, we finally completed a ride that we’d meant to do before when he started dropping ball bearings out of his headset (oops!) – Ditchling Beacon to Devil’s Dyke. This is also a “bus-to-bus” hike we’d talked about doing as a family. More fun on the bike, quicker and didn’t have to take the bus as part of it, but not as family-friendly. 🙂
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<a href="http://gallery.accapehart.com/v/Events/Outings/IRB_3994+_EH__2_.jpg.html"><img src="http://gallery.accapehart.com/d/21045-2/IRB_3994+_EH__2_.jpg" /></p>
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AC on the<br />Capital to Coast<br />ride
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Then, last weekend, I did the Capital to Coast bike ride (60 miles). (It’s still not too late to offer support and <a href="http://www.justgiving.com/AC-Capehart">help me raise my target goal of £200</a> for the Capital to Coast ride!) This was also quite fun. I started out with some mates from work going slowly, but looked behind me and saw that I’d already lost them so pushed myself instead. Breaks every 10-15 miles with snacks and water made it a pretty straight forward trip. I finished it off in about 5.5 hours. It feels like I should have done better. I rode pretty well, but definitely took advantage of the rest stops. There were also road-side photographers. I had no idea what they were doing, so I waved at all of them. Turns out, they were taking pictures of the riders to sell back to us. I am far more interested in pictures that make me look like a serious cyclist. Fortunately, there was one that has a bit of that look, so I did buy it:)
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<a href="http://gallery.accapehart.com/v/Places/England/Brighton/PaddleRoundThePier/IMG_4872.JPG.html"><img src="http://gallery.accapehart.com/d/21011-2/IMG_4872.JPG" /></p>
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Martyn Ashton<br />does precision riding
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Did another 30 miles this weekend. Just out-and-back. I intended to go to Beachy Head to see what it looked like, but traffic was heavy, I’d forgotten sunscreen, getting a little tired. Turning back, I realized how much the wind had been to my back. I slogged home, and it seemed like it was getting worse and worse. When I finally stopped, I realized the rear wheel had been brutalized somehow, and the breaks were rubbing almost continuously. I’d been working against hills, wind and breaks. After that ride, we went back down to the <a href="http://www.paddleroundthepier.com/">“Paddle Round The Pier”</a> where we got to watch <a href="http://www.ashtonbikes.com/">Martyn Ashton</a> and Blake Samson on the Animal Relentless Bike Tour.
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<a href="http://gallery.accapehart.com/v/Places/England/Brighton/PaddleRoundThePier/IMG_4889.JPG.html"><img src="http://gallery.accapehart.com/d/21041-2/IMG_4889.JPG" /></p>
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Blake Samson’s<br />arial acrobatics
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What a blast. While Carolyn most enjoyed Blake’s aerial acrobatics, I was primarily a fan of the precision control and balance required by Martyn’s trial riding. I’d always been impressed by trial riding, but I’d never seen any in-person, and while this was more stunt than trial specifically, it was enough to keep me up last night pouring over youtube videos of trial riding, and contemplating picking up an Ashton Diamondback trials bike while I’m here as they don’t carry ’em back in the states.
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More pictures from the “<a href="http://www.animal.co.uk/fe/htm/index/index.asp">Animal</a> <a href="http://www.relentlessenergy.com/">Relentless</a> <strong>Freestyle Bike Tour</strong> sponsored by <a href="http://www.vitosport.co.uk/index.html">Vito Sport</a>, and <a href="http://www.ashtonbikes.com/">Team Ashton Diamondback</a>” can be found in <a href="http://gallery.accapehart.com/v/Places/England/Brighton/PaddleRoundThePier/">my gallery</a>.
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I just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. I also deleted a lot of users. If one of them was you and your actually reading this, sorry. Best I could tell it was sleeper spam accounts. But basically, if your email address is in the .ru or .pl domains, and your “real name” doesn’t match your email address at all, I figured you and I weren’t on very close terms.
On Friday, it was supposed to rain. We were going to go shopping. I needed a replacement keychain – my “England” one from Heathrow had broken under the strain of daily use. I needed a hat (CF my post wherein I left my hat on the train on the way up). I was interested in a sweater of Scottish wool. We have various birthdays coming up that we need to provide for. We had even considered Pitlochry’s Children’s Adventure Playground figuring it would be more interesting than staying in the cottage — even in the rain.