Alexis Lyon

I intended to go to 80′s night tonight at the local club with its light up dance floor. My physical therapist did some sweet kinesio taping of my arms to thwart my tendonitis, and I thought the bright turquoise tape would go well with some leggings, big hair, and other pink accoutrements. However, I just didn’t get there.

I made it out to dinner at least. But even before my friends picked me up at 8 to head to the tavern, I was grooved into my couch with my little macbook playing with WordPress and related website projects. After dinner I even invited my friends in for a little FTP action. All I did was ask one simple question: “What’s a good free FTP client?” …or was it text editor?  I don’t know. Many things I do know, like that these were the sort of friends that would know. But the order of little questions that led to so much more…downloading, uploading, installations, and live web editing…well…the specifics of that I’m not quite sure.

What I do know is how good it feels to learn something new.  Not just learn something, but do something that changes my presence on the web.  Within seconds.  I get so excited when I conquer an obstacle that previously seemed so daunting.  Like figuring out a way to get a podcast recorded on my friends little device and uploaded through Windows media to function with pretty little buttons when viewed by Macs. I am smart. I use words I don’t even know before I know I know them. I can whip out a research paper from first hand experience to articulate religious syncretism involving worship of the goddess Kali by Sinhalese Buddhists. I can even make a colon out of clay, which might even add creative to my list of assets. But there are still and will always remain to be so many things I want so badly to know how to do. What I’ve really wanted to be able to do these days is to say “Hello, World!” and then install a plug in and integrate my “hello”‘s from other interworldly networks. I want these networks to cross-pollinate and propagate and look so slick and smooth and cool. I won’t say that I can’t do these things. But I will say that the road to being able to do these things can seem overwhelmingly long at times. I can connect roads. I can document the absurdities I find along the sides of roads, and then connect as many of theses absurdities as possible to as many roads as I ever knew to be there and then some, so that when you come to a crossroads it doesn’t matter which way you go because you could always just use google to get back to one of the shortcuts…I can do sprinklings of that sort of thing. Being able to do this fashionably, however, is going to take some time.

In the meantime, I work my day job, take a class or two in the “Hello, World” school, paint a little, ponder when I will sculpt again, and enjoy phone calls from my favorite 7 year old wondering when we are going to do the Worm Project again. Which reminds me: I want to start a WormBlog. Should I buy wormblog.com?  Or just add it to the end of my self named website’s wordpress section like this: alexislyon.com/wordpress/wormblog? Or should I try out a wordpress.com site? Would that be easier? Or would I be disappointed that it would not  have all of the customizable functionality that I’ve been starting to crave? I’m slightly intimidated, and at the same time obsessed, by so many web development-ish things that I do not know. And that I do know, just a little.

Given the choice to download the super easy versus the super crunked and customizable version of something, lately I tend to hover in the middle ground. I can download and install applications with no problem.  But then I crunk it up a notch, and at 2 in the morning I suddenly decide I need to learn how to install wordpress plugins. I know all of these things are a breeze to many. We all have our niches. I seem to have as many niches as I have social networks. No wonder I can hardly find time to sleep. I really don’t understand those people that get bored. If there’s one thing my mother taught me (and there are myriad things she taught me) it’s that there is never any reason to be bored.  There is always something I could be doing. Like teaching myself more about how to put it out there. On the web that is.

In any case, I digress, as I usually do. An old girlfriend used to call me “Tangentia.” Some friends find this charming. Those are the ones that are still around to guide me through the mysteries of FTP.

Tonight, with the help of friends, not only did I make it through a steaming heap of nachos, but I also downloaded a new text editor, a new FTP client, and played around a little bit with Aptana (Eclipse style software that appears to make things possible that I don’t even know I want to know how to do yet). I found my website files through the terminal and downloaded them. I edited some text on a page or two of my site directly through the FTP both in Text Wrangler and then in Aptana.  I don’t want to buy Dreamweaver, or use my old 2002 iBook with its Dreamweaver MX.  Rather I want to learn how to use all of the free and open source software I can, and I want to learn how to do things the simple complicated way (simple because it’s my way, complicated because…well…customizable just opens up a world of worms…ha…I love my own unintentional metaphors…) I want to learn more and more!  A week or so ago, I tried to install some WordPress plugins, but was thwarted by some specifics here and there, such as incompatibility with PHP4, and not realizing that I didn’t really need to unzip any of the files I downloaded before I uploaded them.

Perhaps if I can remember some of the things I have figured out along the way, I could write some of those simple little bloggish instructions (the sort that I have found so helpful!)

I could also start a dictionary of words that I made up.  I used to have an argument with a guy I worked with about my use of the word “uneditable.”  His argument was that since Microsoft Word underlined it in squiggly red, then by no means could it be a word. This WordPress visual console appears to agree with him by the looks of the red squiggliness I see as I compose this.  However, if you take a gander at a google search, you’ll see the word all through the results unsquiggled. Interesting to note that “google” will pass all of these tests without a bit of red while all of my innovative constructions of “squiggle” filled words are squiggletastic in comparison.

While I never got my hot turquoise kinesio taping out on the dance floor, it sure helped my forearms muscle through this blog post.  And just so you know, “kinesio” is a word.  I just googled it.

Getting ready to consolidate and refresh my web presence.  I started alexislyon.com about half a decade ago, in order to create a web gallery of my artwork.  In my spare time (ha!) when I wasn’t making art or working, I was learning Photoshop and Dreamweaver MX as I went, trying a little of this, a little of that, to create various pages.  I even started a little side project on wormproject.com.  I became quite fond of a rollover-thumbnails-and-switch-the-big-pic kind of layout.  With all of  the Photoshop editing, it was very tedious.  Many years and a new computer later, I am finally trying to sneak in a little time to either seriously update and/or redo my website.  After a saucy jaunt down to WordCamp in Boston last weekend, I have installed WordPress!  Here I go….

Will I redo?  Or just incorporate?

Shall I process this decision through this blog?  For now, why not?

Over the past couple of years I have been playing around voraciously in the social web.  Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Tumblr, Posterous, Blip, Blogger (hee hee, can you mention that here?), YouTube, Flickr, and many more than I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.  Some I became obsessed with and/or addicted to, and others I lost interest with.  Shall I link to some of these?  Use pluggins?  I heard some great talks at WordCamp last weekend about aggregating and auto posting video (Steve Garfield), and some other interesting Ignite talks.  One warned against over filling my site with things that work better elsewhere…I remember thinking it was so negative…but it stuck with me obviously…

OK…I think I’m “dot dot dot” -ing a little much now as I digress…

Stay tuned, come back, and let me know what you think!

Alexis

alexislyon.com

wormproject.com

In the last two weeks upwards of 15 women have asked me to teach them how to surf. I certainly enjoy getting more friends out in the waves as much as I can. All of this interest got me thinking about my journey into the waves, and how exactly it is that I learned. So I decided to compile a blog entry of some of the things I have learned that might be useful for others.

The friend that introduced me to surfing is the fabulous artist Barbara Dilorenzo (my BFF for 26 years now!) She even named her design company after the ocean
http://www.wavepaint.com
Over the years she got me out in the water on an extra board of hers down at Second Beach in Rhode Island. That got me interested enough to sign up for a lesson or two.

Here are some of the companies that have offered lessons (some specific to women) in New England:

I found this company when I was trying to learn to be a freestyle motocross star (they specialize in getting females started in extreme sports):
Girls Learn To Ride: http://gltrnews.airbornellc.com/
I never became a freestyle motocross star, but I did find a couple of different women specific surf camps through the site. I don’t see any listed in New England this summer, but it still might link to some fun surf news, and might be good to keep on the radar in case something gets posted in the future. The clinics I found through Girls Learn to Ride were actually local businesses that may have more available in New England anyway.

One of the lessons I took was with Peter Pan down in Rhode Island. He was a tough style coach, really making you work hard to catch the waves, paddling and paddling and paddling until exhaustion. He really drills some basic essential skills into you that will most likely stick with you for a long time, even if you don’t stand up on any waves yet that day. He had really reasonable package deals where you scheduled a lesson for a couple hours, wetsuit rental and board rental included. The day I took a class with him, he was totally cool with us keeping the equipment for a few more hours at no extra charge to practice what we’d learned. That was a few years ago now, but it looks like he has a website.
http://www.surfermag.com/buyers-guide/surf-camps/2009/peter-pan-surf-academy.htm

Another year I took a great class with Wahine Kai East in Kennebunk, ME. A completely different vibe than the Peter Pan class. This company teaches only women, and is taught by all women. Some of the most useful ideas I came away from that class with were from casual conversations we had on the beach at the end of the class. I left with an idea of what I wanted to look for in a board, and what I might need for equipment.
http://www.themainesurfschool.com/index.htm
It looks like they have a good deal for a group class if you get 5 friends together and plan one together.

Another place in Kennebunk, Maine I have heard great things about is Aquaholics:

Some of my friends rave about Nanci there, who has helped them find some deals on used boards that are a good match for them. I think they also have classes, and maybe even some groups (that might even be free?) to get women out in the water playing in the waves together.

With that said, I should move on to some tips on shops.

Wherever I travel on the coast of anywhere that has any surf at all, I look for surf shops. Aside from the surfers already in the water, shops are a great place to find out about the conditions of the area you are visiting. They might have lessons, or they might rent out boards and/or wetsuits by the day or by the hour. While you may have a friend or two with a board to go ride with, you’re really going to learn to surf when you get a board to ride. Think of it as one of the most important investments into your well being you will ever make. Unlike snowboarding, you are not going to have to buy lift tickets, so once you get a board, you can go surfing for free. True, you might have to put some quarters in a meter or pay a parking ticket once in a while, but compared to a season pass for a ski resort, or lift tickets, it’s virtually nothing.

So, with that said, here are some of the shops I like that are near Portland, Maine.

I’m going to have to say Cinnamon Rainbows http://www.cinnamonrainbows.com/ is my favorite, in Hampton, NH, because they have such a large selection of boards. I like to meet up halfway with friends from Massachusetts sometimes and surf in New Hampshire, and top it off with a nice meal at the Friendly Toast in Portsmouth. I actually have never bought a board there myself, but many of my friends have, and I have learned a lot by talking to the folks there about the different sizes and shapes of boards. I did get a great deal on my wetsuit there, the “4:3″ that I wear about 3 seasons out of the year, as well as the occasional board shorts, new leash, etc. After poking into different little shops in different little surf towns, it is really exciting to see so many boards in one place, of so many different kinds. They rent them too, and they are right on the water so they might let you try them out if I remember correctly. They have the largest selection of used boards I have seen so far in New England.

In Portland, Maine:
http://www.corduroyboutique.com/
They rent boards, and send boards out once a week for repair if you need board repair right in town. Got my mitts there, and the occasional hunk of Mighty Mounds (totally unfeminist but excellent wax:)

In Scarborough, Maine:
http://www.arlbergski.com/locations.html
This place rents boards for the day I believe, near Scarborough and Higgins Beach.

Scarborough Beach does require you to purchase a surf pass for the year to drive into their lot with a surfboard. It’s $75, but then it gets you and any passengers, and as many boards as you can bring, into the beach all year long. It also lets you get in through the gate after hours, which is great for sunrise, sunset, and moonrise surfing.

In Old Orchard, ME
http://www.moosecounty.us/
Really chill local place. I should get there more often.

I actually lucked out and bought a board at Play It Again Sports (used sporting equipment) in Portland, ME once, but I heard it is a rare find:
http://www.playitagainsports.com/

Once you have a board, or maybe even before you have a board, you need to get it to the beach. I used to just toss mine in the back of my pickup with a bungee cord. After repairing lots of dings, I started being more vigilant about zipping it into a bag before I tossed it in, and bought a pad for the tailgate for about $20. I also bought a lock that attaches to the fin box which makes me stress less when I want to go have a bite to eat before heading home. I don’t know much about car racks, or cars, for that matter.

For most of the year in Maine you’re going to need a wetsuit to stay in the water for any length of time. Diving suits and surfing wetsuits are different. You want a surfing wetsuit, for flexibility, etc. They come in different thicknesses. The thicknesses refer to the millimeters of neoprene, I believe. They usually have two or three numbers to indicate the different layers of thickness (usually thickest near the core). This is what I think about the one’s I have bought over the years:

3:2 My first wetsuit. Not very warm at all. Warmer than board shorts and a rash guard.

4:3 My favorite suit. Warm enough to wear in spring and fall, with mitts and booties as necessary. Since I bought it, I wear it all summer too, unless I wear no wetsuit in the heart of summer.

6:5:4 My hooded winter suit. The hardest to get on and off. Necessary and amazing for surfing all winter. I wear it with the same mitts and booties and can surf in the snow Some of my friends have 5:4:3′s, which seem to serve the exact same purpose. We surf together in the same temperatures, and don’t see much of a difference. Dermatone, or even Chapstick, or Body Glide, can seal the deal and protect your face on colder, windy days.

Speaking of mitts and booties, I bought the thickest ones they had, because I figured, if I am going to wear mitts and booties, I want them to be warm as possible. Some surfers may disagree, and will make a point to wear the least possible thickness of everything for higher dexterity, etc.

If I were to suggest one wetsuit to buy first, I would get a 4:3. It will last you through all seasons but winter, esp. if you end up getting mitts and booties.

People learn on all sizes and shapes of boards. The first board I bought was a longboard 9’6″. I find it easier to catch waves and balance on the longboard. When I started standing up more, I wanted to get a smaller board for tighter turns, and bought an 8’4″ The shorter one was harder to catch waves on at first, but allowed me more dexterity in larger surf. I am a 5’10″ red headed girl giant remember. Some of my smaller friends prefer shorter boards. And some love the long ones no matter what, and like to walk up and down them while riding. Ask people you meet how long their boards are, and why they like them. Talk to people at different shops. Be honest about how new you are, and how little you know. Rent different sizes and kinds of boards. Don’t ever use those slippery foam boards if you can help it. I slid off and ripped my big toenail off once in Santa Monica while trying to ride one of those horrible slippery boards.

Sometimes Magic Seaweed is right on, and sometimes completely off. It’s nice to see an idea of the forecast, even though of course it keeps changing. It’s fun to check the surf all over the world, and peruse the photos.

This site is run by a local kid in Scarborough, Maine, whose dad runs the surf camp at Scarborough Beach:
http://www.mainewaves.com/
One of my favorite things about this site is the page that shows multiple Webcams in Maine.

There are many more shops, places, links, tips, etc. that I am sure I have missed, so feel free to comment if you have corrections, thoughts, additions. Maybe I will write another post soon less about gear and more about learning to ride. I need to get to sleep so that I can squeeze in a quick session before work in the morning.

Hope you have fun and that I see you out in the waves!

I’m not sure if I even pumped the tires up right. I unscrewed the caps, attached the pump, maybe, and pumped once or twice until it said 120. But something didn’t feel right. Oh well. They were pumped up enough from the tune up I invested in a month ago. I wasn’t even scared of the way the little mountain bike shoes click into the pedals. When I got those a couple years ago, those totally freaked me out.

I got out on the road, and realized I had no idea how to change the gears. There was a little lever by the thumb on each handlebar, but neither did a thing. This was my bike; how could I not know? I even pulled into a church parking lot, flipped my bike upside down, and got my hands dirty in the chain trying to manually shift it and figure out how the thing worked.

I finally figured out that the brakes have a special sideways function, and got back into the groove. I reflected upon that sad moment I seem to encounter within a year of most breakups, where I come across some sort of need that used to be answered by my former partner. For years those needs were things I still needed to learn about motorcycles. Learning to ride motorbikes while dating a couple motorbike mechanics was a good safe springboard for motorbiking, but wanting to figure things out without calling up some ex has prompted me towards self sufficiency in a variety of areas.

Speaking of motorbikes, it is funny to me how much safer I feel on a motorbike than a pedal bike. On a motorbike I am the traffic, while on a pedal bike I ride in constant fear of the traffic. There just seems to be so much less under me, and my body feels (appropriately I might add) less protected in spandex attached to pedals than it does pumping gears with booted feet underneath blue jeans.

With that said, I was so terrified heading down my first hill on the pedal bike today that I used the brakes the whole way to the train tracks at the bottom, still checking as I pedaled later to see if I had popped a tire on the tracks. I don’t think I did. This road bike just has such skinny little tires.

After a gentle hour long ride through Falmouth mostly, with many gorgeous ocean views, and a brief interlude into a yard sale (where I bought a fabulous pottery book for a dollar) I was feeling a bit more warmed up to the whole activity, excited to explore all sorts of similar routes and beyond in the weekends to come. By the end of the hour I was switching gears appropriately to go faster on the way down hills with less fear, climbing up them at much faster speeds. I am doing two triathlons in August, so it’s a good thing I’m pulling the bike out at last.

At dinner last night I met my friend’s new girlfriend. I liked her right off, and there was none of the “new people” awkwardness you can feel in such a situation. We were all comfortably chatty right away. In fact, I was so glad to see my friend for the first time in months, and get to meet this new person in her life, that I didn’t even blabber on and on incessantly about myself, but rather asked about their lives and their relationship. A question I asked that sparked some enjoyable conversation was, “Where did you guys meet?”

They had met at work, though there was some discrepancy about whether they had met each other by chance during a previous encounter months earlier. The fun of the question though was to see them share the stage and banter back and forth as they recapped with lots of humor and sweet eyes at each other their few first encounters, what brought them back together, how they first kissed, etc. All in all, I left that dinner both grateful to spend some time with my friend, and also satisfied to see that she had a pleasant and fun partner worthy of venturing with across the country and introducing to friends and relatives.

Within moments of parting with my dinner companions, I ran into an old friend on a downtown Portland, ME street corner around 9 o’clock on a Saturday night. We got to talking and we got to walking and ended up embarking on what we playfully termed “a platonic date.” This platonic date was charming, strange, fortuitous and fascinating, and lasted the better part of the next 6 or 7 hours. The most fascinating part, I’ll have to say, though the topic continued into the evening, was when we began to honestly recap the trials and tribulations of our past friendship, and our somewhat unsuccessful forays into dating both other people and each other over the years. So of course we tried to figure out precisely how it was that we met.

Maybe we remember better in our 20′s or in our teen years? Is it a result of passing the 30 year mark that we’ve lost some of the details? We could remember all sorts of encounters, but not the precise moment when we actually met. Never the less, the memories we had of our first encounters, where we met by chance, and walked, sat, danced, and kissed, was sweet enough that I would feel comfortable counting it as a legitimate “how we met” story. Just in case this chance encounter with an old friend might one day lead into the sort of relationship that warrants such a story. Just in case

But I digress. Are these stories important? The “how we met” stories? Do they really have some bearing on what the relationship might mean? Could they in and of themselves ever be deal breakers? I met someone at the Paradise in Boston, MA, probably at some sort of jam band show, when I offered him an orange Tic Tac. It served as a charming story and memory with quite a bit of potential, though after pleasant dates to museums, parties and shows we never really hit it off as a couple anyway. I met a guy on the way into a dance club at midnight on a Saturday night after he said, “Nice boots.” A little while later I sat next to him on a couch in the club, and we decided to go for a walk and swing on some swings by the ocean together. (if my date isn’t fun to hang out with on a playground under a starry sky, it’s most likely not going anywhere). We hit it off on the playground, and I brought him back to my art studio where we sculpted each others’ ears out of clay. It was very romantic. Within a month, though, I didn’t really like him after I started to get to know him. Why do we have charming encounters and wonderful dates with people we’re certainly not meant for? Does this mean conversely that wonderful relationships can grow from innocuous, boring, uncomfortable, or just plain trashy beginnings?

How important is it really to remember the “how we met?” story? I’ve gone on a total of two dates with people I met in personal ads. I was very disappointed with both, so I never bothered to really explore a concern I pondered at the time, which was how would I feel about later recapping the “how we met?” story if I met someone through the online personals? I’ve know quite a few folks that have married people they met on match.com, and perhaps today in our online culture this is probably quite common. Though I’m not averse to meeting someone through the personals, I’d rather have a charming “how we met?” story. The most serious and long lasting relationship I’ve ever had was started by a set up orchestrated by a common friend. And some other sweet relationships have started less specifically, but also through people I just met through a circle of friends. One such relationship started with a just-ran-into-each-other-on-the-street spontaneous attendance of an Alice Cooper show. He grabbed my hand in the spirit of the concert to thrust it up in the air in recognition of the man on stage. Then we got nachos. I don’t remember when we first kissed and it probably wasn’t that night. The spontaneous attendance of the Alice Cooper show doesn’t really count as the “How we met?” but rather as the “How we started hanging out and therefore became more than friends” story.

I hope my next relationship has a nice “How we met?” story. Or even a nice series of “how we remember how we first started hanging out and why we decided to keep hanging out” kind of stories. I guess all that really matters is that if you do keep hanging out with someone long enough to ever need to tell the story to friends and loved ones, that you can tell it together with playful humor and kind knowing glances, whatever the circumstances were, and however little or much you can remember.

I’m going through a breakup. Or at least relationship turmoil. By day, I show up at the office and dive into nerdiness. Zip off to programming class and find comfort in brushing up on the syntax that will make my code compile. I distract myself for a few more hours laughing over Indian food with friends.

I avoid that lonely moment of going home by myself for as long as I can. I am okay. I am strong and functional through my professional and educational life. I am even an honest grown up through the breaking up.

On the couch in my pj’s with my cats and my laptop, I begin to blip. Songs I once had to rewind again and again if I wanted to repeat them. In 1990 I got my first CD player, and I found the “Repeat” button. I could wallow in the misery of “so I hear you found somebody new, and that I never meant that much to you,” for hours on end. My uncool rough little childhood had finally reached a tragic depth with the severed love of a one week relationship with the first person I ever french-kissed.

This has been a pleasant, non wallowing, cathartic cheese ballad session.

I will not try to say anything funny, intelligent, witty, or sweet. I am suddenly shy. I have been journaling privately since fourth grade. I have a lot to say. I have many thoughts in my head. I want to write the ones that are in between the tweets. The dreams I remember before I fully wake up. We’ll just see how it goes.

I suddenly feel the pressure I feel as an artist when I think about whether the work will sell, or anything related to the sale of the work, as I am making it. A self consciousness, a judging, before the work even begins. In my art this is stifling. It strangles my creativity, as much of what I make will never be sold, I would imagine. Not much of a market for intestinal creatures and installations. I have a static website, http://www.alexislyon.com where I learned and dabbled in a little web design quite a few years ago, in order to create an online gallery of my artwork. I have made many creatures, mouths, and installations since I last updated this site. Something else I have noticed over the last few years is the proliferation of free and user friendly ways to publish words, pictures, and video all over the web using social networking. My awareness of social networking media has increased exponentially over the last year. I am not sure of how much of what I am finding is brand new, and how much I am just finding suddenly as I dabble through social media, trying out just about everything a friend I know sends my way.

twitter, delicious, plinky, blip, tumblr, posterous are just a few of the sites i find more interesting. More on that later.

Now to check the surf report.