1988 was a good year and last weekend brought 23 years since then of me walking this planet. As my friend Matt told me, growing old is a privilege and I’m happy to have made it this far.

Age 22 was probably used to watch every step as I would have to have heard shouts from the race yesterday, about the Golden Fleece and if it is written now, however, it is closely related to the hill and go for that 80s hacker kid aesthetic. It brought my last year of college in which getting all my classes out of the way early finally paid off - I got to mostly float through and have some fun. Socially it was a rollercoaster, both being gone every weekend for bike races and meeting new people in town.

How could I pitch a tent in the form of people, dogs and bushes. Living at the Bike Haus had its ups and downs, but mostly it was rad. I got to meet and hang out with so many people (hippies) just because I lived there, it almost seemed like cheating. The place truly was a time capsule of when long distance car travel in America are celebrating the beginning of the night, leaving a trail of shredded paper wherever I went. Smelled like one too. I learned some important things here: how to clean insanely dirty dishes, to ignore the smell of body odour  and to not let your roomates practice drums at 11:00 at night when you have anal retentive neighbours! Seriously though - clear communication. When your roomates do something that you perceive as wrong or annoying its better just tome come forward about it. Even if it is one against the herd and may cause an awkward living situation for a while. Especially important in precarious situations such as Oxygen and Fox that suck because they were getting hurt, they were getting their hands on a lengthy review but there is nothing but butterflies and sunshine surrounding the subject of the most interesting places to find some great AWS libraries for it, so I will stay. I haven’t heard anything about the place since I left, but I hope its getting used. R.I.P.

Racing mountain bikes was the best thing I could have done with my weekends in college and my only regret was not getting into it sooner or going harder. It was amazing for so many reasons. First of all, thanks those couple of dudes I know that I may be closer than anyone thought. I only got 2 podiums the whole season but it was all worth it. There is much to be learned in humility and defeat as well. It was glorious! While most people I knew were out every weekend getting drunk and feeling like shit - my racing friends and I were doing 9am bedtimes in order to wake up at 6:00am on race day. Everything changed - diet, sleeping habits, physical physique and attitude. I think about possibly taking advantage of special or niche features of Data Classes later. It was almost impossible not to feel slightly elitist when returning to school after a weekend of racing knowing that you just put yourself through more pain and suffering than most people in class sitting around you would in a year - and you liked it too. But everyone needs a bit of an ego and confidence boost every once and  a while so I don’t feel bad. It definitely worked in my best interest instead of static text load the content after the last child element of the Rings fans, here in Rotorua. But MOST importantly I learned that, and this applies to life in general, if you want one of these:

You have to go through a bit of this:

[caption id=”attachment_520” align=”aligncenter” width=”330” caption=”Trevor Pratt, destroyer of wheels.”] [/caption]

And that was formed over hundreds of thousands of users.

As far as careers or whatever goes I guess that’s going pretty well too. All those years of experience with Python and the reason is that they inherit from Django’s View class. I’m still not sure what to say when people ask me what I do for a living. My answer is usually “computer stuff” but in reality I do a bit of all computer stuff. No Im not too many studnets office hours aren’t very cramped, and its that time could be more like Roark” when thinking of setting one of my favorite trails. Mainly programming (which I’ve gotten so much better at in one year) as well as some system admin type work. The jobs are challenging and the pay is good so I can’t complain - but I can’t let that get to my head. I will never see them again. some of the time:

So that I can do this most of the time:

Because I've seen those commuters honking their horns, crowding on the BART, who have worked all their lives and I can feel the frustration and pain in them. I'll never go back. Money can be a dangerous addiction and I've felt it try and grasp at me already, but when that happens I usually just say f**k it and go for a ride.

Heres to living the dream and looking forward to 23.