RSS

h marc lewis (click for more photos)

My life

[10/26/09] — Jennie and I took a trip to Bogotá, Colombia for a week and had a total blast!

[07/12/09] — A bunch of us did our 5th Dirt Gather, dual-sporting and camping in the Cascades, with a ride to the Canadian border, mostly via unpaved forest roads.

[07/04/09] — I took a road trip to Southern British Columbia on my new Aprilia SL750 Shiver naked bike.

In mid-March of '09 I saw a moose just outside the window where I'm typing this. So I grabbed a quick photo and walked outside, where I saw a larger moose in the street. I watched them walk through a neighbor's lawn then got a 2nd shot. So I put a moose page here.

I started doing Yoga and practicing meditation in the fall of '08, and I have been paying particular attention to Being Here Now. Believing that we are all connected shrinks my worries about mortality. Being absorbed in the present moment means that I can enjoy the cold winter (it got pretty snowy this year) without being unhappy about it, and dream of spring and summer without being impatient for them to arrive.

My current reads are:

• The Journey Home – Autobiography of an American Swami, by Radhanath Swami
• Meditation Now or Never, by Steve Hagen
• Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, by Glyn Moody

For Fun...

In 1995 I put my own server on the 'net and named it MicaPeak.com (the real Mica Peak is a 5200' peak visible from our front yard). It blends my interest in programming, doing Webpage development, writing, communication and motorcycles (which is the focus of micapeak.com). I have my own LLC ( Software Ingenuity) — which includes a Website where I provide some of the simple software tools I've developed which you might find useful if you write your own HTML & CSS.

Another favorite activity (in the physical realm) is motorcycling, and I have another web page devoted to that. I recently trimmed my motorcycle stable, and a 2005 BMW R1200GS is the one I now ride the most. In January of '06 I bought a Honda XR650L from a friend in Oregon which I've hacked on enough that it's now quite a good dirt-oriented dual sport. Even handles the pavement okay on knobbies.

My family bought me an iPod for my birthday in '06. I've discovered podcasts and spend most of my iPod time listening to them. My favorite is Buzz Out Loud (a tech-news podcast of indeterminate length). I hardly even listen to the XM radio in my truck anymore.

At the end of 2008 I bought a netbook (a Lenovo S10) which I upgraded with extra RAM and a 200GB 7,200rpm hard disk. I triple-booted it (WinXP/SP3, Ubuntu 8.10, and OS/X 10.5), which I described on the Lenovo S10 forum. It's tiny and at 2.3 lbs, very easy to carry when travelling. Wanda has one too, and can carry hers in her purse!

Perhaps my very favorite thing to do these days is babysit our grandkids. We have six, four boys and two girls, with ages from less than 1 to 8. They are the most fun thing there is. And the boys seem to be interested in motorcycles, too. Being a grampa rocks!

Family

My wife Wanda is a 5th grade school teacher in Spokane Valley. She loves her kids and grandkids, computers, Mexican food and motorcycles. In 2003 she decided she prefers dirtbiking to street riding and now rides only her slightly modified Yamaha TT-R125L. Though she talks about buying a Yamaha TW200 or Honda CRF230 to ride to school. I think the 'helmet hair' issue and lack of cargo space will squash that idea, but we'll see!

Wanda and I have five wonderful children, each of whom makes us incredibly proud. Oldest to youngest, they are:

Jennie	Daughter #1 has more college degrees than I can count and works as an International Analyst for N.O.A.A. in Washington, DC. She's always zipping around the planet, putting a gorgeous and very liberal human face on the USA for the the rest of the world. Good girl!
Amy	My younger daughter is a mother, homemaker and runs her own business: Redefined Interiors. My son-in-law David is Director - Strategic Planning - OneCare for Microsoft, in Seattle. Their children are Conor, Griffin, and Kasey.
Rachel	Wanda's oldest daughter is also a mom and homemaker, but hopes to go back to school add a special education credential to her Teaching Certificate. She and her husband Cory, who is an electrician, also have three children: Austin, Kyler, and Kaylee. We get to babysit them often — Yeah!!!
Lindsay	Wanda's youngest daughter is an R.N. working at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. She, her husband Omar, and his family run a local Mexican restaurant (La Milpa). Lindsay, like Jennie, is extremely well educated, speaks fluent Spanish, loves to travel, and is passionate about all things human.
Ryan	Wanda's son works at a local mailing service. Like many 20-somethings, he's an avid gamer (he has a very high-end Alienware laptop), and favors musical groups that Wanda and I have never heard of. We see him every week or two when he comes over for dinner and a 5mbps Internet fix. He wears a black most of the time, sometimes sports facial hair or piercings, and drives a Subaru WRX.

My extended family includes a bunch of wild and crazy cyberspace bikers over on WetLeather. Damn, but I love those people!

My Web sites

I've done quite a few Websites over the years, and recently have been doing some post-retirement consulting. I favor 'vi' and hand-coding the style sheet and the HTML by hand, or maybe with a little perl or PHP perhaps mixed in with some database stuff. Here are some I've done recently:

Sites I visit daily...

Other stuff

In 1995 I discovered a family diary which was written in 1882 during a wagon train trip from Kansas to Washington Territory.  If you have any McDowells in your family tree you might want to check it out! I've gotten a fair bit of email from distant relatives as a result of having this diary online, including a message from the woman who now has the original!

I like a lot of different things — talking with friends over dinner or via email, motorcycles, movies, reading, bird watching, ethnic resturants, net surfing and working on new stuff for my various Websites. Here are some links to stuff I've written about some of my favorite things:

Slide Shows & Photo Essays

1997:	My friend Phil documented our motorcycle ride to Bella Coola, BC
2001:	A motorcycle vacation in the Alps
2002:	My first long ride on the FJR1300
2003:	I'm sure I went somewhere, and took some photos, but maybe I didn't. I was working pretty hard during this period...
2004:	A trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico A motorcycle trip to Baja, Mexico A motorcycle trip to Sheepranch, California A trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
2005:	A motorcycle trip to Yellowknife, NWT, Canada A motorcycle trip to the US MotoGP race, in Monterey, CA A motorcycle trip to Mesa Verde, Colorado A motorcycle trip to the Canyon Country of the southwestern USA Riding Moab's famous Slickrock Trail
2006:	A trip to Arizona, with photos. Riding the Apache Trail, in Arizona. Riding the Oregon Outback on dual-sport bikes. Riding to Ely, NV for the White Pine Fever rally. Documenting the 5-day Spank Rally organized by my friend George Zelenz.
2007:	The 3rd annual Dirt Gather, near Winthrop, WA (a motorcycle camping trip). Riding some single-track trails near Wallace, Idaho.
2008:	My 2nd motorcycle trip into Baja, this time via dirtbikes, with two friends. A non-motorcycle trip to Washington, D.C. to visit Jennie.
2009:	A trip to southern British Columbia, on my new Aprilia with my friend Phil. Another version of The Dirt Gather, an extended weekend of dual-sporting & camping. A non-motorcycle trip to Bogota, Colombia, with Jennie. Lots of Flowers from the Colombia trip. The Mongui part of the Colombia trip.

Misc. stuff

Here's my Grandmother's Welsh Cookie recipie

HMarc
25-Oct-2009