Welcome to 2017: Workout Log and Other Garb

It's official, 2016 is in the books and 2017 is upon us. I spent the weekend in Phoenix visiting some friends and family, and for the second year in a row I hit up Arizona's NYE electronic music event, Decadence. Also got in my first workout of the year, a 4.25 mile run/walk back from the event to M & J's house where I was staying, which took about an hour. A few comments and observations from the weekend:

1. Older women are quite good at Cards Against Humanity. On NYE, M, J, and I were playing with M's parents, who I had not seen since we were in high school, and J's mother, who was visiting from out of town. The young folks were generally getting our asses handed to us; the game ended with J's mom having 6 cards, M's mom having 5, M's dad having 3 (I think) and the rest of us having 2 each.

2. Decadence was a LOT bigger this year than it was last year. They added a third, smaller stage, and the two main stages were larger than I had remembered them being. Of course, this also meant that it was considerably more pricey to buy a ticket than it had been in 2015, and they had some serious issues with entry and parking on the first night. It took me 2 hours to make it 5 miles from M&J's house to my parking spot to actually getting my bracelet and getting into the festival. The second night, I got dropped off about half a mile from the entrance and just walked the rest of the way. That's the way to do it; 10 minutes on foot versus 2 hours sitting in the car hoping your bladder doesn't explode or you end up having to piss in a can.
   They still don't play any psytrance (and they probably never will), but I caught some good Drum 'n' Bass right before midnight on NYE, and even though a lot of the music is of the overcommercialized pop-EDM variety that I wouldn't normally listen to on a regular basis, the fact is that Decadence is still a really fun experience. Everyone is there to dance and have a good time, and I remember looking out over the crowd at one point and feeling like there is a lot of hope still present in Arizona rave culture. I didn't always think that was the case; there were definitely points in the mid-2000s where I felt like it was being overrun with prostitots, douchebags, and various other sorts of people who just didn't understand what PLUR was all about or why it mattered. Events like this go a long way to showing me that there is a sort of second Renaissance in rave culture taking place; a lot of the music no longer holds any appeal for me, and I'm something of a psytrance snob, but the vibe is still there, and it's still strong. There was so much positivity and hope and happiness at the main stage that it was infectious, and even Zedd's complete failure to properly mix two tracks together, wasn't enough to ruin it. I admit that I could do without so many exhortations to "make some noise" or "put your hands in the air" but this is just me being a petty snot. :-P Seriously, though, while it may not be at the level of the Ozora experience (I am biased, I like psytrance, you can suck it), the producers of Decadence do manage to put some high-quality magic in the air, and making the trip out from SF was definitely worth it.
   
   I ran into S, and it went about as well as it probably could have, I think. The first night, she spotted me when I wasn't even looking in her direction and yelled "hey!" but we didn't talk because she was busy working at the event and in the middle of walking somewhere while I was up on a fixed platform. There wasn't any weirdness, though, so then the next night I spotted her shortly after midnight and went over to wish her success and happiness in the new year. Yeah, I know what I said in a previous post about the "you don't exist" list, but since it may well be another year before our paths cross once more (maybe at Decadence 2017?) or we may never see or talk to each other again, at least our last encounter was a positive one. Maybe I misinterpreted some of her previous actions (or, I guess, technically they were non-actions since it seemed like she was ignoring me), but it's exactly this sort of uncertainty that I can't be a part of, because it really fucks up my program. Blackbirds thrive on knowing what's up, and we don't do well when we can't figure out what the fuck is going on, so rather than create unnecessary stress for ourselves or anyone else, we flap our wings in another direction.

3. I continue to have zero understanding of when someone is or is not flirting with me. Maybe it's because of how things went down with S and my desire to avoid a repeat of all of that, or maybe it's just because I really have no clue, but in the end, the reasons don't matter. I had lunch with L the day I arrived in Phoenix, and there are some things that she does which I might interpret as being of the "hey, I like you" variety, but I also don't know if those are also just her innate behaviors that don't mean anything out of the ordinary. So I'm just not going to even go there (or even remotely close to there) without a hell of a lot more certainty (see previous paragraph) than I have now. This is sort of like Pascal's Wager as applied to interpersonal relationships: there are two possibilities - either X is interested in Y, or X is not interested in Y - but Y does not know whether or not this interest actually exists. So, Y can choose to explore the possibility that it does, or Y can assume that the interest does not exist and do nothing. What could possibly go wrong?
   Suppose that X is not actually interested in Y. If Y does nothing, no problem. If Y does something, then it's quite possible that all kinds of things could blow up in Y's face, including the whole friendship. If X is interested in Y, and Y does nothing - well, again, no problem, because if X is that interested, eventually it will become obvious to Y and we escape this conundrum. And, of course, if X is interested and Y does something to reciprocate said interest, then we have the optimal outcome. Yay us.
   
   Let's recap. If Y does nothing, then regardless of what state X is in, Y doesn't lose. If Y does something, then it either goes really well or it turns into a clusterfuck. Translating this into the context of Pascal's Wager, for Y to do nothing is equivalent to Y believing in god, and for Y to act is the equivalent of not believing. If you don't believe and you get it wrong, you're a crispy critter, so the rational thing to do is just believe, in which case it doesn't matter whether or not you're right or wrong, because you avoid the infinitely more unpleasant outcome of an eternity in hell. Fuck you, Blaise, and your stupid triangle.

4. The "airborne shuffle" works pretty well on flat ground. This was something my trainer (who was in the army) had suggested as a way to cover large amounts of ground fairly quickly without getting exhausted. I tried it on my run home from Decadence^[1], and I found that I actually was able to cover the first two miles or so without getting even slightly tired. Then I got fucked by a gate that I couldn't get through, and thus my attempt at a shortcut turned into about a quarter mile of backtracking, so I switched from the shuffle (roughly 5.0 to 5.5mph) to a long-stride walk (roughly 4.0 to 4.5mph) until I was about half a mile from my destination and just started running the normal way. I'm not sure how well the shuffle will work over uneven terrain, but on slick pavement, it's a winner.

One more day of vacation and then it's back to work - until this weekend, when it's time once more to get my ski on ... and maybe run into the girl in EB Trading that looks like a European psytrancer.

In any event, Happy New Year, motherfuckers! We here at Blackbird Control wish all of you (and all of us) a joyous and fulfilling 2017.