Pint 4: Warning!! The following is long and boring. Read at your own risk.

It is 9:30 but it feels like 5 in the afternoon. The days are very long here, and getting longer. That totally messes with my internal clock. Not a big deal because I have no where to be and plenty of time get there. It does make for some difficulties in eating dinner because 9 feels like 5 and 5 feels like 2. My body feels like eating dinner, but my watch won’t let me. Everyone knows how bad it is to eat late in the evening.

I was just reading from the book, “People Skills”, by Robert Bolton, PH. D. It is a book about communication and how we as humans and especially Americans do such a lousy job at it. Jordan gave me the book and so I have been reading bits and pieces over the last few weeks. It reads more like a text book than a regular book so I can’t sit and read chapter after chapter. The author actually recommends that you read it in short spurts because the skills he is trying to cover are ones that take time and practice to develop and master so the process is gradual. He recommends that you read a section and then practice it in your life. Improving that particular skill in your own interpersonal actions, you should then move on to the next one covered and practice it.

I am sort of taking his advice, but not entirely. Being a guy, I am very goal oriented. I am also a focused, single minded individual so I like to finish one thing before starting another. In reading, I want to finish a book before I start the next one. With a book like this, however, I shouldn’t read it cover to cover like I normally would do. It is very difficult for me to discipline myself in this way, which is actually why I am writing this blog. I just read three chapters, two more than I should have. I would have kept going, but I know that it was better for me not to, so now I am writing. Writing will also help me reflect on what I just read and that is another skill the author talks about.

Have I mentioned before that I am a terrible listener? I am. I realized this back in Iraq when someone pointed it out. Ever since then, I have been working on improving my listening. This book has been very helpful in that area. It talks about barriers to communications, listening skills, verbal and non-verbal communication, and other things. The barriers to communication, when I first read them, seemed to include everything that I do to communicate. I felt that the best way for me to effectively communicate after reading all of them was to not say anything ever again.

I am not allowed to: criticize, name-call, order, threaten, argue or divert. All of those things made sense. But I also can’t: diagnose, praise evaluatively, moralize, question, advise, or reassure. I read all of those and was like, “what can I do?” Diagnose, advise, and reassure are the things that I do. Questioning, too, seems like a great way to get people to think about what they are doing or not doing and helps them work through their issues. But according to this guy, those things all cause people to close up, and stop communicating. If he is right, and I am not convinced just yet, then I have a lot of work to do in the area of communication. He is right and I do have a lot of work to do in the area of communication.

I figure this time of traveling is one of the best times to practice. I have met so many different people from all over and each one has a story to tell. Most of them are just dying for someone to listen to them and I am working real hard on being that person. The problem is that I can’t really get any feed back as to my success as a listener. Or at least I haven’t figured out how to interpret other people’s impression of my listening. It just takes time, and luckily at this point, time is something I have plenty of.

I would tell you about my day now, but it was pretty uneventful. Oh, why not? The first part of this blog was boring and I doubt anyone has gotten this far anyway and as I just said, I got the time. I went on another bike ride. This one was significantly further than a couple days ago and my legs and butt have informed me of that. Where my previous ride was to the south, today I went north. My goal was this 40 km loop along the coast, inland a bit, and then returning to the coast. The best description of today’s ride is brutal.

The first leg along the coast was in a generally North East direction. Since the wind today was out of a generally North East direction also, it meant that the first leg was entirely into the persistent 15 knot wind. Persistent isn’t a good enough description. Relentless, unyielding, ruthless, deplorable, agonizing are much better descriptions. At times I felt like giving up. At other times, I felt like quitting. Most of the time, I just felt like crawling into the fetal position and not moving until the wind stopped.

There is a verse in the bible about trials leading to perseverance, perseverance, proven character, and proven character, hope. And hope is a good thing, probably the best of things. Well, the last part isn’t in there, but it should be and just because it isn’t in there doesn’t mean it isn’t true. When Paul wrote that, he must have just finish a bike ride where the entire first part was against the wind. Today’s bike ride did teach me perseverance or at least point out that I have a lot to learn.

Along the way, I stopped and chatted with some rock climbers. I asked about climbing in Ireland and they said that the best climbing was up in the Northern part of the country and it consisted of only a few three pitch routes. For a country whose highest point is less than 4000 ft, what can you expect. I also stopped midway at the Monk’s Pub for some seafood chowder and my daily pint. The chowder wasn’t all that good, but the pint made up for it.

The ride back also made up for the first leg, a little. Obviously since the first leg was entirely into the wind, the second leg was almost entirely with the wind, combined with it being mostly down hill meant that I pretty much coasted the entire 10 miles. Good thing too because after the pint and chowder, my body wasn’t up for much of anything. I did stop my coasting briefly to grab a red onion for tomorrow’s breakfast and dinner and a white chocolate ice cream bar for immediate personal consumption.

As I said at the beginning, nothing much exciting happened today and if you have read this far, let me apologize but also say that I warned you. Tomorrow will probably be equally as unexciting so maybe I will just forgo a post all together.

Until then and tomorrow.

Jason