There is never a better time to face your demons than on your bike in a snowstorm. When my friend Derek Sitter once spoke about facing demons, coming off prescription medication for anxiety in some hotel in Texas, I couldn't relate to
It's in the moments you feel like total shit and are circling the drain the demons show up. Not when you're strong.
It's in this moment, on the bike, in the snow storm, the watermelon has fallen out of busted saddle bags and the bills took all the money in the bank that you just start hating. Hating myself. Hating poverty. Hating any friend who did me wrong. Hating the cars and the world and the life. There's the soul of an old Russian prostitute that speaks up during these times, "Please car! Strike me down! Take me away from this hell on earth!"
But as I'm riding, ill-equiped pants become more soaked and filthy from road scum flinging off my tires sans mudguards, I'm writing. And I'm in my head not rooting myself on. Not saying things are going to get better. Not even telling myself, this is my life

Three years ago, summertime, my car broke down and I borrowed my bosses car to teach zines to an art camp in Salem. Back home I juggled riding my bike to my nonprofit job and finishing the publishing, binding and sending off the compilation zine. In the end my job suffered and the zines weren't sent in time. There was a point in all of this when I realized the river I was swimming against was contributing to spiritual annihilation. This wasn't satisfying. This was fucking hard-ass work. It was a fucking struggle.
But now, in the winter, heading to my sisters to hopefully toss my clothes in the drier, I realize it wasn't spiritual annihilation as much as it was a painful shedding of something that no longer served me.

Joel and I were talking about heroin and there was this moment where we both became quiet in thought.
"I get it, you know. The life is hard and happiness seems to come so seldom. Sometimes you get so fed up of trying so hard to feel ok that you just want to feel ok, right then. You can't wait anymore."

Nothin' goods ever gonna happen to you when you deserve it. Nothin' bad's gonna happen when you deserve it. The best thing I've discovered so far in making life work is just to keep with and take the hard times with the easy times. Likely, you'll probably sit on a bad deed for a few years until it sprouts a thorny bush. Bad deeds are the kind you find yourself making excuses foe. The regrets. A man without regrets is a man who doesn't judge himself to harshly and let's the things in life come and go. A man without regrets is a free man and one to love and receive love as he comes across it.

Townes Van Zandt sounded like one of these men. He sounded like a heartbreaker but he never kept anything he couldn't take care of so he didn't take nothing that nobody wasn't offering.