Life lessons on two wheels to the tunes of the
Grateful Dead
This Week in Grateful Dead History
Week 1
I wish I was a headlight on a northbound train.
Even the most cursory examination of the lyrics of Grateful Dead songs quickly uncovers one of the most fundamental aspects of the band’s identity: This is an American band, rooted in American culture, and built around easily recognizable locales and deeply American principles and history.
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This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 30 - July 22, 1984
Let your life proceed
Free will versus fate. The debate is as fundamental as any other in the realm of human existence, and has been taken up by many of the great philosophers throughout recorded history. Aristotle (385-382 B.C.E.) said, “The man is the father of his actions as of children”; Augustine (355-430) tipped the scale in the other direction with his belief that all things are determined in some manner by God; Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) believed in free will conditionally: “A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational”; René Descartes (1596-1650) suggested that free will lies in our thoughts: “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power”; and more recently, Nobel Prize winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) humorously claimed, “We must believe in free will, we have no choice.”
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 12 - March 19, 1977
You‘ll never find another honest man
During a speech in Charlotte, VA on August 18, 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump stated (in his classic subliterate style), “But one thing I can promise you this: I will always tell you the truth.” But after being inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017, the man who promised to always tell the truth told ten lies on his first day in office and five more the following day. By the end of his term, four years later, Trump had spread such consequential falsehoods as that the COVID-19 pandemic would disappear “like a miracle,” and the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, due to fraud, inspiring his supporters to attack the Capitol on January 6, as the results of the election were being certified by Congress.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 42 – October 16, 1974
Once in a while you get shown the light
There are so many things I love about mountain biking is that it would be impossible to list them all. But if I had to pick the aspect of the sport I love best, it would be the way getting out on two wheels represents a true “sabbatical” from life. Once the rubber hits the dirt, and I embark on another adventure in the wilderness, all of my troubles seem to melt away. And after conquering a completely different set of obstacles on the trails, the ones waiting for me at the trailhead somehow seem more manageable than they did just a couple of hours earlier.
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