Philip Robert

Bend, Oregon is an amazing town. Nestled under the eastern slopes of the Cascade mountains I think that Bend may be one of the best places I've ever visited. Having been her for less than a day I can feel the small town friendliness of this place. There is an outdoor culture here that I couldn't find in Ashland. The people seem much more excited about the recreational opportunities of the place. I feel at home here even though I don't live here.

The Deschutes River flows through the center of Bend, meandering between green banks. Bend has created a pleasing mix of riverside parks and neighborhoods providing both public and private enjoyment of the river.

Downtown Bend is populated with a number of small retail, restaurant, and coffee shops. Thump Coffee on Minnesota Avenue serves an excellent organic roast, and has a fun adventure filled staff and clientele.

There is a reason that this river is called the Rogue. In many places it is quite unruly. I have seen the Rogue in quiet repose meandering slowly across a valley floor. Now I've seen its violent nature constrained by mighty lava flows.

Here at the Chasm the banks of the Rogue River narrow to within 25 feet of each other and the unruly current running between flows fast enough to fill up an olympic sized swimming pool once every minute. The force of the current is tremendous. You can feel the strength of it vibrating up through the lava rock beneath your feet. It is an astounding sight.

Mill Creek Falls from Philip Robert on Vimeo

This is what an extended road trip with no time constraints will get you. The opportunity to impulsivly go check out all the cool sights that we normally would have to miss because we're on a schedule. Just a short little hike off the main hwy (62) to get this view. It was taken with my still camera. Now lemme tell ya! I'd much rather have used my video camera for this, but... I was hikin and I didn't wanna break out the heavy artillery. So this video was shot on my Panasonic Lumix digital camera. Not too bad.

Road trips are a lot like life. We decide to go on a journey, and we are faced with an unending string of decisions. My plan had been to stay in Ashland for the summer, and with the exception of a family reunion in Arkansas in June, and Burning Man in August all I was going to do was learn to kayak on the Rogue River.

After having several rooms and apartments slip through my fingers I came to the decision to make a long road trip from Oregon to Arkansas for the family reunion. Take 10 or 15 days to make the trip. Take the time to visit some cool places, meet some cool people. There's no rush, just the thrill of the journey. So I had come to a fork in the road. It was time to travel.

When I left Ashland I had an idea that I would camp out at Crater Lake for a couple of nights. When I got to the intersection of Hwy 230 and 62 I had a choice. Go right to Crater Lake or continue straight ahead to Bend, Oregon. The weather wasn't helping that much. The clouds were threatening snow, but I didn't actually make the choice until after I took the picture. Pulling out I was intending to turn right and head to Crater Lake. Then I saw another sign that said that the North Gate to Crater Lake was closed.

It didn't say why it was closed. It didn't say that the park rangers just hadn't gotten around to unlocking the gate. It didn't say that the road was covered with snow, or had washed out. It just said that the north entrance was closed. In a split second I changed my mind and headed straight for Bend.

It would have been nice to see what Crater Lake looks like. I wanted some photos to show y'all. But if the weather was going to turn bad, I also wanted an exit strategy. So this time I bypassed Crater Lake. Did I miss out? There's no telling what the adventure would have been had I made the turn. At a single moment in time my life had two futures branching out from one another. Now my future lies on the road to Bend.

Thoughts on life and the roads we travel brought to you by Philip Robert.

This morning marked the end of my second month of practicing Bikram Yoga in Ashland, Oregon. I've been going consistently three and sometimes four times each week with amazing results. Today was the first time that I didn't have to drop down to the mat during the entire class. Although I came out of some of the postures a little early, I went into each posture for each set. A little bit of progress is still progress.

Now for the hard part. Two months into this I'm just beginning to get into shape. My muscles are getting stretchy and strong, my breath is coming under control, and the spare tire around my stomach is beginning to deflate. I know from past experience that if I can continue doing this my weight will drop to 190 lbs and my waistline will drop to 32 inches by September, maybe sooner.

It'd be easy to continue like this if I was staying in Ashland, but life happens. Circumstances have me traveling to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and I'm leaving tomorrow. There are Bikram studios on the way that I'll be visiting. For days when I don't have a Bikram Studio to go visit, I have a plan.

Bikram has a great cd of the workout which I'm going to put on my iPod . Then using a set of small speakers I'm going to use this to continue doing my practice at least three times each week. That's my plan, and I'm sticking to it.

The yoga road trip plan brought to you by Philip Robert.

For the past few months I've been doing a lot of research on web marketing and doing business online. Back in the day I remember thinking that the internet was going to be a very powerful economic force. Having a Navy career going on it wasn't something that I would choose to focus on. Looking back I can see that it would have been a worthwhile endeavor to try to learn as much as I could about the internet. Not the spectator side or surfing, but the creative, productive side of the internet. That's all water under the bridge now.

Some would say that ship has already sailed. The internet is all grown up and the good ideas have all been taken. Far from it I say. We have yet to see the greatest fortunes the internet has created. We have yet to see the next greatest thing that will become part of our daily lexicon like Google, or Hotmail, or Myspace. Everyday new websites are going up. Brave entrepreneur's like my older brother David Robert are working diligently on sites like Proximity Cast as a way to help serve people in new and exciting ways. The guys at Google are constantly pushing the creative envelope of computing to bring the cyber surfing and cyber producing public new and creative ways to seek out products, services, and information they need with products such as adsense, adwords, and google apps.

In my quest to carve out my own little dot com empire I've been reading blogs like Dosh Dosh, John Chow, and Alvin Phang's Gather Success. I've gathered a huge amount of information from Paul Graham, and Timothy Ferris. Reading these blogs and websites has provided me with insight about how blogs are monetized, keyword research, adword campaigns, and affiliate marketing. Reading these websites I am continually discovering other sites like Stomper Net which has provided some of the most valuable nuts and bolts information.

Almost any guru will tell you that the secret of being successful at work is to work at something you love and are passionate about. One of the sayings goes do something you love and you'll never work a day of your life. My friend Colin Fithie says pure job satisfaction is getting paid to do something that you would do for free. My friend Kimberly Bliquez actively pursues these concepts in her life and her TV show Living your Passion.

At the beginning of this year I decided that I was going to learn how to design websites, learn how to be an active web producer, and create a web income of at least $100 per day. To date I have made great progress on learning web design, and being an active web producer. Pulling together the elements necessary to create what is just a small web income of $100 per day has been elusive. Part of the problem is figuring out what I am most passionate about. There are a number of subjects of which I am interested and can talk passionately about. There are a number of subjects of which I have deep information which I can talk passionately about. It has been a paralyzing exercise in trying to decide which one I will focus on and talk passionately and in depth about.

My nephew, Sam Birdsong, proposed to me yesterday that I should not limit the subject of this blog, but open it up so that I might talk about the many subjects which grab my interest. Ungrudgingly I have to accept this point. From reading much of the above blogs the ones I enjoy the most seem to follow this format, and I can see the value of Sam's advice.

Here is a list of the blogs and resources that I've found helpful and interesting over the past few months:

• Dosh Dosh
• Lorelle on Wordpress
• John Chow
• Gather Success
• Google Lady
  
• Yaro Starak
• Stomper Net
• Paul Graham
• Timothy Ferris
• Affiliate Confession

I am continually discovering other sites which add small pieces of the puzzle to the big picture of web marketing and blogging. Soon, hopefully, and with a lot of hard work I'll achieve my goal of $100 per day. Then I can shift it upwards to perhaps $1000 per day. Wouldn't that be something?

These thoughts and others brought to you by Philip Robert.

Last night I took a visit to Jackson Wellsprings to take the waters. The Wellsprings as they're known locally is sort of a funky place. It's an RV park/tent campground with cabins and teepees. The patrons of this little place just north of Ashland are an interesting bunch of people. Many of them would be called hippies I suppose. They've got the requisite dredlocks, tattoos, and piercings you would expect of today's hippies. There are some families who come in attracted by the big swimming pool and the hot springs. There are people who are living here because at $15 a night it is a pretty cheap place to stay.

I was having a good conversation with the girl at the counter when her friend brought over a home made smoothie for her, and the girls decided to take a break. They invited me outside into the cool evening air. We sat down on the grass and the conversation drifted around a bit and we got onto the subject of people who didn't understand why they couldn't just camp at the wellsprings for free. The concept that it was private property and this was the owner's business just seemed to escape their logic.

Counter girl had to go back into the office to take care of some customers. Smoothie girl and I continued talking. The subject of homelessness came up. For most people in this country the homeless are those dirty, ragged looking people pushing around an old shopping cart piled high with all the possessions they own. They live in a shadow world constantly shuffling around panhandleing, and probably wondering where they would sleep for the night. Doesn't seem like a life one would choose, but I suppose they are reasons.

Smoothie girl and I started talking about other kinds of homelessness. She told me that for the past year her family had been living in a tent at the wellsprings, and for a long time she said that she felt like they were homeless. Then she said one night sitting out under the stars with her kids she began to take stock of how they were living. She had a large tent with electricity. She had a microwave and a television. Her and her children had access to all the amenities that the wellsprings had to offer which included the spa and the pool. It wasn't a nice two bedroom house with a white picket fence, but she came to the realization that she was pretty far from homeless. She realized that it didn't matter where they slept as long as it was the same place each night. Her kids were happy, well fed, and she was taking care of them the best way she could while working at the local Wal-Mart.

It's coming up on three years since Tracy threw me out of her life, and I've certainly felt like I've been homeless ever since. I've managed to live in some nice places since then, but what I know for certain is that having a house or an apartment doesn't make a home. When I was with Tracy, for the first time in my adult life I knew what having a home was like. It was her house. It was a small two bedroom one bath place in a nice little neighborhood. Being with her if felt like a palace. That break up is one of the most crushing experiences of my life. The wounds have taken a long time to heal and the scars run deep. I've learned from this that it's not the bricks and mortar of a house that make a home, its the ties of the heart. Love is a powerful force, given a chance it will change the way you look at the world.

Being a guy there's something about things with engines and wheels (or wings) that just gets me going. The other night I pulled up to the Black Sheep Pub in Ashland and sitting out front was a gorgeous Lamborghini VT. The guy had picked out a great vanity license plate. It said IPHL-YA. He told me it was a reference to the cars color, and here I was thinking he was being empathetic to all the guys on the road with Lambo envy...

Meanwhile I'm happy with Eleanor my black 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Sport. I keep threatening to sell her off to get something with working AC, but the truth is she's almost paid for and keeps on running reliably even with 160K + miles.

Recently a company in California has produced a very green car. Zero emmissions, amazing power and handling, and killer good looks. It's going to get the kind of stares that the Lambo gets. Of course I'm talking about the Tesla Roadster. All electric, you can charge it up anywhere, and it gets off the line like a bat out of hell. I'm not too clear on this, but I think Jay Leno may have purchased production model #1 from Tesla. Here he is in a video giving it a review. Happy Driving.

Happy Driving thoughts brought to you by Jay Leno's garage and Philip Robert.

Being healthy is one of the essentials of Happiness. It's important to always be active, to watch what we eat, to really take care of this temple called our body. Something I'm finding out through my yoga practice is how important it is to take care of our feet.

Our feet are made up of numerous tiny bones held together by a network of muscles, tendons, nerves, and blood vessels. Our feet are designed to be flexible, to be sensitive, to hold up our bodies. When we don't take the time to give our feet a good workout they become like clubs that we stand on. At this point it seems like they're always sore and aching. Barking dogs they're sometimes called.

Over the past two months as I've been practicing yoga three or four times a week I've discovered how weak my feet are. The pain from just standing in savasana was often too much and I'd drop down to the mat to relieve this incredible pain I was feeling in my feet. What is going on? Why are my feet so sore? It's because they're not used to being barefoot. They're not used to flexing and supporting the weight of my body as I work out. That's what a good pair of shoes is supposed to do.

Shoes may protect our feet in some ways, like preventing you from feeling the thorns in your lawn, but in other ways they prevent our feet from working the way that they should. Imagine having to wear a stiff leather or plastic jacket which limited the movement of your arms and shoulders. If you wore this all the time for years upon years how fit do you think the muscles, tendons, and joints of your torso would be? Take away the support and start moving, and I'd bet that your entire upper body would be screaming with pain. That's what we do when we encase our feet in shoes.

Will I stop wearing shoes? Not a chance. It's just not appropriate in our society to walk around unshod in lots of places. Will I be going barefoot a lot more? You can bet on it. Especially some of the places that I'll be visiting this summer. Remember how happy you were when summer time came when you were a kid? Besides no school for three months it also meant getting to run around barefoot. Those were happy times in my life, and I had happy feet. This summer I'm looking forward to having many happy moments and having happy feet with them as well.

Surely you've noticed the strange looking shoes up in the picture. They're called Vibram Five Fingers, and I'm planning to get a hold of a pair as I drive through Bend, Oregon next week. They might look a little weird, sort of like toe socks on steroids, but I bet they're great for knocking around rivers, swimming holes, and hot springs.

Take some time for yourself this summer and walk around barefoot. Get your feet moving, flexing, and gripping. Get a foot massage. Dance the Tango in the kitchen in your socks. Have fun! Have Happy Feet!

brought to you by Philip Robert.

Few things are more satisfying to me than cooking with my friends. I'll admit that I'm a decent cook. It comes from my Grandmother who was a magnificent cook. Lately I've been getting into pastries. My favorite are Rustic Apple Tarts from a recipe in last autumn's Cook's Illustrated entertaining issue. I've also been getting a ton of ideas from a few food blogs that I regularly read.

• The Skinny Gourmet
• Smitten Kitchen
• Cooking for Engineers

These are just a few of the food blogs out there, and I look at a lot of others. These three just have really great recipes. Skinny Gourmet has a recipe for cinnamon rolls that I've yet to try. I think that they'll debut at next month's family reunion. Smitten Kitchen has a pizza dough recipe that I've had great success with, and Cooking for Engineers taught me how to cook bacon. My favorite method of these is baking at low heat. I actually bake the bacon at 350 degrees for 20 minutes unless I need the bacon grease for something. Cooking it at 200 degrees like Cooking for Engineers does takes hours, the bacon needs just a little extra heat at the end to crisp it, but the fat renders out beautifully!

One of the greatest things about cooking this way is that you have an opportunity to know exactly what you're putting into your food. I try to get down to the core ingredients of the recipes preferring to cook biscuits or pancakes from scratch for example. Instead of using someone else's biscuit mix or pancake mix, I mix up my own to much better results. It takes a little extra effort sometimes, but having a pantry stocked with staples usually results in meals that are much more exciting than the fare that you get at most restaurants. Happy cooking everyone!

Written by Philip Robert