Treysen Craig

Intro Letter

My main thinking while writing the first piece was thinking back to how I would have thought about and talked about that as a child. This helped me form the voice that I was going for of just a younger version of myself. The second piece I came up with the idea while I was thinking about my first piece and the topic of speed. In the second piece I tried to lean towards memoir writing by adding more details and descriptions. I hope that the reader gets from both the pieces the value of speed, whether it be physical like in the first piece or non-physical like the second piece with time and the ideas about that.

Authors Note

The main feedback that I want is do you think that I stuck to a genre for each piece, informal essay for the first and memoir for the second. The other feedback that I would like is does the word choice show a specific voice. While I do not think that this is my best work that I have done I do think that it is quite well done and am pretty satisfied with the final outcome of it.

 

The Art of Speed

Once the speed of sounds has been broken you must make sure that you do not hit anything that’s in your path. Getting to that speed on a bike takes and exuberant amount of skill, a tiring amount of effort, and most importantly the strongest helmet you can find. You must find the tallest hill around you that you know will get you lots of speed and struggle your way to the top while watching for hazards as you go. That last part is very important because if you hit that ever persistent crack in the sidewalk that should have been fixed years ago and has led to many scrapped knees you will fly off, and then you will become one of the few that have left some skin on the pavement. You must also realize what day it is, if it is trash day don’t try going down the hill simply because you will collide with one and go flying over the handlebars, praying that you land in the grass. The most important thing is, mainly because it would cost money, to see where people park their cars so you don’t slam into the side of it and damage you and the car.

To attain the speed required is no easy feat as it takes years of practice and an absolute mastery of both the hill and your bike. If you lack the skill required in either sense I would suggest practicing and getting good as a starting point. If you already have the skill and feel confident enough with yourself to attempt it go right ahead but make sure that you remember the steps as stated before otherwise you’re in for a bad time. When you make it to the bottom make sure you slam the brakes just hard enough so that you leave a nice tire skid to show how fast you were going and for bragging rights.

If and by that I mean when you finally hit something or crash your best hope is to just ragdoll and hope for grass. If you happen to hit grass lucky you now there is maybe some bruises, if you hit the pavement well that sucks for you ‘cause now some part of you is bleeding and you probably don’t really want to hop right back onto your back and get going. As you are hobbling your way home and doing everything you probably shouldn’t do after getting a scrape you can think about how you are going to trick out your crutches because you’re probably too injured to walk normally ever again.

When you get home it’s always a good thing to start with a wet paper towel and then a bandaid, but don’t tell anyone that you hit a trash can because that a lame story. You must formulate and think through what your cover story is, it should probably be something that is super awesome and could never be topped except for maybe at the X-Games. When your story has  successfully been made and mentally approved you can start to tell it to other people. This is when it gets to be really tricky, because you can’t lead anyone on to how your accident actually happened; that would be embarrassing.

The faster you can say your story the less that people are going to have question about it because they didn’t actually hear a lot of it. When you become an expert at speed talking through your story you can work on the crucial part of thinking on your toes when questions are asked about your story. If you can come up with responses and counter questions fast enough it will make your story more believable and therefore harder for other people to figure out the true story of your escapade over the trash cans.

If you have an actual eyewitness from someone else you must get your story straight between you two. This is essential if you hope to formulate a believable story that can be told several times very quickly. The biggest thing that will give you away is a smirk or smile when you are telling the tall tale to the other people who are oh so eagerly listening to what you have to say and tell them. Some people, especially parents, get very good at identifying what your face looks like when you are lying about something. This is when you must be careful and attempt to control your tell, basically you must perfect a poker face in the simplest terms. When a successful poker face has been achieved you must make sure to not tell anyone for quite a while while the event blows over then you may tell of your triumphant ride down the hill and your Superman over the garbage cans.

Don’t forget that after a day, if you didn’t make a really big deal about it, you can go back out to continue your ever unreachable goal of becoming a speed demon of the hill. While the pursuit is a very noble one it is a path that is paved with concrete that doesn’t like contact with people. When you finally regain movement to your appendages and phalanges so that you can control where your bike is going this time. If you never regain movement then I am very sorry for your loss and wish you the best for the rest of your life and hope that you do the best you can.

Now moving on to the rest of the lessons of going fast, you must remount your tron bike and motor your way to the top of the hill again. Do not make the same mistake that you did on the first run down, because that is what ended you up in the homemade ER. This time you must follow the essential rule of looking out for trash cans, and just generally watch out for everything in your path. If all the aforementioned steps of how to ride a bike at supersonic speeds are followed then there is surely no way for you to fail in your epic quest.

The basic steps to going fast start with obtaining something to ride, preferable a bike or something with two wheels, then you must find a hill or large incline, that is semi-safe to ride down, but the most important step in the process is to watch out for an obstacles in your path and pay attention to what the weather is going to be. These are the keys of success for riding a bike super fast

The Importance of Time

Time is something that we as people do not value as greatly as other people in the world. We get an exuberant amount of free time and yet we still complain at how busy we are. This becomes extremely apparent around the Holiday’s where everyone is so focused on what they have plans to do that they lose focus on the point that they have time off from everything to just relax with family and friends and unwind. Instead the focus is shifted onto what we have to do and when we have to do and always following a very strict schedule.

I think that the best place to escape all the busyness and just take some time to think is in an empty field on a farm. The only noise that will bother you is the howl of the wind pushing the powder snow into piles and maybe a light conversation with a sibling. The crackle of the frozen plants under your feet can take you back to the unorganized noise that seems to bombard us anytime we spend time with people. Instead of simply appreciating the opportunity to spend time with one another it become a space for argument rather than discussion.

Instead of savoring the opportunity to slow down and just let the world flow around you the need to continue moving forward at a breakneck pace moves most people just as fast through our times that are meant to be slow. The thing about time is once it is passed it is something you cannot get back but we insist on going forward and continuing what we started until it is done. It’s not until you separate yourself from the people that are moving at a breakneck pace ever forward do you really get to slow down and relish in some of the moments that just go flying past some people who don’t even notice them.

Once you re-enter the breakneck stream we are snapped back to place with everyone else, but we are desperately trying to cling to the memory of that one moment of pause where time slowed and the details of the moment mattered more than the moment itself. When this strange occurrence happens many people reaction is just to drown it out by making their own noise to counter the silence. When you are in a snow covered field though it is hard to drown out the silence over the processing of event and just a calm respite from the barrage that is the Holiday season.

Our senses almost get dulled by the amount of information that we are bombarded with, whether it be from family, TV, or friends we are constantly moving forwards without regard of what we leave behind us in order to continue the process of moving forward. When a moment of respite is given I gladly take it, because it is not often that we actually receive one that works to process what is going on in the jetstream that everyone else is blazing through. The value of the movement of time has been lost as we continue to focus on what we want rather than what we are doing, so to get a moment to reflect on our actions rather than our conscious is always helpful.

The reason that I value the slowing down and processing over the constant bombardment is simply because it gives a chance to actually understand what we are doing rather than just doing it. With so much chaos happening during this time what better time to look at what we are doing and to also look at what the other people around us are doing. The value of silence is lost when we can no longer just be in conversation that is simply a conversation. The demand for noise and crowds of people being pushed as what normal is ruins the value of a time to slow down and reflect on what is happening.

When noise begins to drown out our own thoughts and we are left only to process with what we have heard in split second instances is when the need for time to slow is the most apparent. Although I wish that everyone had a field that they could go to to hear the snow wisp around them as the only noise and being able to calm down and slow down what we are thinking is truly a blessing. When we receive one of those coveted moments where time slows and our thoughts become clear many times we squander it simply because we don’t want to leave the jetstream even for a moment.

When we find our “field” it doesn’t hurt to just listen to the snow and remove yourself, even if only momentarily, from the chaos that is occurring around us. While the chaos is not bad it drowns out the silence and it accelerates the time, removing the want to turn moments into memories.