Life Lessons and the Art of Snowboarding

I picked up snowboarding way later than most of my friends, so I got to watch them doing 360 tail grabs while i was still falling on my ass every 5 seconds. I learned quickly though and my first season on a board my buds were already taking me on tree runs. I put some good nicks on my board, good bruises on my butt, shoulders and hands from hitting trees. One of my buddies, after noticing how sap covered I came out of the trees, told me some of the best advice I have ever learned that carries through to others sports and even life itself. "Pick a path and look where you want to go, not at the trees!" It was hard to get myself to do it-how do you not look at that tree you're about to collide with and hard!? But I quickly found out he was so right. When I ignored the trees, suddenly I wasn't headed for them anymore.
A couple weeks ago I took a motorcycle training course where we were instructed to weave some offset cones. At first it seemed nearly impossible not to hit the cones. Sure enough though, the instructor told us "You will go where you look! If you look at the cone you will hit it!" So when I applied my snowboarding skills and looked through the obstacles at my path, suddenly it was easy.
I think we can apply this to life. Don't get so caught up in our present struggles to the point we're not looking at the overall picture of where we're headed. Wow, this is way more inspirational than the usual JWU blog...now I need to write something really stupid. I'll be right back.

Hollywood Style Wreck

Friday night me and my homeboys were coming out of a local brewery full of alcohol and piss. As we climbed into my buddy's truck we saw a Mustang whiz by on Patterson (40mph zone) probably going over 100mph.
"Did you see that?!" I exclaimed. Not 3 seconds after the words came out of my mouth we all heard a screeeech-thump! THUMP! thump, thump!
"Did you guys hear that?!! I think that car just rolled!!! He had to have just rolled his car!" I yelled stupidly. Then we saw a cloud of smoke billow up above the trees.
"Let's go drive by!" my buddy said.
"No, dude! We can't! That means we're required by law to help and I don't know how! Plus none of us are in a good condition to help if you know what I mean!"
So we drove to a point one block south and ran through a field. As we came out of the clearing we saw plenty of by-standers including the girl whose car was clipped by the speeder. She had been spun around and was really shaken up but OK. He and another witness said that the driver of the Mustang crawled out and ran away.
Down the street not 50 yards from us was the Mustang facing us engulfed in Hollywood-Style 6 foot flames. My buddy ran up near it to take video with his phone.
"Dude! Get away from there! that things gonna blow!" we yelled at him. Right about that time we heard a BOOM! and saw pieces of flaming debris fly into the air.
All in all it was a good time and I wouldn't hesitate to do it all again!

The Future is Here!

That's right people! JWU recently took a journey to the country of Tennessee. On our trip we were amazed at some of the technological advancments of the airports and airplanes we traveled. As if air flight wasn't mind boggling enough, these are some of the things we saw on our journey:

"Flat Screen" Televisions in the concourses.
The pilots spoke to us over a speaker system in the plane.
The seats on the aircraft we designed as flotation devices "In the unlikely even of a water landing". High speed underground trains (pictured)

Moving stairs that you just stand on and they carry you up or down (pictured)Futuristic aerospace tentlike ceiling (pictured)
Futuristic silver trash recepticles (Pictured)My favorite, a moving floor panel. No need for walking anymore! Simply step on this "magic carpet" and it wisks you away! (Pictured)

Statues of happy naked people. The future is astonishing! (Pictured)
Futuristic structure with colored lights (Pictured)

The future is in fact here! That means Jake Wilkinson's Unicycle needs to release the new album "Hits From the Future"

PS JWU was in Nashville this week. This could have been a huge opportunity for us to make it big, but we forgot to bring demo CDs to pass out. So we hoped to maybe play some of our songs on Music Row but we didn't really know what to do...so we didn't. Charity did get to meet a reasonable facsimile of Elvis Presley though (Pictured)

My Invention

It's here folks! The greatest merger of technology since Apple bought....um....Orange. Anyway, I shall call it GooTube. It will use advanced technology to visually search the internet. Use your webcam or camcorder to capture images and then GooTube will automatically do a video search of whatever you are filming. Of course I need to find some really smart computer geeks to develop the technology, but by writing this blog you can see I made it up first!

Conference of the Birds

Three of them are out there on the grass. They are chirping very loudly. One is facing the other two. He will say something and then they will all move swiftly and smoothly on their feet about 5 feet and stop abruptly with more chirping. I don't know bird lingo; I really wonder what they are saying. I think the first guy is like "Now listen, we all know there are worms out here, but I don't see any, do you?" And really he's trying to get the other two to lose hope and leave so he can have all the worms to himself. But the other two are calling 'BS'. "Frank, you're full of crap-I SAW a worm like 2 feet behind you,"
"No, no, no," Frank says as he walks that way to scare the worm back into his hole. "That was a...a..umm....it was hot dog," he recoiled foolishly.
"A hotdog?!" Pete says looking over at Sam.
"Are you kidding me? A worm is nothing-" Sam was cut off by Frank.
"LOOK! It's the Byrds in concert!!!" Frank pointed to an imaginary band behind the other two. Pete and Same knew the Byrds weren't there but looked back to humor Frank. Frank realized he was deep in his lie, but took the opportunity to pluck the worm from the ground and then fly away.
I can still hear them arguing out there.

Da Blues

Not that I don't like the Blues, but I don't listen to them when I'm sad. There is a degree of acceptance in Blues music; they seem Blue about things, but more like "Well, that's reality, deal with it,". But I'm like no way! I'm not gonna DEAL with it Joe Burns! I shouldn't be in this situation. The world done me wrong! I want my music to feel like I feel. Moby is good.

A Low Rumbling

I'm freakin' out man!! I hear a low rumbling, kind of like a semi passing by on the interstate or someone a block away sitting their car listing to their music with the sub woofers blaring. The thing is, no one else can hear it. Charity said I must have a brain anurism (sp). Featuring Enchilada McKenzie said I should just shut up and turn up the Beach Boys I was listening to. The thing is the bass is UNDER the Beach Boys!!! Maybe Tag Team's 'Whoomp There It Is' or the Beastie Boy's "Brass Monkey" or the 69 Boy's 'Tootsie Roll' would have the bass to cover it up, but certainly not these oldies like We Five - they recorded before bass was invented. Just kidding, they played bass guitars, but there wasn't this sonic, studio produced bass that is most electronic and hip hop music. Remember when sub woofers first started showing up everywhere and then these guys started have bass contests at their car shows. This led to the bass tests CDs that really aren't music, just pulsing sounds that blow out normal speakers. this is what the aliens are using on me RIGHT now. No one else can hear it because they aimed the sound waves right at my head. They are having a bass contest and they found that when they channel the sound waves through my mind, it amplifies the bass. This is because I can use my imagination to make a sub woofer that is so big it doesn't fit well into the Grand Canyon. All i can do is let them finish the contest. I bet I don't get anything for helping them out. Selfish bastards. Get OUTTA MY HEAD!!!!!