In another lifetime, I worked as a bicycle courier in D.C. year-round for four and a half years. I worked when it was over 100 degrees and when it was below zero. I successfully trained about a hundred bicycle couriers during that time.
Then I was fortunate to have the opportunity to manage a courier service for another dozen years, training a fairly large cadre of motorcycle couriers. I have very fond memories of the people I worked with and the time I spent in the business, and have stayed in touch with many friends from back in the day. I am proud to see the lives they have created in the “real world,” and to remember the time we worked together.
So when I needed to write about a folk culture, this seemed like a natural choice. It is adapted from an interview, and dedicated to all my old riding buddies.
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For about two decades beginning in the 1960s, a fixture of the urban Washington, D.C., working scene was the motorcycle courier. Riding his own motorcycle or a company-owned bike, the motorcycle courier spent his day being radio-dispatched on a continuous series of pickups and deliveries in and around the Washington metro area.
As with their antecedents, the Pony Express, the historical duration of their profession was short, and the unique confluence of demographic, economic and sociological trends that brought the profession into being guarantees it will never return. Like the Pony Express, changing technology destroyed the economic niche that created and sustained the motorcycle courier.
“Couriers is a better word than messengers,” according to John C. Steinberger, president of Speed Service Inc. “Anyone can deliver a message, these people perform a service.” He founded Speed Service Couriers, Inc., in 1957 with a motorcycle, an operations center and a two-way radio…though he had drawn up the idea in the early 1950s. In those days, before the advent of portable tape rigs and movable wirephoto machines, dispatches were in the hands of the press courier. The seconds counted when the courier was on his way back with film…As still and motion picture cameras ranged farther and farther into the field, and with expanded deadlines and news shows, needs changed.
The first practical application of the Speed Service System came with the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. A heavy snowfall stopped traffic; even motorcycles had a rough time moving about. There were a dozen [inaugural] balls to cover. Steinberger…solved the problem by having more men on the street, riding anything that could move.” (Mastrangelo).
The economics and demographics of the early-to-mid nineteen seventies caused an unprecedented expansion of the motorcycle courier industry. The gas crisises had driven consumer demand for motorcycles as an affordable, energy-efficient alternative to automobiles, and the number of registered motorcycles doubled between 1968 and 1973. This in turn led to the creation of a large pool of riders with some experience, primarily young men between the ages of 15 and 25. Motorcycle couriers were, for all intents and purposes, exclusively men, reflecting the composition of the motorcycle riding population of the time. The ready availability of this labor pool, along with the uncertain unemployment picture at the time, assisted the growth of the industry.
A final local factor in the local growth of the industry was the dramatic expansion of the federal government in the late sixties and seventies, catalyzing the change of the Washington metropolitan area from sleepy southern backwater to world-class city. This fueled demand for services by drawing hundreds of law firms, corporate government relations offices and lobbying firms to the area.
Unfortunately, this singular intersection of trends created just a brief heyday for the industry, which in later years would dwindle into insignificance, a victim of other societal changes. Foreshadowing this eventual decline, in 1975 alone motorcycle sales dropped by 25% from their 1974 level; the populations in the primary motorcycle purchasing groups were anticipated to continue to diminish in number steadily until at least 1985. At the same time, a steady stream of environmental regulations concerning exhaust and noise emissions were serving to increase the complexity, and hence the purchase price, of motorcycles to the point that discouraged new entrants to the endeavor (Business Week). This demographic shift has continued unabated to today.
In 1980, nearly a quarter of riders were under 18; by 1998 less than 4% were. During the same period, the total number of motorcycle registrations declined by about 30% from its all time peak, all but eliminating the pool of riders that made up the business in the 1970s and virtually guaranteeing that such an industry will never be reconstituted (Glamser). Meanwhile, the price of an entry-level motorcycle has typically more than tripled (in unadjusted dollars) discouraging investment by young, unemployed individuals looking to make a living. Thus, we can look back on a brief “golden era” from about 1973 to about 1985, when scores of young men made their living as full-time motorcycle couriers, logging hundreds of miles a week riding in and around the metropolitan area, rain or shine, year round.
Being a courier—of any kind—is generally not a career destination, but a way post to something better. When Metro Messenger placed an advertisement for motorcycle couriers in the Washington Post, Oscar—a classic candidate for the position—responded.
After a cursory interview to ascertain whether he actually knew how to ride a motorcycle, his ‘road test’ began. Metropolitan Messenger and Delivery Service (“Metro”) was unique in Washington in that it operated its own fleet of motorcycles, several dozen bright yellow BMWs of mixed vintages, with large radio boxes on their rear fenders and jury-rigged saddlebags made from “borrowed” UPSP mailbags. (Mailbags were inexpensive—unless you were the Postal Service—and readily available; the only drawback was their tendency to occasionally smoulder and catch fire from the heat of the motorcycle’s exhaust system. More than one load of deliveries met its end in such a fashion, with an oblivious rider blasting down the highway trailing a long plume of white smoke.)
One of the two owners of Metro, Reuben Moore, assigned Oscar to a motorcycle, a pre-1970 R60/2, and the two of them proceeded from Metro’s garage/office off “Blues Alley” in Georgetown for Oscar’s “road test,” a baptism-by-fire with Reuben riding his own motorcycle in the lead.
“They met in the Army…Jerry [Blum] was the people person, and Reuben was the one with the ideas, the smart one of the two of them…I became personal friends with Jerry; he helped me buy my first BMW…Jerry would go out of his way to help you if you needed help. The two of them made a good team, and Metro was a great business. It should have gone on…but unfortunately their business model was wrong.”
“Reuben Moore had me follow him…the opposite of what I would do. His primary concern was taking care of his motorcycles…he told me to follow him, and he would put his finger up in the air every time he wanted me to shift gears…if he put two fingers up, I needed to be in second gear…and so on…he was showing me how to shift the motorcycle. I was hired [at $3.00 an hour] but I was damn well gonna shift that bike the way he wanted me to.”
He tells of Reuben coming upon the scene of an accident involving one of Metro’s motorcycles while out on one of his regular jogs around the city. First, he picked up the bike to inspect its condition. Second, he walked over to the rider who was lying on the ground with a broken leg—still waiting for the ambulance to arrive–and told him he was fired. Then he went on jogging. In another apocryphal story, a rider quit and filed for unemployment; under his reason for quitting, he stated, “…his boss was crazy.” Reuben went to the unemployment office in person to contest the claim, and the examiner found in favor of the employee.
When asked about the people he worked for as a motorcycle courier—the clients—Oscar said, “The clients were all the same…except for CREEP. CREEP I’ll never forget. There will always be only one CREEP. 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue, sixth floor…they had a little office with the name on the door at first, but they removed the name…” [CREEP was the ‘Committee to Re-Elect the President,’ Richard Nixon’s re-election committee, and quite notorious in 1973 and 1974.] They (clients) haven’t changed in all the years that I’ve been in business…the receptionists still look the same, act the same… it’s all the same.”
He described an insular community comprising young, white, college-educated men who were “transitional…between things,” working 50-hour weeks, year round, rain or shine. “When it rained, I was wet…when it was cold, I was cold.” There was an egalitarian meritocracy functioning within the group. “The bad ones didn’t last very long; they either wrecked or they quit. The ones who were there, who had been there a long time—they were equals.” Annual turnover could run as high as 1,000%. Typically, long-term employees made up half the workforce; the other half turned over rapidly and repeatedly. This created a group that was reluctant to acknowledge newcomers until they had ‘paid their dues,’ which is to say, had stuck with it long enough to move into the inner circle. It took about 90 days to be recognized, at which point you were ‘fully vested.’ In a dangerous and demanding work environment, riders learned to be cautious about making emotional investments too quickly.
Following the brusque initiation at the hands of Reuben Moore, riders (as they refer to themselves) simply either succeeded or failed. Failure could mean any of a number of things—having an accident and being fired for carelessness, having an accident and being incapacitated, quitting because of the stressfulness of the job, quitting for not making enough money, simply deciding one was not cut out for the courier life, or any number of variations. Success meant one thing—showing up day after day and making a living at it.
The social order within the community bestowed status and a degree of prestige on ‘good’ riders. Despite the image of couriers in the media, speed, recklessness and wild abandon do not make a good courier.
“I wouldn’t think of couriers as risk-takers…it’s a misconception.” A good courier is “…efficient, shows up every day, steady and dependable, doesn’t hurt himself… a good courier, like in any job, is very efficient; he maximizes his motion, so he’s not necessarily racing down the street, but he knows the best route to take…he knows how to get on and off his bike, he knows where to park, knows how to get in and out of the buildings—he knows where he’s going. He knows exactly how to ask for the items he’s picking up…so it’s more efficiency, which translates into speed, which translates into production, which translates into money. Speed is certainly part of it, but there’s a lot of things that go into speed more than just racing through traffic.”
The garage was a special, sacred, safe place for the riders. There was a magical moment at the end of the day when a rider received the order “R-T-B” (“Return to Base”). Though a rider could be fired on the spot if their motorcycle was seen parked in front of a liquor store, however innocently (Reuben would jog countless miles throughout the city daily, always keeping an eye out for his motorcycles, and the list of Reuben-mandated fireable offenses was long and inscrutable) the last stop of the day was frequently to grab a six-pack before heading to the garage.
The garage was the gathering place for riders at the end of the day. Besides being the place where the motorcycles were signed back in and serviced, and paperwork was completed, it was a site for ‘male bonding.’ There was much bragging, lying, story-telling, cautionary tale reciting, and general camaraderie taking place. After a riders’ initial introduction to the business with Reuben (and later, as the business grew, with other senior riders), the garage was the where the real educational process took place. Newcomers would listen quietly on the periphery, absorbing as much information as they could. Old-timers would hold court, telling ‘war stories’ from that afternoon or years ago. Questions would be timidly asked, answers provided. Everyone would share information communally; of particular interest was information concerning riders who had been injured (regardless of what company they worked for—all riders shared a common kinship) or hazards to be aware of. Hazards could be man-made or natural; maybe just a security guard with a bad attitude. This daily storytelling ritual and exchange was key to building the culture of the motorcycle courier.
Timothy Tangherlini, writing in his book "Talking Trauma: Paramedics and Their Stories," says “Storytelling pervades our everyday lives and structures how we view the world. We learn the beliefs of our culture through stories, respond to certain situations by telling stories, entertain each other with stories, and voice our fears, hopes, frustrations, and joys…Even at work, storytelling can play an important role in how we perceive our jobs and our relationships with coworkers and in how we carry out our tasks. In many cases, the stories employees tell play a major role in the functioning of the organization. Workers rely on stories of coworkers' experiences, coupled with their own narratives about work, as a guide to day-to-day life.”
This was certainly true for the culture of the motorcycle courier. There was little competitive attitude between riders, except comparing daily production totals, which were eagerly awaited each evening; the competition was with the outside world as a whole: the city, the weather, the clients, the traffic. Alcohol was ubiquitous; marijuana was common, particularly in the office areas (where outsiders were less likely to wander in) and the general atmosphere was of relaxation and commiseration. In many ways, the role of the garage as safe haven helped accentuate the insularity of the rider community. It was a single sanctuary in a hostile world that had little appreciation for the work they performed.
Riders would frequently socialize together on weekends, taking ‘busman’s holidays’ on their personal motorcycles despite the 50 hours a week they spent riding for work. Oscar says: “ I remember going out on winter days and riding with these guys…and freezing. I remember lots of parties…I remember lots of marijuana; it was everywhere. There was lots of alcohol, but I don’t remember people using any of that stuff while they were working. I only remember it as an after work thing, or a weekend thing. It was a young group…it was, after all, ’73, early ’74, the behavior was fairly typical of what you would find. It wasn’t courier behavior, it was 1973-1974 behavior of people in their twenties.”
The day-to-day working world of the motorcycle courier is far removed from the few popular culture images we have been given. A typical day is a steady stream of overlapping pickups and deliveries beginning between 8:00 AM and 8:30. The rider begins by picking up item after item in series. The dispatcher, generally an experienced rider who was promoted (often a living testimonial to the Peter Principle) takes responsibility for keeping track of what each rider has done, is currently doing, and will be doing in the future, typically having to think hours ahead and anticipate what may come. During the late 70’s Metro had two dispatchers operating on two different radio channels; one was responsible for deliveries across the general Washington area, the other solely for deliveries between downtown and Capitol Hill. A third person served as a dispatcher’s dispatcher, routing jobs to one channel or the other.
With their bright yellow classic motorcycles, bike-mounted two-way radios with long buggy-whip antennas, colorful helmets and later, brightly colored yellow reflective safety vests, motorcyclists who rode for Metro were clearly delineated from the average courier in the city. Frequently, they would be mistaken for police of one kind or another by tourists, and it was not uncommon for the sudden appearance of a Metro motorcycle in certain kinds of neighborhoods to produce a panicked cessation of all visible activity.
But the delineation cut two ways. Besides the garage, the motorcycle represented the rider’s entire real workplace. Tangherlini similarly described the association of paramedics to their ambulance: “Many medics refer to the front seat of the ambulance as their “living room,” and see the vehicle itself as a safe haven from the dangers lurking outside.” The rider was safe and in his element while he was in the saddle, and woe to anyone who impinged on this tiny mobile universe. While there were few opportunities to ‘personalize’ an individual machines, a rider was generally assigned to a specific bike. It became his ‘trusty steed,’ and each rider grew to know his bike's idiosyncrasies and foibles intimately. The rider’s radio however, more than the motorcycle itself, was his talisman, the secret of his power. It was the link that kept him connected to his community of fellow riders and, while a constant tormentor, provided a modicum of emotional security. The rider could hear the transmissions to and from all the other riders, and could create an ever-changing awareness of who was where, a shifting constellation of the community of his fellow riders. This mental image became the virtual workspace the rider functioned in, that was every bit as real and as important to his working life as the tightly constrained workplace that was his motorcycle.
On occasions, a general radio failure could prompt a flurry of panicked phone calls from riders, far out of proportion to any real inconvenience. It was a true breach of faith if the radio was inadvertently shut off before the last woebegone straggler limped in at the end of the day, and more than once an irate rider stormed into the dispatch room wanting to know why he had been abandoned. [It was not an unreasonable question; riders counted on that lifeline if they got lost , had an accident or a mechanical problem.] In keeping with the quasi-police trappings of the job, riders were assigned a “unit number” which was used, sometimes along with, often instead of, their name when communicating over the radio. Radio communications were conducted using a modified “10-code” based on the standard Public Safety Officers series of 10-codes. As with paramedics, the use of codes on the radio represented a boundary between those in the profession and those outside it.
There were some very pragmatic reasons to use the 10-code system. It conserved airtime, which is critical when 30 riders are competing for the attention of one dispatcher; it was easily understood under poor transmission and reception situations; it was nearly symbolic, so it was understood almost intuitively. But is also provided intangible benefits when used in place of, or to augment, plain English. While plain English could be understood by anyone, radio codes helped create a mystique around the daily tasks, which in turn helped define and establish the place and worth of the individual. When arriving at a pickup location, the rider would listen for a break in radio traffic, give his unit number and say “10-7,” meaning he was where he had been sent and was awaiting further instruction. These terse exchanges continued all day long, until the rider was “10-30” (“all clear”) and would hear the eagerly-awaited “RTB.”
Oscar says: “I spent half my day on Capitol Hill; the other half in the K Street corridor…most of the afternoon was spent picking up two or three things for every one you dropped…a lot of times, you’d have fifteen or twenty things in your bags at five o’clock, then you’d start dropping…you’d get off when your bag was empty.” He presented an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, he described being a motorcycle courier as something “you would do for money,” and “get out of it as quickly as you can…the world is filled with jobs like that. What happens to a lot of people is before they know it, they’ve done it for five years or ten years; that’s the big risk.” He said he was looking for another job the entire time he was working at Metro.
On the other hand, he said it was probably the best job he ever had, and clearly he was nostalgic when recalling that period of his life. “It’s a young man’s job; I couldn’t do it now. It’s physical labor, and when you’re young, you can do it and you can still party all night.”
“I loved it. I loved it. It was hard work, but I loved it. I liked the people; I hung around with them after work, on weekends, and it was the kind of job where you didn’t take your worries home with you. It was a special kind of job, because you were doing something you knew not many people could do. You delivered that last package, and you were done…it was Miller time.” A common refrain from motorcycle couriers was “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this…”
The young men who worked as motorcycle couriers during the “Golden Age” were self-aware enough to recognize they were intelligent, highly skilled, talented, resourceful people doing a job that was dangerous, poorly compensated, had no future, no prestige and no social standing. However, the cohesive nature of the informal relationships within the group apparently provided more than enough job satisfaction to overcome the low-status, inherently unfulfilling work. The homogeneous nature of this group combined with the clearly defined sense of institutionalized traditions created by two charismatic founders created a strong and lasting social bond that invested the work—and the workplace—with significance and meaning.
Thousands of men passed through Metro Messenger over the years (as did many women in later years, though predominantly as bicycle messengers) and went on to successful “real world” careers. It is likely many will look back on their time at Metro as the best job they ever had. What made this the “Golden Age” was the strong and insular network this group created. Metro Messenger was sui generis, and was an avatar of the strong personalities of its founders. The strong sense of camaraderie created within this organization, the sense of place, and the sense of tradition (though the timeline would hardly suggest that traditions could have had time to form) provided a balance to the seemingly overwhelming negatives of the professional equation.
We will never see such a time and place again.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
A Wetback in my own space
Epiphany time.
I work in information technology, doing customer support mostly, and have done a variation of that for the last five years or so. I am a server monkey and a mouse jockey, and as an english major, I try my best to translate technology into plain English so everyone can just get their jobs done and go home. These technology things, after all, are just tools, the means to an end—not the end in themselves.
I am not overly enamored of technology; I like to think of myself as 'technology agnostic,' but I have a grudging respect for what computers et al can enable. For example, I truly believe the internet is mankind's greatest creation—a massive collaborative "hive mind" in the best possible sense. I can only peer "...through a glass, darkly..." at what phenomenal possibilities lay before us. I am confortable with technology in my life, but don't think of myself as cutting edge.
But that's not the epiphany. This is the epiphany: I am a wetback in my own space.
This dawned on me when I ran into one of the users I support, incidentally a non-native english speaker. Apropos of nothing, they launched into a generic (e.g., not directed at any particular incident or problem) tirade against computers specifically and technology in general. Taken aback by the abruptness of this outburst and lacking any meaningful context in which to frame it, I began to respond, but using discretion and good sense, I held my tongue. And for some reason, the encounter made me recall long-forgotten classes from middle school, where I gained a feeble and cursory knowledge of this person's native language.
This made me realize a foreign language is a good analogy, if it is not a direct comparison, for the place of technology in our lives. Technology has slowly seeped into our lives, arriving subtly and incrementally without our awareness, involvement or consent; it echoes the presence of "the other"—those who are not like us, who we suddenly realize are everywhere. We are struck by technology like we are struck by the proliferation of signs we cannot read lining the shopping centers where we grew up shopping with our parents. I saw a great quote recently about technology and generational change, the gist of which went something like "...We only hold passports to this brave new world; our children are its citizens."
Like many threatened and insecure Americans, technophobes resist and resent the intrusion of this new and foreign idiom onto their turf. They will not concede to learn the simplest phrases, the "hellos" and good-byes," the most basic phrases that enable human discourse; they are proud of their ignorance and refuse to become conversant. They insist, they demand, overtly or otherwise, that the 'other' must concede to them and conform to their ways—never the other way around.
Technology happens to be my language in this situation—yes, my second language only, of which I speak a certain dialect and with a pronounced accent—and I am marked by it. The resentment towards technology that so many harbor is almost palpable and it washes over me: I am tainted by association. Interactions are transactional in nature; conversations are bookended with a cold evaluation of what technological obligation I have yet unfulfilled with the speaker.
I must respectfully tug my forelock and shuffle. Whether this relates to our common environment or is tied to some personal interest is irrelevant; I am the annoying little man who mows the lawn, edges the walk, blows the leaves away with the whining blower early of a Saturday morning, sheds the drywall dust from his paint-spattered coveralls in line at the 7-11.
The language I speak divides me from those around me.
I work in information technology, doing customer support mostly, and have done a variation of that for the last five years or so. I am a server monkey and a mouse jockey, and as an english major, I try my best to translate technology into plain English so everyone can just get their jobs done and go home. These technology things, after all, are just tools, the means to an end—not the end in themselves.
I am not overly enamored of technology; I like to think of myself as 'technology agnostic,' but I have a grudging respect for what computers et al can enable. For example, I truly believe the internet is mankind's greatest creation—a massive collaborative "hive mind" in the best possible sense. I can only peer "...through a glass, darkly..." at what phenomenal possibilities lay before us. I am confortable with technology in my life, but don't think of myself as cutting edge.
But that's not the epiphany. This is the epiphany: I am a wetback in my own space.
This dawned on me when I ran into one of the users I support, incidentally a non-native english speaker. Apropos of nothing, they launched into a generic (e.g., not directed at any particular incident or problem) tirade against computers specifically and technology in general. Taken aback by the abruptness of this outburst and lacking any meaningful context in which to frame it, I began to respond, but using discretion and good sense, I held my tongue. And for some reason, the encounter made me recall long-forgotten classes from middle school, where I gained a feeble and cursory knowledge of this person's native language.
This made me realize a foreign language is a good analogy, if it is not a direct comparison, for the place of technology in our lives. Technology has slowly seeped into our lives, arriving subtly and incrementally without our awareness, involvement or consent; it echoes the presence of "the other"—those who are not like us, who we suddenly realize are everywhere. We are struck by technology like we are struck by the proliferation of signs we cannot read lining the shopping centers where we grew up shopping with our parents. I saw a great quote recently about technology and generational change, the gist of which went something like "...We only hold passports to this brave new world; our children are its citizens."
Like many threatened and insecure Americans, technophobes resist and resent the intrusion of this new and foreign idiom onto their turf. They will not concede to learn the simplest phrases, the "hellos" and good-byes," the most basic phrases that enable human discourse; they are proud of their ignorance and refuse to become conversant. They insist, they demand, overtly or otherwise, that the 'other' must concede to them and conform to their ways—never the other way around.
Technology happens to be my language in this situation—yes, my second language only, of which I speak a certain dialect and with a pronounced accent—and I am marked by it. The resentment towards technology that so many harbor is almost palpable and it washes over me: I am tainted by association. Interactions are transactional in nature; conversations are bookended with a cold evaluation of what technological obligation I have yet unfulfilled with the speaker.
I must respectfully tug my forelock and shuffle. Whether this relates to our common environment or is tied to some personal interest is irrelevant; I am the annoying little man who mows the lawn, edges the walk, blows the leaves away with the whining blower early of a Saturday morning, sheds the drywall dust from his paint-spattered coveralls in line at the 7-11.
The language I speak divides me from those around me.
Writer's block
Uh, yeah, there's this one thing I've been trying to get written and posted, for like three years in one form or another apparently, and it seems like it's more of a kidney stone than a post, because I CAN'T SEEM TO GET IT OUT OF ME and I keep not getting it written because the ESSENCE of it keeps eluding me, or transmogrifying, or I keep stepping back and looking at it differently, and then I think it's the MOST FASCINATING THING EVAR and then it occurs to me that really it's dumb as dirt, and then I notice certain aspects of my writing that suddenly I'm all self-conscious about, and oh yeah THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK. Hey! Look over there ! A bright shiny thing!
That is all.
That is all.
Au Claire De Lune
Last night was a school night, which makes for a very long day—a day capped off with a nearly fifty-mile ride commencing around 10:00 PM.
I walked out of class across campus and found Beast waiting right where I left her, poised gracefully on three points, calm and composed. The night air had already chilled from the twilight cool to the earnest cold of night, exactly what you would expect for early October. In a long-familiar ritual, I secured the items I wouldn't need for the ride, and geared up in what I would.
I rolled westward, and for the first time saw the moon before me. It glowed with the warmth of sunlight that has passed through earth's air, not the icy moonlight that so often rains down to make the coldest nights of the year. It appeared to be a perfect half-moon, smiling on the diagonal at the occult sun, teased in its passage by a lone planet dancing just above its crown. Its poignant beauty was enhanced by the faintest wisps of high clouds catching and amplifying the dusky light.
It stood before me as I rode westward towards the mountains, and I recalled a piece I had written many years before about such a westward ride in the night, never expecting I would actually make that cold and persistent ride. And as the miles rolled beneath me (snug within my heated cocoon, chilling air flowing around and through me) I noticed the moon was constant, always before me no matter how the road twisted and turned.
As I turned off the great highway southward on the lesser roadway, it rode directly before me, and I saw something I had never noticed before; the sparkling lights of a aircraft transecting the half-disk perfectly, looking like lunar fireworks and calling to mind Welles' 'War of The Worlds' and its reports of explosions on Mars...
At each hill I ascended on my westward path, the warm half-moon shone bright at the crest, as though to illuminate my road. As I crested each hill, it lit up the valley before, and rolled on westward to await me at the next peak. How it anticipated where I was going, I cannot fathom.
In the final stretch towards home, on the gentle ridge preceeding the gravel path down the hill and into the darkling woods, I paused and turned off Beast. I sat in the cold silence and looked back over my shoulder, for now that I had made my way home, the moon and I parted company. It was free now to go with its fellow traveler the planet, and cross the low broad mountains it faintly illuminated. I could make the last few miles without its help, and as I rolled around the penultimate bend, I caught a glimpse of it settling for the night into the deep cover of the pines, and the oaks, and beyond.
The chill of the night's ride stayed with me for hours, despite the warming jacket and a glass of hearty red wine once I had shucked my layers of gear. The great thick muscles are dull, massive, and slow to respond; I delude myself that I am mostly warm, and will recover quickly. But where there is no heat, no warming comes no matter how many blankets are piled on, and next time I will not count on the light of the moon to keep me warm.
Yet there is something to be said for a night's ride in such beatific company, that cannot be translated into simple warmth or comfort.
I walked out of class across campus and found Beast waiting right where I left her, poised gracefully on three points, calm and composed. The night air had already chilled from the twilight cool to the earnest cold of night, exactly what you would expect for early October. In a long-familiar ritual, I secured the items I wouldn't need for the ride, and geared up in what I would.
I rolled westward, and for the first time saw the moon before me. It glowed with the warmth of sunlight that has passed through earth's air, not the icy moonlight that so often rains down to make the coldest nights of the year. It appeared to be a perfect half-moon, smiling on the diagonal at the occult sun, teased in its passage by a lone planet dancing just above its crown. Its poignant beauty was enhanced by the faintest wisps of high clouds catching and amplifying the dusky light.
It stood before me as I rode westward towards the mountains, and I recalled a piece I had written many years before about such a westward ride in the night, never expecting I would actually make that cold and persistent ride. And as the miles rolled beneath me (snug within my heated cocoon, chilling air flowing around and through me) I noticed the moon was constant, always before me no matter how the road twisted and turned.
As I turned off the great highway southward on the lesser roadway, it rode directly before me, and I saw something I had never noticed before; the sparkling lights of a aircraft transecting the half-disk perfectly, looking like lunar fireworks and calling to mind Welles' 'War of The Worlds' and its reports of explosions on Mars...
At each hill I ascended on my westward path, the warm half-moon shone bright at the crest, as though to illuminate my road. As I crested each hill, it lit up the valley before, and rolled on westward to await me at the next peak. How it anticipated where I was going, I cannot fathom.
In the final stretch towards home, on the gentle ridge preceeding the gravel path down the hill and into the darkling woods, I paused and turned off Beast. I sat in the cold silence and looked back over my shoulder, for now that I had made my way home, the moon and I parted company. It was free now to go with its fellow traveler the planet, and cross the low broad mountains it faintly illuminated. I could make the last few miles without its help, and as I rolled around the penultimate bend, I caught a glimpse of it settling for the night into the deep cover of the pines, and the oaks, and beyond.
The chill of the night's ride stayed with me for hours, despite the warming jacket and a glass of hearty red wine once I had shucked my layers of gear. The great thick muscles are dull, massive, and slow to respond; I delude myself that I am mostly warm, and will recover quickly. But where there is no heat, no warming comes no matter how many blankets are piled on, and next time I will not count on the light of the moon to keep me warm.
Yet there is something to be said for a night's ride in such beatific company, that cannot be translated into simple warmth or comfort.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Traditions and Transitions
The time had arrived.
A few more years passed behind us, once again we stood on the threshold of a grand transition. This time it was greater in practical import yet lesser in the grand scheme of things—another semester of school beginning, but now it would be five time zones across the great ocean, an uncrossable and seemingly irrevocable barrier marking the separation: no spur of the moment visits would be possible in response to whimsy or need, real or imagined. This was indeed a big step.
Yet practice makes perfect. Rituals and traditions help dull the edge of parting, make the enormous seem normal, and provide comfort to those who need it when they need it most. The transition, so few years ago, of turning one’s back on your child and walking away into divergent unknowns—even when it is an act both symbolic and literal—sets the tone. All that follows becomes easier.
So what choice did we have but to take our quadrennial two-wheeled romp through the countryside?
The route was meticulously planned to encompass all the high points in one grand sweep; our favorite roads and vistas, diner food & hot coffee in ceramic mugs for breakfast and trophy pie somewhere down the road to bring home for those who couldn’t join us. All in all, we would take almost six hours to ride two-hundred miles, all within a forty-mile radius of home. We began by striking out sharply southwest, crossing the first set of mountains and heading towards the second—retracing our classic route of years gone by.
The morning held great promise. It was pleasantly chilly under a pale blue sky scribbled from horizon to horizon with a hash of smeared chalky contrails; I felt compelled to find a rag and wipe the sky clean to begin our day. The unveiling of the mountains showed them brightly illuminated in the low-slanted light, pinned flat against their background; the foreground of fields and woods before glowed brightly with the reflective sheen of dew, while ten thousand cobwebs held ten thousand galaxies among the tall grass.
The ride was sweet and smooth. I will not detail the roads here and now; I have already written at length of most of them, and much of their appeal is their timeless yet constantly renewing nature. We stopped when and where we wanted, chatted of things great and small, peeled off extra layers as the day gently warmed and admired the world in microcosm as it rolled past beneath our black-booted feet. Suffice it to say, we made it from Washington to Paris to St. Louis and home—with warm strawbarb pie and apple dumplings—in time for a stylishly late lunch. Tired, dried out, saddle-sore, a little “road-simple” and glad to be home again.
We also made a date to do it again for the next big transition, assuming that it lends itself to celebrating with a long ride to nowhere in particular and back home again. Here's to traditions and transitions.
A few more years passed behind us, once again we stood on the threshold of a grand transition. This time it was greater in practical import yet lesser in the grand scheme of things—another semester of school beginning, but now it would be five time zones across the great ocean, an uncrossable and seemingly irrevocable barrier marking the separation: no spur of the moment visits would be possible in response to whimsy or need, real or imagined. This was indeed a big step.
Yet practice makes perfect. Rituals and traditions help dull the edge of parting, make the enormous seem normal, and provide comfort to those who need it when they need it most. The transition, so few years ago, of turning one’s back on your child and walking away into divergent unknowns—even when it is an act both symbolic and literal—sets the tone. All that follows becomes easier.
So what choice did we have but to take our quadrennial two-wheeled romp through the countryside?
The route was meticulously planned to encompass all the high points in one grand sweep; our favorite roads and vistas, diner food & hot coffee in ceramic mugs for breakfast and trophy pie somewhere down the road to bring home for those who couldn’t join us. All in all, we would take almost six hours to ride two-hundred miles, all within a forty-mile radius of home. We began by striking out sharply southwest, crossing the first set of mountains and heading towards the second—retracing our classic route of years gone by.
The morning held great promise. It was pleasantly chilly under a pale blue sky scribbled from horizon to horizon with a hash of smeared chalky contrails; I felt compelled to find a rag and wipe the sky clean to begin our day. The unveiling of the mountains showed them brightly illuminated in the low-slanted light, pinned flat against their background; the foreground of fields and woods before glowed brightly with the reflective sheen of dew, while ten thousand cobwebs held ten thousand galaxies among the tall grass.
The ride was sweet and smooth. I will not detail the roads here and now; I have already written at length of most of them, and much of their appeal is their timeless yet constantly renewing nature. We stopped when and where we wanted, chatted of things great and small, peeled off extra layers as the day gently warmed and admired the world in microcosm as it rolled past beneath our black-booted feet. Suffice it to say, we made it from Washington to Paris to St. Louis and home—with warm strawbarb pie and apple dumplings—in time for a stylishly late lunch. Tired, dried out, saddle-sore, a little “road-simple” and glad to be home again.
We also made a date to do it again for the next big transition, assuming that it lends itself to celebrating with a long ride to nowhere in particular and back home again. Here's to traditions and transitions.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Études
A rider of long acquaintance, whose skill and confidence with a motorcycle I greatly admired, had a ritual he undertook each spring around the time the warm weather arrived.
He would don his riding gear, gas up his R75, and early of a Saturday morning, ride to the nearby intersection of two major parkways. Each road was four divided lanes; their intersection was a meticulously maintained and landscaped cloverleaf. There he would spend the better part of an hour riding the cloverleaf from loop to loop, never actually getting on or off a road, but simply honing his skills, rubbing the rust and dust off, and blowing away the cobwebs.
He would enter and exit again and again until he was satisfied with the results, moving in an endless progression of turns. His object was gentle, fluid transitions, all throttle and clutch—no brakes.
Far too few riders take their riding so seriously. It’s like a musician playing scales: it’s something you need to do if you ever expect to become really proficient.
I was reminded of this rider’s ritual recently, albeit under different circumstances. I broke a long-standing personal rule about ride routes by including a brief out-and-back segment, a straight line doubling back and covering the same stretch of road twice. It’s not like I’ve even seen all the good roads a first time, much less that I can afford to see something twice in the same few minutes. But this was a special case.
My attention was captured by the sign thoughtfully placed by the highway department warning tractor-trailers against taking this road. Steep, narrow turns, something like that, it said. What more could you ask for?
The road begins gently enough, rolling slowly upwards through pastureland bordered by dark forests. But shortly, the dark forests are at the verge of the road and the road itself is lost around the next turn. It ascends steeply through a modest gap, then begins a precipitous and serpentine course carved between abrupt roadside banks of clay and gravel on one hand and dark deep ravines on the other. Light and shadow strobes across the road as you go, and then suddenly you are released again into farms and fields, though these face a different valley than where we just were.
Stop. Turn around. Rewind the road, regain the starting point, put the steep on the left and the drop on the right, climb where we descended and descend where we climbed, regain our original course a few minutes behind schedule and a few miles richer. It’s a four mile-long refresher course in lean, roll-on and roll-off, in diving hard into corners and heeling the bike over when you need to in order to follow the road.
It is a nice easy way, in just a few miles, to knock the rust off, to whet the edges a bit, to restore the fine point at the tip and focus on the fundamentals. It is a joyous rider's étude, a scale to be played from low note to high and back again on the road to proficiency.
He would don his riding gear, gas up his R75, and early of a Saturday morning, ride to the nearby intersection of two major parkways. Each road was four divided lanes; their intersection was a meticulously maintained and landscaped cloverleaf. There he would spend the better part of an hour riding the cloverleaf from loop to loop, never actually getting on or off a road, but simply honing his skills, rubbing the rust and dust off, and blowing away the cobwebs.
He would enter and exit again and again until he was satisfied with the results, moving in an endless progression of turns. His object was gentle, fluid transitions, all throttle and clutch—no brakes.
Far too few riders take their riding so seriously. It’s like a musician playing scales: it’s something you need to do if you ever expect to become really proficient.
I was reminded of this rider’s ritual recently, albeit under different circumstances. I broke a long-standing personal rule about ride routes by including a brief out-and-back segment, a straight line doubling back and covering the same stretch of road twice. It’s not like I’ve even seen all the good roads a first time, much less that I can afford to see something twice in the same few minutes. But this was a special case.
My attention was captured by the sign thoughtfully placed by the highway department warning tractor-trailers against taking this road. Steep, narrow turns, something like that, it said. What more could you ask for?
The road begins gently enough, rolling slowly upwards through pastureland bordered by dark forests. But shortly, the dark forests are at the verge of the road and the road itself is lost around the next turn. It ascends steeply through a modest gap, then begins a precipitous and serpentine course carved between abrupt roadside banks of clay and gravel on one hand and dark deep ravines on the other. Light and shadow strobes across the road as you go, and then suddenly you are released again into farms and fields, though these face a different valley than where we just were.
Stop. Turn around. Rewind the road, regain the starting point, put the steep on the left and the drop on the right, climb where we descended and descend where we climbed, regain our original course a few minutes behind schedule and a few miles richer. It’s a four mile-long refresher course in lean, roll-on and roll-off, in diving hard into corners and heeling the bike over when you need to in order to follow the road.
It is a nice easy way, in just a few miles, to knock the rust off, to whet the edges a bit, to restore the fine point at the tip and focus on the fundamentals. It is a joyous rider's étude, a scale to be played from low note to high and back again on the road to proficiency.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Cribbing from myself
(On the Blue Ridge Parkway, June) The parking area is clotted with Harleys and their clones, and their road-benumbed riders. I recognize what they are feeling from their voices and their gaits and the looks in their eyes. A day like this will eat you up, suck the marrow from you, and wring you out like a sponge.
The term I used to use for this phenomenon was “road-simple.” Yet I do envy them [travelling as I was, in a passenger van], and see "the mark of the dragon" [The familiar squiggly decal from 'The Dragon's Tail'—U.S. 129 through Deal's Gap, N.C.] on many.
((sigh)) We never want what we have, and we never have what we want. And where are the goddam Beemers? [When I found out, boy did I feel silly!]
[From the following day] The bikers stick in my mind for some reason. They are representative of a certain type I have watched for a long time. They appear worn, tired, testy, stiff and sore, and not very happy until they are off their bikes and socializing. My prejudice will out, and I make no pretense of objectivity.
Riding, though by no mean exercise, is physically demanding. So is sitting in the sun for hours. So is immersion in constant loud noise. To combine it all on a machine designed for its looks, or in imitation of looks, is folly. No wonder they look and act they way they do. The sport bikers have it right.
Design is life, reality can’t be held at bay for too long, and physics is a cruel mistress.
The term I used to use for this phenomenon was “road-simple.” Yet I do envy them [travelling as I was, in a passenger van], and see "the mark of the dragon" [The familiar squiggly decal from 'The Dragon's Tail'—U.S. 129 through Deal's Gap, N.C.] on many.
((sigh)) We never want what we have, and we never have what we want. And where are the goddam Beemers? [When I found out, boy did I feel silly!]
[From the following day] The bikers stick in my mind for some reason. They are representative of a certain type I have watched for a long time. They appear worn, tired, testy, stiff and sore, and not very happy until they are off their bikes and socializing. My prejudice will out, and I make no pretense of objectivity.
Riding, though by no mean exercise, is physically demanding. So is sitting in the sun for hours. So is immersion in constant loud noise. To combine it all on a machine designed for its looks, or in imitation of looks, is folly. No wonder they look and act they way they do. The sport bikers have it right.
Design is life, reality can’t be held at bay for too long, and physics is a cruel mistress.
The Line
I ranted earlier about the reason people give for riding, especially the unfounded assumptions made by non-riders on my behalf. Intangible and frankly irrelevant reasons like freedom, rebelliousness, living outside the law and other incoherent and inarticulate assumptions of the vast endoquadricyclic public.
Here’s the real skinny. It’s all about the line.
A long time ago I described the difference between how traffic looks from on a bike versus the view from in a car. A motorcycle is two points, and therefore geometrically is one-dimensional—a line. A car is four points, and therefore is geometrically two-dimensional—a plane. For discussion’s sake, we can ignore the third dimension, since for all intents and purposes neither cars nor motorcycles operate in the third dimension. And we will also ignore time, although in this discussion it’s a much more relevant dimension than height.
Riding is a balancing act. At rest, motorcycles are elegant, poised sculptural things, but ungainly and clumsy left to their own devices—what rider hasn’t heard the sound of their securely parked bike tipping over once they had turned their back and walked away from it? But once a bike starts rolling, the magic begins.
Pilots know the magic moment for an aircraft; it is the rotation speed, the point when a taxiing plane can rotate nose-up around the axis of its wheels and transition from rolling to flying. The speed is specific to each type of plane and combination of conditions; for commercial airliners it is around 160 mph; for Beast, magic begins at 18 mph.
As we begin our travels, Beast demands I lead, guiding her in an ungainly dance that actually requires I steer—point the front wheel towards where I want her to go. She hesitates, tentative as she slowly finds her way in the equivalent of faltering baby steps. But around 18 mph, she knows her way; she takes over. The rotation of the wheels provides enough gyroscopic stability to keep the bike on an even keel; steering becomes countersteering—turning the front wheel opposite the direction you want to go—and leaning determine the course of bike and rider.
Bike and rider move in four dimensions, in one continuous fall.
As with the airplane in flight, forces are delicately balanced. Thrust and drag; lift and gravity; inertia and centripetal force. The only distinction between airplanes and motorcycles is that lift is generally not a significant factor for bikes—though aerodynamic effects must certainly be taken into account at higher speeds. Air resistance increases with the cube of velocity; and modern motorcycles are more than capable of easily entering the realm where those effects are considerable.
Beast and I have traveled many miles without my input to the handlebars; I simply sit back, detached and hands-free, watching as we move down the road at speed; together we set a course through common consent. A tensing muscle here, a slight shift of weight there; on occasion a turn or lane change signalled with a hand gesture that also serves to deflect our path.
A gentle turn is simply the act of falling over at high speed. As Beast begins to lay over and deflect her course, I compensate by increasing the throttle. The added speed increases the inertial forces towards the outside of the turn, and we stay in perfect balance on the line.
In fact, this is what the line—and the ride—is about: making a precision path in four-dimensions using in essence just the throttle. The line is the solution to a endless rolling equation, a graph drawn across the landscape of all the points between A and B where everything is in perfect balance, drawn with two tires and an 1100cc engine.
Here’s the real skinny. It’s all about the line.
A long time ago I described the difference between how traffic looks from on a bike versus the view from in a car. A motorcycle is two points, and therefore geometrically is one-dimensional—a line. A car is four points, and therefore is geometrically two-dimensional—a plane. For discussion’s sake, we can ignore the third dimension, since for all intents and purposes neither cars nor motorcycles operate in the third dimension. And we will also ignore time, although in this discussion it’s a much more relevant dimension than height.
Riding is a balancing act. At rest, motorcycles are elegant, poised sculptural things, but ungainly and clumsy left to their own devices—what rider hasn’t heard the sound of their securely parked bike tipping over once they had turned their back and walked away from it? But once a bike starts rolling, the magic begins.
Pilots know the magic moment for an aircraft; it is the rotation speed, the point when a taxiing plane can rotate nose-up around the axis of its wheels and transition from rolling to flying. The speed is specific to each type of plane and combination of conditions; for commercial airliners it is around 160 mph; for Beast, magic begins at 18 mph.
As we begin our travels, Beast demands I lead, guiding her in an ungainly dance that actually requires I steer—point the front wheel towards where I want her to go. She hesitates, tentative as she slowly finds her way in the equivalent of faltering baby steps. But around 18 mph, she knows her way; she takes over. The rotation of the wheels provides enough gyroscopic stability to keep the bike on an even keel; steering becomes countersteering—turning the front wheel opposite the direction you want to go—and leaning determine the course of bike and rider.
Bike and rider move in four dimensions, in one continuous fall.
As with the airplane in flight, forces are delicately balanced. Thrust and drag; lift and gravity; inertia and centripetal force. The only distinction between airplanes and motorcycles is that lift is generally not a significant factor for bikes—though aerodynamic effects must certainly be taken into account at higher speeds. Air resistance increases with the cube of velocity; and modern motorcycles are more than capable of easily entering the realm where those effects are considerable.
Beast and I have traveled many miles without my input to the handlebars; I simply sit back, detached and hands-free, watching as we move down the road at speed; together we set a course through common consent. A tensing muscle here, a slight shift of weight there; on occasion a turn or lane change signalled with a hand gesture that also serves to deflect our path.
A gentle turn is simply the act of falling over at high speed. As Beast begins to lay over and deflect her course, I compensate by increasing the throttle. The added speed increases the inertial forces towards the outside of the turn, and we stay in perfect balance on the line.
In fact, this is what the line—and the ride—is about: making a precision path in four-dimensions using in essence just the throttle. The line is the solution to a endless rolling equation, a graph drawn across the landscape of all the points between A and B where everything is in perfect balance, drawn with two tires and an 1100cc engine.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Everything which is complex is unusable
French polymath Paul Valéry (1871-1945) once said poems are “…never finished, only abandoned.”
Recently I remembered a project I abandoned decades ago and forgot completely about.
My father died at the age of sixty-four, when I was twenty-one. [As a footnote, I quietly celebrated the exact moment when the days I have had with my son surpassed those I had with my father, and have marked on the caledar the same milestone with my daughter.]
In a muddle after his passing, I struggled to find a way to reconstruct him and hold on to his essence. So I contacted as many of his peers as I could locate—his remaining brother and sister, childhood friends, former co-workers, neighbors and associates, and simply asked each to provide whatever scraps of remembrance or ephemera they could. I would then try to assemble these bits and pieces unedited and unexpurgated into a coherent whole that shined some light on my father.
I was dismayed by the results.
Not like comparing apples and oranges, but more like comparing apples and aardvarks, like comparing the sound of a wild goose’s wing on a moonless night with the smell of a bag of damp gym socks. Childhood clippings from his hometown paper; an article he had written for a trade publication; a letter about him which seemed strangely generic; scraps of old personnel files. Such disparate data points; I could no more recreate a notion of my father from them than I could stitch a cozy comforter from slices of pizza.
I pored over them time and again, unable to find a starting point from which to build the portrait I so badly wanted to create. I still have all the responses somewhere, dogeared and yellowing, stuffed in a folder in a box on a shelf in a room. I don’t even recall what they look like or who all bothered to respond, and I still feel pangs of guilt in recalling that I promised everyone who responded I would send them a copy of the finished product. I supposed I haven't actually broken that promise—yet.
But recently I realized in hindsight (having read Zinnser on “writing well” ) that what I really needed to do was sit down and interview each and every one of those people. I would have been able in that moment to extract exactly what it was I wanted from them, to precisely plumb their remembrances and tease out the threads that meant the most to me. Instead, I asked them to read my mind and heart, and answer a question I wasn’t even capable of asking at the time.
I am not a good enough writer to yet create a coherent narrative from those bits and pieces; I doubt I will ever be, and the urgency and sorrow that propelled me in that effort has diminished and dwindled over the decades. The loss has subsided and life has, in its richness, helped me to fill in that gaping hole. It makes me sad to realize how little remains of my father, how much has evaporated and been lost to time, how little of him I can still recall.
But then Valéry also said: "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable.”
Postscript: The irony is that if I want this project to come to fruition, I will need to bootstrap it by creating a remembrance of my father to bring order to creating a remembrance of my father...how circular.
Recently I remembered a project I abandoned decades ago and forgot completely about.
My father died at the age of sixty-four, when I was twenty-one. [As a footnote, I quietly celebrated the exact moment when the days I have had with my son surpassed those I had with my father, and have marked on the caledar the same milestone with my daughter.]
In a muddle after his passing, I struggled to find a way to reconstruct him and hold on to his essence. So I contacted as many of his peers as I could locate—his remaining brother and sister, childhood friends, former co-workers, neighbors and associates, and simply asked each to provide whatever scraps of remembrance or ephemera they could. I would then try to assemble these bits and pieces unedited and unexpurgated into a coherent whole that shined some light on my father.
I was dismayed by the results.
Not like comparing apples and oranges, but more like comparing apples and aardvarks, like comparing the sound of a wild goose’s wing on a moonless night with the smell of a bag of damp gym socks. Childhood clippings from his hometown paper; an article he had written for a trade publication; a letter about him which seemed strangely generic; scraps of old personnel files. Such disparate data points; I could no more recreate a notion of my father from them than I could stitch a cozy comforter from slices of pizza.
I pored over them time and again, unable to find a starting point from which to build the portrait I so badly wanted to create. I still have all the responses somewhere, dogeared and yellowing, stuffed in a folder in a box on a shelf in a room. I don’t even recall what they look like or who all bothered to respond, and I still feel pangs of guilt in recalling that I promised everyone who responded I would send them a copy of the finished product. I supposed I haven't actually broken that promise—yet.
But recently I realized in hindsight (having read Zinnser on “writing well” ) that what I really needed to do was sit down and interview each and every one of those people. I would have been able in that moment to extract exactly what it was I wanted from them, to precisely plumb their remembrances and tease out the threads that meant the most to me. Instead, I asked them to read my mind and heart, and answer a question I wasn’t even capable of asking at the time.
I am not a good enough writer to yet create a coherent narrative from those bits and pieces; I doubt I will ever be, and the urgency and sorrow that propelled me in that effort has diminished and dwindled over the decades. The loss has subsided and life has, in its richness, helped me to fill in that gaping hole. It makes me sad to realize how little remains of my father, how much has evaporated and been lost to time, how little of him I can still recall.
But then Valéry also said: "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable.”
Postscript: The irony is that if I want this project to come to fruition, I will need to bootstrap it by creating a remembrance of my father to bring order to creating a remembrance of my father...how circular.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Rain, a Tuesday morning in July
Tuesday morning we arose to a thick gray sky dull with greasy foreboding. Before long, faint curtains of rain fell on the hills to the east. We were treated to a rare, but not unknown, morning thunderstorm—usually one or two a year—that rattled the walls and flogged the ground with vengeful rain.
The rain and humidity stayed with us. By evening, violent lightning and thunder began without prelude or warning, like no lightning and thunder I'd ever heard before. It was the sound of pure explosions without grumbling or introduction. I went outside to observe it firsthand, and it was like dry lightning—violent, sudden, unnatural in its abruptness.
The storm clung to us like a drunken guest with no means to get home. Throughout the night it ranted and roared, pounding the house with fists of rain, then drifting off to sleep again. I don't know how many times it cycled like this, but by morning we were worn out by the compulsive worrying of the dogs.
Wednesday broke with the lingering clouds still with us, sleeping it off. There were hints of blue sky, but soon enough it was raining again. The view from work was singularly English, reminding me of the view north over Soughy Rigg from the Great Whin Sill.
Later that evening, the ride home was spectacular, with eruptions lightning compensating the darkness of widespread power outages. At times, literally the whole sky lit up like a singular dome of light; other times, it was licked by filaments of light that raced across from horizon to horizon.
Thursday dawned cool, clear and breezy—a day even rarer than a morning thunderstorm. The Blue Ridge is visible for the first time in many days.
The rain and humidity stayed with us. By evening, violent lightning and thunder began without prelude or warning, like no lightning and thunder I'd ever heard before. It was the sound of pure explosions without grumbling or introduction. I went outside to observe it firsthand, and it was like dry lightning—violent, sudden, unnatural in its abruptness.
The storm clung to us like a drunken guest with no means to get home. Throughout the night it ranted and roared, pounding the house with fists of rain, then drifting off to sleep again. I don't know how many times it cycled like this, but by morning we were worn out by the compulsive worrying of the dogs.
Wednesday broke with the lingering clouds still with us, sleeping it off. There were hints of blue sky, but soon enough it was raining again. The view from work was singularly English, reminding me of the view north over Soughy Rigg from the Great Whin Sill.
Later that evening, the ride home was spectacular, with eruptions lightning compensating the darkness of widespread power outages. At times, literally the whole sky lit up like a singular dome of light; other times, it was licked by filaments of light that raced across from horizon to horizon.
Thursday dawned cool, clear and breezy—a day even rarer than a morning thunderstorm. The Blue Ridge is visible for the first time in many days.
Vending machine
He slid to a stop by the vending machine. Panting, he realized this might be all the food they would have for miles, maybe days. He pounded frantically on the glass panel flat-palmed with the universal gesture of the short-changed and the gypped.
He grabbed the molded plastic chair from below the wallphone. He swung it against the blank face of the machine with an impotent fury unrealized before that instant. The windowed face of the machine magically transformed into a white wall of ice chunks, then collapsed inwards with a sigh of resignation and loss.
“C’Mere! Help me” he shouted. She came over, breathless. “Here—take as much as you can…we’ll want it all.” He shoved glass crumbs aside with exaggerated delicacy, liberating the motley packets from their pigtail prisons and tossed them to her waiting hands. Chips, pretzel, candy bars, gum, lifesavers—all of them. All his. And hers. Things he would usually never eat in a million years. This was just his lucky day.
They grabbed as much as they could make room for—what with everything else they were already hoarding—then crammed their pockets with what was left; she stuffed some kind of gooey bar in her mouth for good measure and threw the wadded-up wrapper into the machine's empty belly. She bolted for the stairs, smacking the panic bar on the door and bursting through it shoulder-wise in one sweet move like a linebacker, then disappeared up the stairwell.
Looking back over his shoulder, he started to run, then faltered and sighed. He stumbled to a stop and shuffled awkwardly back to the ruined machine. Pack sliding off his shoulder, he fumbled with his greasy wallet. He looked through it studiously, thumbing through the mess of tattered papers it had become—a delicate, dainty action all the more ludicrous under the circumstances. Grabbing all the bills between thumb and middle finger, he tossed the wad, all of it, onto the galaxy of glittering stars in the dark and hollow heart of the machine. Five dollars, five hundred—what difference did it make? He wouldn't be needing them.
“Sorry. For your trouble...” he said to the silence. Then he bolted to the stairs, slamming into the door just before it closed again. He could still hear her footsteps, racing up the stairs ahead of him.
He grabbed the molded plastic chair from below the wallphone. He swung it against the blank face of the machine with an impotent fury unrealized before that instant. The windowed face of the machine magically transformed into a white wall of ice chunks, then collapsed inwards with a sigh of resignation and loss.
“C’Mere! Help me” he shouted. She came over, breathless. “Here—take as much as you can…we’ll want it all.” He shoved glass crumbs aside with exaggerated delicacy, liberating the motley packets from their pigtail prisons and tossed them to her waiting hands. Chips, pretzel, candy bars, gum, lifesavers—all of them. All his. And hers. Things he would usually never eat in a million years. This was just his lucky day.
They grabbed as much as they could make room for—what with everything else they were already hoarding—then crammed their pockets with what was left; she stuffed some kind of gooey bar in her mouth for good measure and threw the wadded-up wrapper into the machine's empty belly. She bolted for the stairs, smacking the panic bar on the door and bursting through it shoulder-wise in one sweet move like a linebacker, then disappeared up the stairwell.
Looking back over his shoulder, he started to run, then faltered and sighed. He stumbled to a stop and shuffled awkwardly back to the ruined machine. Pack sliding off his shoulder, he fumbled with his greasy wallet. He looked through it studiously, thumbing through the mess of tattered papers it had become—a delicate, dainty action all the more ludicrous under the circumstances. Grabbing all the bills between thumb and middle finger, he tossed the wad, all of it, onto the galaxy of glittering stars in the dark and hollow heart of the machine. Five dollars, five hundred—what difference did it make? He wouldn't be needing them.
“Sorry. For your trouble...” he said to the silence. Then he bolted to the stairs, slamming into the door just before it closed again. He could still hear her footsteps, racing up the stairs ahead of him.
TOTD: Science v. organized religion
Science embraces the unanswerable; organized religion simply makes answers up.
That is all.
That is all.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Point Of View
My literal worldview has recently taken an interesting turn.
I live a few miles east of a very distinctive mountain, an outlier of the Blue Ridge. Not quite a monadnock, more a malformation of the main ridgeline. It sits below and to the east of the Blue Ridge’s spine, and has a unique silhouette—our very own Gibraltar.
Decades ago, I hiked to the summit of this mountain with a friend, a hike certainly more significant in the journey than the destination; its summit is completely wooded and without a view to speak of. Most of what I remember from actually being on the mountain revolves around gathering acorns in a Euell Gibbons-esque fit of stalking the wild whatever. Later, I wrote about the relationship of the broad protective flanks of the mountain with the tiny village nestled beneath it—one of my first little essays.
When we flew west a year or two ago, I could look out and watch the mountain slowly sliding past the left wingtip, squashed by altitude into a mere crumple in October's multicolored carpet.
Now I see this mountain in the morning to my right as I leave, the horizontal sun just beginning to light its flanks; I can gaze across the piedmont at it from where I work. My whole world is encompassed in that glance.
Coming home, I notice it oddly misplaced to my left along the main highway—a highway I always thought of as straight. How in the world did it get over there? Now I realize how extreme the cumulative effect of countless minor bends in the road are, and can instantly reconcile the map in my head with the map on the printed page.
When I turn down our lane, I look directly at the mountain, often with the mottled sunset splashed across the sky behind it. With this magnificent reference point in mind, I can now understand and organize, in three dimensions, the landscape in which I live. I can trace the roads, the rivers, the long low rolling hills, and piece it all together.
The map geek in me finds that very satisfying.
I live a few miles east of a very distinctive mountain, an outlier of the Blue Ridge. Not quite a monadnock, more a malformation of the main ridgeline. It sits below and to the east of the Blue Ridge’s spine, and has a unique silhouette—our very own Gibraltar.
Decades ago, I hiked to the summit of this mountain with a friend, a hike certainly more significant in the journey than the destination; its summit is completely wooded and without a view to speak of. Most of what I remember from actually being on the mountain revolves around gathering acorns in a Euell Gibbons-esque fit of stalking the wild whatever. Later, I wrote about the relationship of the broad protective flanks of the mountain with the tiny village nestled beneath it—one of my first little essays.
When we flew west a year or two ago, I could look out and watch the mountain slowly sliding past the left wingtip, squashed by altitude into a mere crumple in October's multicolored carpet.
Now I see this mountain in the morning to my right as I leave, the horizontal sun just beginning to light its flanks; I can gaze across the piedmont at it from where I work. My whole world is encompassed in that glance.
Coming home, I notice it oddly misplaced to my left along the main highway—a highway I always thought of as straight. How in the world did it get over there? Now I realize how extreme the cumulative effect of countless minor bends in the road are, and can instantly reconcile the map in my head with the map on the printed page.
When I turn down our lane, I look directly at the mountain, often with the mottled sunset splashed across the sky behind it. With this magnificent reference point in mind, I can now understand and organize, in three dimensions, the landscape in which I live. I can trace the roads, the rivers, the long low rolling hills, and piece it all together.
The map geek in me finds that very satisfying.
The smells I uniquely associate with our home in the woods:
Woodsmoke.
Creosote.
Virginia pine needles warming in the sun.
Tansy, as it grows and when it is dried.
Mimosa blossoms.
Various types of incense:
Balsam fir.Irish peat.Jasmine.
Chainsaw, running and still.
House funk.
My spiced coffee.
Whatever that liquid hand soap is that we started using because regular soap is so hard to rinse off.
Fresh butter.
Creosote.
Virginia pine needles warming in the sun.
Tansy, as it grows and when it is dried.
Mimosa blossoms.
Various types of incense:
Balsam fir.Irish peat.Jasmine.
Chainsaw, running and still.
House funk.
My spiced coffee.
Whatever that liquid hand soap is that we started using because regular soap is so hard to rinse off.
Fresh butter.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Meat Rockets
Since we left Lithuguyistan some two-and-a-half years ago for the hinterlands, my balance of attention while riding has shifted dramatically.
In the urban and suburban mix, most of your attention is devoted to teasing out the human hazard threads from the fabric of the riding environment. Oncoming cars and sudden careless left turns across your path, cars exiting parking lots and driveways unexpectedly, road hazards left behind by slovenly workcrews, construction debris and common litter, oblivious pedestrians with iPods and lattes blithely appearing out of nowhere, red-light runners and overt hostility are all part of the game, tossing and tumbling in various proportions as the miles pass by.
But out here, there are so few intersections to speak of—those benchmarks of hazard for motorcyclists—the human hazard is drastically diminished. Certainly the same foolish and thoughtless behaviors exist here; but there are so many fewer people exhibiting those behaviors that the level of risk they represent is dialed down dramatically.
The slack is taken up by a different kind of risk, one that certainly existed in the suburbs, but has much greater import out here—the wildlife, otherwise known as Meat Rockets.
These silent, stealthy menaces wait along the roadside, suicide bombers on an anti-human jihad, ready to hurl themselves into traffic with eighty pounds of venison strapped to their ribcage in a valiant effort to take us out. The term "Meat Rocket" was coined of necessity; by the time a sharp-eyed spotted calls out to the driver "Hey! Look out for those deer on the roadside up ahead..." it's probably too late. But a crisp "MEAT ROCKET!" alerts the driver to all they need to know.
And it's an apt term, if you've ever seen the crazed and inscrutiable boltings of a buck, a doe, a fawn, or even a lowly squirrel. As fighter pilots described the spiral corkscrew of smoke from a SAM locking in on their doomed airplane, so could you try to describe the path of an incoming Meat Rocket, hell-bent on your destruction. Whether the Meat Rocket finds it's target, forces you into evasive manuvers or simply distracts you and leads to a crash, the final score is usually the same: Meat Rocket 1, Rider 0. Frequently, the final score is a tie, with both sides losing badly.
These furry roadside IEDs—Insane Executioner Deer—exist by the thousands. For each one that is killed, ten more are waiting to take its place. Needless to say, there is never a good outcome from an encounter, particularly if you are on two wheels when targeted. [I have heard apocryphal tales of late model BMWs rending deer in twain; the massive A-arm casting of the paralever front suspension both withstands the impact by transmitting it directly from the front fork assembly into the stressed-member engine/frame assembly, while at the same time neatly cleaving the incoming Meat Missile. Most other traditional fork tube suspensions are too flimsy to endure such a violent impact and fail with devastating consequences for rider, bike and meat missile.]
Certainly squirrels, birds, rats and pigeons are common enough hazards in the urban or suburban motorcycling environment; they represent the small-arms fire of this interspecies battle. Deer are even common enough in our modern world that most riders will grow accustomed to looking for them, particularly at those seasons of the year when the jihadi blood runs hottest. What I still have a hard time getting used to is cows.
Cows are the ICBMs (Immensely Collossal Beef Missiles) of the human/animal intifada.
Several times this summer I have encountered a lone loose cow on the two-lane country road in the few miles between my house and the main road. There's absolutely nothing like first thing in the morning leaving for work, heading down the road with a song in my heart, leaning into the fourth ess-turn of nine, rolling on the throttle, coming around a perfectly-banked right-hand sweeper...and there, standing full-across both lanes, stands 1200 pounds of black-and-white bovine inertia without a care in the world.
Now, I understand that some of these ICBMs are designed to go off on contact; others are proximity-fused, and you'd best keep your distance. Do you cut the red wire or the green wire? You do neither; it's a tense little standoff. These ICBMs cannot be defused, reasoned with, cajoled or otherwise induced to do your bidding. I stare, and snort. Pawing the ground impatiently, I blip the throttle. No reaction. I honk once. No reaction. Eventually, I shut off the engine and wait patiently, and in the end, this seems to produce the best results. With quiet grace and dignity, and a modicum of mutual respect, we go our own ways unmolested and unharmed.
I stop at the end of the next driveway and walk up to the house in all my riding regalia, letting the neighbors know once again that Bossie got out, and hope everyone else heading out is paying attention this morning.
There is a certain cognitive dissonance when an ex-city dweller finds themselves delayed by a cow who is not particularly concerned with someone else's schedule. It's refreshing in a peculiar way, and in truth, it is comical (when the outcome is good) and a pleasant counterpoint to a commute built on sitting still in interstate highway traffic.
Moo.
In the urban and suburban mix, most of your attention is devoted to teasing out the human hazard threads from the fabric of the riding environment. Oncoming cars and sudden careless left turns across your path, cars exiting parking lots and driveways unexpectedly, road hazards left behind by slovenly workcrews, construction debris and common litter, oblivious pedestrians with iPods and lattes blithely appearing out of nowhere, red-light runners and overt hostility are all part of the game, tossing and tumbling in various proportions as the miles pass by.
But out here, there are so few intersections to speak of—those benchmarks of hazard for motorcyclists—the human hazard is drastically diminished. Certainly the same foolish and thoughtless behaviors exist here; but there are so many fewer people exhibiting those behaviors that the level of risk they represent is dialed down dramatically.
The slack is taken up by a different kind of risk, one that certainly existed in the suburbs, but has much greater import out here—the wildlife, otherwise known as Meat Rockets.
These silent, stealthy menaces wait along the roadside, suicide bombers on an anti-human jihad, ready to hurl themselves into traffic with eighty pounds of venison strapped to their ribcage in a valiant effort to take us out. The term "Meat Rocket" was coined of necessity; by the time a sharp-eyed spotted calls out to the driver "Hey! Look out for those deer on the roadside up ahead..." it's probably too late. But a crisp "MEAT ROCKET!" alerts the driver to all they need to know.
And it's an apt term, if you've ever seen the crazed and inscrutiable boltings of a buck, a doe, a fawn, or even a lowly squirrel. As fighter pilots described the spiral corkscrew of smoke from a SAM locking in on their doomed airplane, so could you try to describe the path of an incoming Meat Rocket, hell-bent on your destruction. Whether the Meat Rocket finds it's target, forces you into evasive manuvers or simply distracts you and leads to a crash, the final score is usually the same: Meat Rocket 1, Rider 0. Frequently, the final score is a tie, with both sides losing badly.
These furry roadside IEDs—Insane Executioner Deer—exist by the thousands. For each one that is killed, ten more are waiting to take its place. Needless to say, there is never a good outcome from an encounter, particularly if you are on two wheels when targeted. [I have heard apocryphal tales of late model BMWs rending deer in twain; the massive A-arm casting of the paralever front suspension both withstands the impact by transmitting it directly from the front fork assembly into the stressed-member engine/frame assembly, while at the same time neatly cleaving the incoming Meat Missile. Most other traditional fork tube suspensions are too flimsy to endure such a violent impact and fail with devastating consequences for rider, bike and meat missile.]
Certainly squirrels, birds, rats and pigeons are common enough hazards in the urban or suburban motorcycling environment; they represent the small-arms fire of this interspecies battle. Deer are even common enough in our modern world that most riders will grow accustomed to looking for them, particularly at those seasons of the year when the jihadi blood runs hottest. What I still have a hard time getting used to is cows.
Cows are the ICBMs (Immensely Collossal Beef Missiles) of the human/animal intifada.
Several times this summer I have encountered a lone loose cow on the two-lane country road in the few miles between my house and the main road. There's absolutely nothing like first thing in the morning leaving for work, heading down the road with a song in my heart, leaning into the fourth ess-turn of nine, rolling on the throttle, coming around a perfectly-banked right-hand sweeper...and there, standing full-across both lanes, stands 1200 pounds of black-and-white bovine inertia without a care in the world.
Now, I understand that some of these ICBMs are designed to go off on contact; others are proximity-fused, and you'd best keep your distance. Do you cut the red wire or the green wire? You do neither; it's a tense little standoff. These ICBMs cannot be defused, reasoned with, cajoled or otherwise induced to do your bidding. I stare, and snort. Pawing the ground impatiently, I blip the throttle. No reaction. I honk once. No reaction. Eventually, I shut off the engine and wait patiently, and in the end, this seems to produce the best results. With quiet grace and dignity, and a modicum of mutual respect, we go our own ways unmolested and unharmed.
I stop at the end of the next driveway and walk up to the house in all my riding regalia, letting the neighbors know once again that Bossie got out, and hope everyone else heading out is paying attention this morning.
There is a certain cognitive dissonance when an ex-city dweller finds themselves delayed by a cow who is not particularly concerned with someone else's schedule. It's refreshing in a peculiar way, and in truth, it is comical (when the outcome is good) and a pleasant counterpoint to a commute built on sitting still in interstate highway traffic.
Moo.
Kris Kristofferson was right
So I had 'the conversation' again today.
I was working alongside two folks with whom I have recently become acquainted, when one asked me if I rode "that motorcycle" everyday. I answered in the affirmative, bracing myself for the inevitable.
"SOOOO dangerous..." they began, and segued into a detailed, blow-by-blow recital of their personal experience with the bleeding edge. The tale included the road involved (check), the vehicle they were driving (car, check), the behavior of the moron motorcyclist (check), the inevitable result (check) and ended with the phrase "...into the guardrail" (check).
I found myself starting to make the usual arguments, in this case pointing out that most motorcyclists were morons and this particular individual most certainly fell into that category. But I also pointed out the behavior the story's hero was partaking in happened to be--in all honesty--the best part of riding. He was attacking a swoopy, sweeping road, one which I've written about before.(Oddly, in the context of a similar incident. Hmm.)
"It's the freedom" one of them sagely opined, the other soberly nodding in silent affirmation, as though that little phrase was the be-all and end-all of the matter, the alpha and the omega.
Well, I was dumbstruck by that comment. Of all the words, phrases, metaphors, similes, cliches and bad puns I've used to describe riding, I honestly don't think I've ever thought of riding in terms of freedom, per se. It's a lot of other things to me, but freedom—in this context, anyway—implies the absence of something, and riding has never been about absence. It's always been about the presence of something, the active embrace of an experience that involves me fully on a different level than other endeavors do.
The exchange made me realize there is a gulf between riders and non-riders that is uncrossable. There is so little common ground between the two camps, and we have been our own worst enemies by letting the least articulate of our brethren set the terms of the dialogue. Those of us who believe riding is something to be affirmatively embraced as an end in itself--as opposed to simply serving as an avenue of escape from some nebulous, oppressive reality--need to speak up more clearly, more forcefully, more articulately.
At this juncture, the discussion (if we can even call it that) is a narcissistic, self-indulgent, self-obsessed diatribe all about loud pipes and totalitarian edicts, about not wearing helmets, about
Otherwise, the non-riders of the world will never get past the poorly-crafted illusion that is presented on our behalf, and we will continue to exist only as another unpleasant and outdated hollister-sturgis-easy-rider misunderstanding.
Kris Kristofferson was right: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Well folks, that sure as hell isn't why I ride.
I was working alongside two folks with whom I have recently become acquainted, when one asked me if I rode "that motorcycle" everyday. I answered in the affirmative, bracing myself for the inevitable.
"SOOOO dangerous..." they began, and segued into a detailed, blow-by-blow recital of their personal experience with the bleeding edge. The tale included the road involved (check), the vehicle they were driving (car, check), the behavior of the moron motorcyclist (check), the inevitable result (check) and ended with the phrase "...into the guardrail" (check).
I found myself starting to make the usual arguments, in this case pointing out that most motorcyclists were morons and this particular individual most certainly fell into that category. But I also pointed out the behavior the story's hero was partaking in happened to be--in all honesty--the best part of riding. He was attacking a swoopy, sweeping road, one which I've written about before.(Oddly, in the context of a similar incident. Hmm.)
"It's the freedom" one of them sagely opined, the other soberly nodding in silent affirmation, as though that little phrase was the be-all and end-all of the matter, the alpha and the omega.
Well, I was dumbstruck by that comment. Of all the words, phrases, metaphors, similes, cliches and bad puns I've used to describe riding, I honestly don't think I've ever thought of riding in terms of freedom, per se. It's a lot of other things to me, but freedom—in this context, anyway—implies the absence of something, and riding has never been about absence. It's always been about the presence of something, the active embrace of an experience that involves me fully on a different level than other endeavors do.
The exchange made me realize there is a gulf between riders and non-riders that is uncrossable. There is so little common ground between the two camps, and we have been our own worst enemies by letting the least articulate of our brethren set the terms of the dialogue. Those of us who believe riding is something to be affirmatively embraced as an end in itself--as opposed to simply serving as an avenue of escape from some nebulous, oppressive reality--need to speak up more clearly, more forcefully, more articulately.
At this juncture, the discussion (if we can even call it that) is a narcissistic, self-indulgent, self-obsessed diatribe all about loud pipes and totalitarian edicts, about not wearing helmets, about
Otherwise, the non-riders of the world will never get past the poorly-crafted illusion that is presented on our behalf, and we will continue to exist only as another unpleasant and outdated hollister-sturgis-easy-rider misunderstanding.
Kris Kristofferson was right: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Well folks, that sure as hell isn't why I ride.
Friday, November 30, 2007
The Big Test Ride
Well, some of you know that I recently had some new aftermarket suspension components installed. They are made of titanium, which offers the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal, is extraordinarily corrosion resistant, and very durable for load-bearing surfaces. I'd describe them to you, but I never got a look at them before they were installed. (Suffice it so say they weren't cheap).
Anyway, I decided to road-test the new parts Wednesday. This was my first ride in...let's see...two-and-a-half months. Not a bad day for late November. Sunny, bright and temperatures stuck in the mid-forties. A few wispy clouds here and there.
I got on the bike gingerly, delicately testing the new parts to see if I could feel any difference. Bounced on the saddle a few times, shifted my weight around, slid back and forth a bit...so far, can't feel a thing. Obviously, the real test will be once I get the bugger fired up and get on the road. Mercifully, the road crew has just completed grading our little lane, so the massive washboarding and rutting is gone for the first time since summer a year ago. In its place we have a nice, smooth, broad and well-packed roadway. Yippee!! VAMOS!!
Despite the long hiatus (and the generous coating of sawdust and cobwebs) the bike came right to life. After a short warm up period, it settled into it's familiar steady grumble. With a little bit of trepidation and a deep breath, I rolled the bike back from the shed, dropped it into gear and let out the clutch. WOO-HOO!!
Boy, I had forgotten how much fun riding is. The last ride before the hiatus was one Mary and I took in mid-September, and for reasons unknown, it was a ride neither of us enjoyed at all. Though it was only 100 miles and less than two hours, it seemed to never end, and was the first ride on Beast that I recall being tedious. But it only took a few seconds to erase all memories of that ride. This is how I remember riding!
Down the dirt road! Up the dirt road! YEE-HA!! On to the pavement! Faster, Pussycat!! WHOOSH!! Highway, here I come!
This is nice. Mountains unfolding in front of me, the road rolling along beneath me. Did you know that I alone, using just this motorcycle, am responsible for the rotation of the earth? I stand still here; the tires are actually spinning the planet beneath me. I choose which way it will go. You may have actually noticed the slight extra spin I gave it, just for fun.
So far so good. I notice nothing from the new components; nothing at all. That's exactly the result I was looking for. In fact, to be honest, I feel a whole lot less than I felt before—which is the desired outcome. The ride is infinitely more comfortable, more relaxing, more about the ride and less about the rider.
So, after this brief test ride—twenty-some miles out, twenty- some miles back, freshen up the tank with boutique petrol (did I mention the stopover at the local distillery and the backpack stuffed with fifteen pounds of malt?) , grab the mail at the postbox, I reluctantly roll back into the shed and slowly, stiff from the cold, dismount. I'd say the new parts passed the test 100%, flying colors et cetera.
(BTW, you won't find these parts in the SNAB; they're strictly aftermarket.)
Anyway, I decided to road-test the new parts Wednesday. This was my first ride in...let's see...two-and-a-half months. Not a bad day for late November. Sunny, bright and temperatures stuck in the mid-forties. A few wispy clouds here and there.
I got on the bike gingerly, delicately testing the new parts to see if I could feel any difference. Bounced on the saddle a few times, shifted my weight around, slid back and forth a bit...so far, can't feel a thing. Obviously, the real test will be once I get the bugger fired up and get on the road. Mercifully, the road crew has just completed grading our little lane, so the massive washboarding and rutting is gone for the first time since summer a year ago. In its place we have a nice, smooth, broad and well-packed roadway. Yippee!! VAMOS!!
Despite the long hiatus (and the generous coating of sawdust and cobwebs) the bike came right to life. After a short warm up period, it settled into it's familiar steady grumble. With a little bit of trepidation and a deep breath, I rolled the bike back from the shed, dropped it into gear and let out the clutch. WOO-HOO!!
Boy, I had forgotten how much fun riding is. The last ride before the hiatus was one Mary and I took in mid-September, and for reasons unknown, it was a ride neither of us enjoyed at all. Though it was only 100 miles and less than two hours, it seemed to never end, and was the first ride on Beast that I recall being tedious. But it only took a few seconds to erase all memories of that ride. This is how I remember riding!
Down the dirt road! Up the dirt road! YEE-HA!! On to the pavement! Faster, Pussycat!! WHOOSH!! Highway, here I come!
This is nice. Mountains unfolding in front of me, the road rolling along beneath me. Did you know that I alone, using just this motorcycle, am responsible for the rotation of the earth? I stand still here; the tires are actually spinning the planet beneath me. I choose which way it will go. You may have actually noticed the slight extra spin I gave it, just for fun.
So far so good. I notice nothing from the new components; nothing at all. That's exactly the result I was looking for. In fact, to be honest, I feel a whole lot less than I felt before—which is the desired outcome. The ride is infinitely more comfortable, more relaxing, more about the ride and less about the rider.
So, after this brief test ride—twenty-some miles out, twenty- some miles back, freshen up the tank with boutique petrol (did I mention the stopover at the local distillery and the backpack stuffed with fifteen pounds of malt?) , grab the mail at the postbox, I reluctantly roll back into the shed and slowly, stiff from the cold, dismount. I'd say the new parts passed the test 100%, flying colors et cetera.
(BTW, you won't find these parts in the SNAB; they're strictly aftermarket.)
Monday, August 13, 2007
Coda
I've been meaning to tend to this unfinished business for a long time, but always turned away at the last minute. It seems like an eternity ago when I started writing about riding, and at that time riding meant something completely different to me. It was an alternate universe to the daily grind, one that I was delighted to explore at length and that satisfied some intellectual curiosity.
What I enjoyed most, and the blog clearly reflects that, was to discover thoughtful pieces that others had written about riding that belied the common perception of motorcycling and motorcyclists. I felt there was an imaginary reader I was writing for, a singular audience who I was conducting a private conversation with. Moving out of an old life to a new one changed riding from an escape (that I no longer had so much need for) to a--dare I say it?--chore that had little to recommend it. I tried commuting on Beast 120 miles a day for a brief period, and abandoned that to a mind-numbing routine of getting up hellishly early and going to bed hellishly early.
Riding is not the thing that makes sense of my life anymore. But I hope it will eventually find its rightful place as relaxation, as recreation, and as a portal to an internal intellectual world that I still cherish. Just remember:
"We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird...But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. If you go slow and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles."
What I enjoyed most, and the blog clearly reflects that, was to discover thoughtful pieces that others had written about riding that belied the common perception of motorcycling and motorcyclists. I felt there was an imaginary reader I was writing for, a singular audience who I was conducting a private conversation with. Moving out of an old life to a new one changed riding from an escape (that I no longer had so much need for) to a--dare I say it?--chore that had little to recommend it. I tried commuting on Beast 120 miles a day for a brief period, and abandoned that to a mind-numbing routine of getting up hellishly early and going to bed hellishly early.
Riding is not the thing that makes sense of my life anymore. But I hope it will eventually find its rightful place as relaxation, as recreation, and as a portal to an internal intellectual world that I still cherish. Just remember:
"We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird...But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. If you go slow and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles."
HST
PS: If any member of that mystery audience is still out there, drop me a line.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Such good timing on my part...
After many decades, I will finally complete my academic career (...begun well back in the previous millennium) sometime in the next year or two by graduating as an English major, right about the time words in english will have finally and completely lost any meaning.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Agents of Entropy
"In fact, we are agents of entropy: we organize our bodies at the expense of the organization of our environment, which we digest and burn."
James Merritt, "Chaos and Complexity"
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Layer upon layer
My mainstay winter riding jacket has been my old Hein Gericke from the early '90s, which has had the main zipper replaced once or twice, is missing most of its many zipper pulls, and is slowly turning the linings of its many pockets into tatters. Combined with my year-round Joe Rocket mesh pants, it gets the job done pretty well.
All of this is fine enough, but recently I've gradually become aware that despite its mass, weight and bulk, it doesn't really put too much between me and the road in the event Beast and I part company.
So when it turned cold again recently, I came up with a brilliant—if I do say so myself—idea. I wore my very oversized summer-weight Joe Rocket jacket over my Hein Gericke, instead of wearing another layer beneath it.
Much to my surprise, it seems to work out pretty well. Except for having another entire set of pockets to misplace things in, it's very convenient. Despite being mostly kevlar mesh, the JR seems to trap a layer of still air where it's needed, and contributes little weight or mass. But now I also have some additional abrasion resistance, and ballistic padding in lots of key places—which also serves to insulate and keep the wind out.
Altogether, when it's all buttoned up tight, it feels a little bit like an exoskeleton. But it's warm, snug, has good mobility, and I feel a little better with an extra layer of protection.
Plus it makes me look even more badass than I typically do.
All of this is fine enough, but recently I've gradually become aware that despite its mass, weight and bulk, it doesn't really put too much between me and the road in the event Beast and I part company.
So when it turned cold again recently, I came up with a brilliant—if I do say so myself—idea. I wore my very oversized summer-weight Joe Rocket jacket over my Hein Gericke, instead of wearing another layer beneath it.
Much to my surprise, it seems to work out pretty well. Except for having another entire set of pockets to misplace things in, it's very convenient. Despite being mostly kevlar mesh, the JR seems to trap a layer of still air where it's needed, and contributes little weight or mass. But now I also have some additional abrasion resistance, and ballistic padding in lots of key places—which also serves to insulate and keep the wind out.
Altogether, when it's all buttoned up tight, it feels a little bit like an exoskeleton. But it's warm, snug, has good mobility, and I feel a little better with an extra layer of protection.
Plus it makes me look even more badass than I typically do.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Excelsior-Henderson, 1914
"Nervous energy is your most priceless earthly asset. Save it. Accumulate it. Replenish your zip tank every day with a spin in the country on a motorcycle. Get out in the open where there is no boundary. Enlarge your horizon. Its radius is all up to you. "
"With a motorcycle you can stick to your job till the day’s work is finished, and then in fifteen minutes put yourself out in the wide open. An hour on the road will blow the clinkers out of your lungs. See the fields once every twenty-four hours - and all day every Sunday and on vacation. A motorcycle will make this possible. You can beat it out to some heretofore distant stream, and fish for a while before breakfast - if you own a motorcycle. "
"You can be at the ballpark, root with the bunch almost instantly after you have climbed out of your overalls or closed your roll top - if you have a motorcycle. Air spray your brain by using a motorcycle. Come down to work clean and fresh on a motorcycle, and you will attack it with a vim born of fresh air and red blood. A motorcycle gives you snap."
"Men with motorcycles are live wires. They do things. They are well, and they do their work well. Their competitors fear them, because they are effective, powerful, healthy chaps. And this effectiveness is operative over a wide field, because the man with the motorcycle has no mile. He lives everywhere. His zone is practically unlimited. "
"The horse has received half his setback into the ranks of the obsolete at the hands of the motorcycle. The first cost of a good horse exceeds that of a motorcycle, and its maintenance is decidedly higher. The horse must be fed and cared for. Give the motorcycle a bit of gasoline and a mite of oil and it is at your service for a mile or a hundred miles. The horse is slow, the motorcycle is swift. The horse has a mind of his own - you are the motorcycle’s. The horse must be shielded - it is subject to exhaustion and you feel for it, and half the pleasure of your drive is spoiled through consideration for the brute which pulls you."
"Not so with the motorcycle. It has no nerves, it never falters, it is as willing at the day’s end as it was in the early hours of the morning. The horse stops on the bad hills - the motorcycle eats them alive. Gasoline is Cupid’s best friend, and the motorcycle is the little God’s choice of gasoline gigs. The twentieth century has heard the call of the motorcycle and answered it."
"Even the automobile has been forced to admit that it has a real peer in its agile little contemporary. Here is a little schedule for you - not that it is the best. It is simply given to suggest to you what can be done with a motorcycle. Up at six thirty. A five mile spin in the country before breakfast. Back in twenty minutes, allowing time for dressing, etc. You have two big healthy lungs under your shirt, both full of ozone; color in your cheeks that wasn’t there yesterday, red blood in your veins, and an appetite like a horse. Seven thirty - you are off for work with fight in your eyes - ready to meet the old world on his homeground and make him say “Uncle.” You feel fresh and clean - for there are motorcycles as clean as enclosed coupes."
"Eight o’clock - you are on the job like a glutton. Let them bring on their perplexities, their trying moments. You are equal to anything, you have absorbed enough horse power to talk you over any hill that the boss can take in his big limousine. All day long you go ahead cutting and slashing. At five o’clock you have a hundred percent day on you back track with a song in your heart."
"That is satisfaction. The other fellow wonders what has gotten into you. Let him wonder. Home to dinner, on your motorcycle, then an hour or two in the wide open, and then to bed where you will sleep like a six month old child. The next day you repeat the dose - put another dent in old Nemesis. Now multiply this one hundred percent work day of yours by six, just to get an idea of what you can do for yourself in a week, after you have taken to the motorcycle. Multiply this day by twenty-eight. Figure out where you will stand at the end of the month, and then multiply it by twelve. This gives you a line on your first big motorcycle year. It means success - a roll top and push buttons, if you care for those things. The other fellow has been lost in your dust. For the sake of your health, your chances, your balance at the bank, your tomorrow - get a motorcycle."
"A motorcycle will take you up on Easy Street. "
Excerpts from ‘You and the Motorcycle; Excelsior-Henderson’ circa 1914
"With a motorcycle you can stick to your job till the day’s work is finished, and then in fifteen minutes put yourself out in the wide open. An hour on the road will blow the clinkers out of your lungs. See the fields once every twenty-four hours - and all day every Sunday and on vacation. A motorcycle will make this possible. You can beat it out to some heretofore distant stream, and fish for a while before breakfast - if you own a motorcycle. "
"You can be at the ballpark, root with the bunch almost instantly after you have climbed out of your overalls or closed your roll top - if you have a motorcycle. Air spray your brain by using a motorcycle. Come down to work clean and fresh on a motorcycle, and you will attack it with a vim born of fresh air and red blood. A motorcycle gives you snap."
"Men with motorcycles are live wires. They do things. They are well, and they do their work well. Their competitors fear them, because they are effective, powerful, healthy chaps. And this effectiveness is operative over a wide field, because the man with the motorcycle has no mile. He lives everywhere. His zone is practically unlimited. "
"The horse has received half his setback into the ranks of the obsolete at the hands of the motorcycle. The first cost of a good horse exceeds that of a motorcycle, and its maintenance is decidedly higher. The horse must be fed and cared for. Give the motorcycle a bit of gasoline and a mite of oil and it is at your service for a mile or a hundred miles. The horse is slow, the motorcycle is swift. The horse has a mind of his own - you are the motorcycle’s. The horse must be shielded - it is subject to exhaustion and you feel for it, and half the pleasure of your drive is spoiled through consideration for the brute which pulls you."
"Not so with the motorcycle. It has no nerves, it never falters, it is as willing at the day’s end as it was in the early hours of the morning. The horse stops on the bad hills - the motorcycle eats them alive. Gasoline is Cupid’s best friend, and the motorcycle is the little God’s choice of gasoline gigs. The twentieth century has heard the call of the motorcycle and answered it."
"Even the automobile has been forced to admit that it has a real peer in its agile little contemporary. Here is a little schedule for you - not that it is the best. It is simply given to suggest to you what can be done with a motorcycle. Up at six thirty. A five mile spin in the country before breakfast. Back in twenty minutes, allowing time for dressing, etc. You have two big healthy lungs under your shirt, both full of ozone; color in your cheeks that wasn’t there yesterday, red blood in your veins, and an appetite like a horse. Seven thirty - you are off for work with fight in your eyes - ready to meet the old world on his homeground and make him say “Uncle.” You feel fresh and clean - for there are motorcycles as clean as enclosed coupes."
"Eight o’clock - you are on the job like a glutton. Let them bring on their perplexities, their trying moments. You are equal to anything, you have absorbed enough horse power to talk you over any hill that the boss can take in his big limousine. All day long you go ahead cutting and slashing. At five o’clock you have a hundred percent day on you back track with a song in your heart."
"That is satisfaction. The other fellow wonders what has gotten into you. Let him wonder. Home to dinner, on your motorcycle, then an hour or two in the wide open, and then to bed where you will sleep like a six month old child. The next day you repeat the dose - put another dent in old Nemesis. Now multiply this one hundred percent work day of yours by six, just to get an idea of what you can do for yourself in a week, after you have taken to the motorcycle. Multiply this day by twenty-eight. Figure out where you will stand at the end of the month, and then multiply it by twelve. This gives you a line on your first big motorcycle year. It means success - a roll top and push buttons, if you care for those things. The other fellow has been lost in your dust. For the sake of your health, your chances, your balance at the bank, your tomorrow - get a motorcycle."
"A motorcycle will take you up on Easy Street. "
Excerpts from ‘You and the Motorcycle; Excelsior-Henderson’ circa 1914
DeCodeing Dianetics:
"Originally I said, hey, If this guy (L. Ron Hubbard) can figure out how the mind works, I can figure out how to ride a motorcycle."
- Keith Code interview 8/15/03
"Hooray for the motorcycle!"
"Hooray for the motorcycle! It seduces you into getting off the freeways and onto smaller roads and doing things the harder way and being aware of the countryside."
-Ted Simon, interview in CityBike June 1998
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Thoughts on Oz...
...You know who the real hero of "The Wizard of Oz" was?
Toto.
If Toto hadn't outed the Wizard, then Dorothy et al., would have been stuck believing in his omnipotence.
Where are the Totos of our day, bravely pulling back the curtains and exposing the charlatans?
Toto.
If Toto hadn't outed the Wizard, then Dorothy et al., would have been stuck believing in his omnipotence.
Where are the Totos of our day, bravely pulling back the curtains and exposing the charlatans?
Friday, January 27, 2006
What bubble? I'm gonna take all my money and invest in tulips!
Our house made more than Mary and I did in 2005.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Bald Eagle
The Bald Eagle, an icon that so sadly is burdened with being the “…last refuge of the scoundrel” is a spectacular animal. It's even more spectacular when viewed minus the tedious overlay of self-congratulatory myth and jingoistic self-aggrandizement with which we have nearly smothered it.
It sits on the bare branch of the oak, deep in the stream ravine, its fresh bloody lunch pinned to the branch with one taloned claw. Slowly and in leisurely fashion, it peels strips of flesh from the dripping carcass, like you or I would eat a piece of string cheese—if we could hold it with our toes.
Carelessly, it tosses the bits of flesh into the air and gobbles them down. It’s easy to try and anthropomorphize, to humanize the bird, but it’s much more rewarding to try and imagine what it’s like to sit on that branch and eat that bloody lunch with its metallic savor.
Eventually, I spook it; it flies off deeper into the woods and disappears from sight, the blithly abandoned carcass dropping to the forest floor to the delight of the scavengers.
The cats will both be indoor cats from now on.
It sits on the bare branch of the oak, deep in the stream ravine, its fresh bloody lunch pinned to the branch with one taloned claw. Slowly and in leisurely fashion, it peels strips of flesh from the dripping carcass, like you or I would eat a piece of string cheese—if we could hold it with our toes.
Carelessly, it tosses the bits of flesh into the air and gobbles them down. It’s easy to try and anthropomorphize, to humanize the bird, but it’s much more rewarding to try and imagine what it’s like to sit on that branch and eat that bloody lunch with its metallic savor.
Eventually, I spook it; it flies off deeper into the woods and disappears from sight, the blithly abandoned carcass dropping to the forest floor to the delight of the scavengers.
The cats will both be indoor cats from now on.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Omphalos: For A Case of Beer
For a case of beer, unobtainable by his own devices
edgy the lad liberated the truck from its red brick barn,
Where it slept awaiting that clamorous call
The call that rarely came, the horn that cried in the night
Awakening the village men, tossing them from various slumbers
With unassailable urgency
But not today. It came occult, on covert occasion,
To serve us in our own special need—
Where the pale concrete children scampered and squealed
Among moss fallen cabins, we labored long in that broad white hole
Snowblind in the heat, chilled by the dark mountains’ fogs
Long days melded into evening’s aching labor
we reached the day of judgement—
The truck equal between shore and broad white hole
Snout draughts deep of the chill lake
From its side the mighty snake emerges, flat like the nightmare parasite
Drapes the weedy sward, broad bronze mouth perched over the hole,
secured by stones, and rope, to a plank—
That was in its turn, secured against the fearsome coilings
On our command the lad loosed the power he brung:
Rumble, then a ripping sound like I have never heard
Before or since, dances across the grass to me
The snake hisses, bucks, belches, heaves, disgorges
a plume of emerald, splays across the hole,
washes away, conceals what we have made
I cannot resist—climb in—our mutual baptism in this moment
A sacrament unsanctioned and unknown
I meet the plume arms outstretched, back turned in greeting
crucified against the pounding column, laying back
embraced and held close by this most substantial of ephemera
You would not think such a thing possible, but I saw it with my own eyes
For three straight hours the snake spewed. It filled the hole with emerald
opaque and unknowable, unfathomable
At its center, a froth-flecked gyre, a foot or more below the unwavering edge
Though I watched it for hours, it stayed, undiminished
Such moment does not easily surrender
Omphalos
edgy the lad liberated the truck from its red brick barn,
Where it slept awaiting that clamorous call
The call that rarely came, the horn that cried in the night
Awakening the village men, tossing them from various slumbers
With unassailable urgency
But not today. It came occult, on covert occasion,
To serve us in our own special need—
Where the pale concrete children scampered and squealed
Among moss fallen cabins, we labored long in that broad white hole
Snowblind in the heat, chilled by the dark mountains’ fogs
Long days melded into evening’s aching labor
we reached the day of judgement—
The truck equal between shore and broad white hole
Snout draughts deep of the chill lake
From its side the mighty snake emerges, flat like the nightmare parasite
Drapes the weedy sward, broad bronze mouth perched over the hole,
secured by stones, and rope, to a plank—
That was in its turn, secured against the fearsome coilings
On our command the lad loosed the power he brung:
Rumble, then a ripping sound like I have never heard
Before or since, dances across the grass to me
The snake hisses, bucks, belches, heaves, disgorges
a plume of emerald, splays across the hole,
washes away, conceals what we have made
I cannot resist—climb in—our mutual baptism in this moment
A sacrament unsanctioned and unknown
I meet the plume arms outstretched, back turned in greeting
crucified against the pounding column, laying back
embraced and held close by this most substantial of ephemera
You would not think such a thing possible, but I saw it with my own eyes
For three straight hours the snake spewed. It filled the hole with emerald
opaque and unknowable, unfathomable
At its center, a froth-flecked gyre, a foot or more below the unwavering edge
Though I watched it for hours, it stayed, undiminished
Such moment does not easily surrender
Omphalos
The Gardener Addresses the Poet:
You wrote line on line, stacked them in weary wilted mounds
until they moldered, sheer quantity mustering inner heat
in tepid imitation of the life you strove to pin to the page.
Let me tell you—the bloom is just a prologue,
a vulgar advertisement for a simple transaction
The real work, the heavy lifting comes
late in the hot season, flamboyant spring forgotten,
Lulled by cicada song and sweat stung
The true stars are the vegetable and fruit—
meek mottled vessels, packed by mad design,
not exalted on high on fragile stalks
but motionless, in sweet communion with the soil
You were distracted and misdirected by a conjurer’s trick
florid displays of no consequence; you took an easy path to fulfillment
Now release these feeble floral metaphors back into the wild,
from where you stole them, so they can regain their vigor
Meanwhile, take a good look beneath, lift the tart’s skirts;
see where your supper lies
I’ll tell you a different tale:
My love is like a kohlrabi. She glows in the midday sun
A sheen on her flawless skin. She is pale and firm and sweet
Not like some insipid pear—her sweetness hides a pungency
She is beautiful with a hint of menace in her exotic aspect.
Her roots go deep into the soil, into her place—
But the sun is her friend, spending her days seeking his embrace
Planted in cool spring, she becomes voluptuous with the warmth.
And so she will stay—if attended to.
The cool of fall, the frost, the snow will not daunt her;
They may make her sweeter, if she is nurtured and cared for.
But leave her alone, untended, ignored—the pungent will turn bitter,
the firm into hard, the sweet to stolid.
I should sample her sweetness today; I may not have time tomorrow
until they moldered, sheer quantity mustering inner heat
in tepid imitation of the life you strove to pin to the page.
Let me tell you—the bloom is just a prologue,
a vulgar advertisement for a simple transaction
The real work, the heavy lifting comes
late in the hot season, flamboyant spring forgotten,
Lulled by cicada song and sweat stung
The true stars are the vegetable and fruit—
meek mottled vessels, packed by mad design,
not exalted on high on fragile stalks
but motionless, in sweet communion with the soil
You were distracted and misdirected by a conjurer’s trick
florid displays of no consequence; you took an easy path to fulfillment
Now release these feeble floral metaphors back into the wild,
from where you stole them, so they can regain their vigor
Meanwhile, take a good look beneath, lift the tart’s skirts;
see where your supper lies
I’ll tell you a different tale:
My love is like a kohlrabi. She glows in the midday sun
A sheen on her flawless skin. She is pale and firm and sweet
Not like some insipid pear—her sweetness hides a pungency
She is beautiful with a hint of menace in her exotic aspect.
Her roots go deep into the soil, into her place—
But the sun is her friend, spending her days seeking his embrace
Planted in cool spring, she becomes voluptuous with the warmth.
And so she will stay—if attended to.
The cool of fall, the frost, the snow will not daunt her;
They may make her sweeter, if she is nurtured and cared for.
But leave her alone, untended, ignored—the pungent will turn bitter,
the firm into hard, the sweet to stolid.
I should sample her sweetness today; I may not have time tomorrow
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Thoughts on #$%^& traffic:
The "left lane" is the new "right lane."
There is a whole gigantic cadre of dull-witted drivers who fail to appreciate the most basic rules of driving, who believe the a lane is a lane. They are the ones driving at or below the speed limit in the left lane.
On my daily commutes, I typically find the left lane clogged with these four-wheeled embolisms, and yet the right lane is clear as...something that's really clear.
Don't they teach drive right, pass left anymore? Or is it presumptuous of me to think these feebs were ever actually taught to drive?
There is a whole gigantic cadre of dull-witted drivers who fail to appreciate the most basic rules of driving, who believe the a lane is a lane. They are the ones driving at or below the speed limit in the left lane.
On my daily commutes, I typically find the left lane clogged with these four-wheeled embolisms, and yet the right lane is clear as...something that's really clear.
Don't they teach drive right, pass left anymore? Or is it presumptuous of me to think these feebs were ever actually taught to drive?
Analogy
If you look up in the top right corner, you'll see a little button which says "Next Blog." I've been using this nifty little feature a lot recently in my downtime, and I have come to a conclusion:
"Blogging" : "writing" as "Karaoke" : "Singing"
I certainly don't put my own humble efforts on any pedestal, and there are a group of bloggers (some I know personally, some I've admired from afar) whose work I hold in high esteem for both content and execution.
But golly whillikers, folks...people do actually read these things sometimes.
"Blogging" : "writing" as "Karaoke" : "Singing"
I certainly don't put my own humble efforts on any pedestal, and there are a group of bloggers (some I know personally, some I've admired from afar) whose work I hold in high esteem for both content and execution.
But golly whillikers, folks...people do actually read these things sometimes.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Friday, December 30, 2005
Magic
I was riding today down a two-lane road with high, steep, tree-lined banks—long, flat and straight, I'd surmise it was an old railroad grade. I was following a big truck, a car-hauler, as it sped along.
In its wake, it sucked up the loose leaves from along the roadside; countless tan lanceolate blades of willow oak. They swirled in the air, and danced along behind the truck where I rode.
For just a few brief moments, they paced me and I rode inside a sphere of stationary motion; I moved and the leaves moved with me. It was like riding inside a shaken snow-globe. Then the wind swept the air clean around me, and I was back in the world again.
That was fun.
In its wake, it sucked up the loose leaves from along the roadside; countless tan lanceolate blades of willow oak. They swirled in the air, and danced along behind the truck where I rode.
For just a few brief moments, they paced me and I rode inside a sphere of stationary motion; I moved and the leaves moved with me. It was like riding inside a shaken snow-globe. Then the wind swept the air clean around me, and I was back in the world again.
That was fun.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Going Downhill Fast
Surprisingly, snow goes a long way to make ski slopes less gut-wrenchingly terrifying.
It obscures the jagged boulders and gnarled roots, fills the eroded gullies and gopher holes, and wraps a deep, soft blanket over the multitude of hard things with sharp pointy edges. That’s small comfort on a warm September day when you’re poised at the top of a fifteen-hundred foot descent, one finger on the brake lever of your bicycle to hold you in the starting gate. Sure, snow would be nice—but you’re not using the ski slope anyway. You’re following a downhill bicycle course carved with reckless abandon through the woods next to the slope, a path strewn with artfully crafted obstacles.
Whose woods these are, I think I know—and he must be one sick, sadistic son-of-a-bitch. They dump all the debris from smoothing the slopes here, just off the ski trails. Boulders, fallen trees, mounds of dirt and gravel, brush piles, even broken-down equipment. It all takes refuge here, barely out of sight and for sure out of mind. The ten-foot wide path for the mountain bike racers is marked through the woods with thousands of yards of yellow ‘caution’ tape festooned from sapling to sapling—an ironic touch if there ever was one.
You think ‘path through the woods,’ and it calls to mind a pleasant hiking trail, sun dappled and punctuated by bluebirds like a Disney cartoon. But this isn’t remotely like a hiking trail, or even like bushwhacking through trackless forest—it’s worse than that. It’s the opposite of a hiking trail, where somebody worked hard to clear your way.
Here, the path is deliberately made difficult by the addition of log obstacles, ramps and boardwalks to nowhere, and countless other fiendish devices. Only the lowest two-hundred yards of the course leaves the woods for the open slope—then it becomes a serpentine gully carved into raw earth with steeply banked sides and berms—a hellish dirt road lifted straight from a pinball machine.
The course is ‘technical,’ meaning being competent isn’t enough—you must bring a fully loaded bag of tricks, including the abilities to levitate, fly, and to go two directions simultaneously. A high threshold of pain helps, as does a certain lack of common sense. Many of the self-preservation instincts and behaviors most of us take for granted are notably absent from the competitors—at least the successful ones.
This is Phil’s first race; he has never competed in downhill before, nor for that matter has he attempted it; urban BMX—under cover of darkness—has been his thing. At eighteen, he must be the youngest rider here; we are both nervous. Well before dawn, we loaded his bike, tools, gear, and supplies in the van and began the four-hour drive up I-95, stumbling bleary-eyed from coffee stop to coffee stop. We arrived just in time for him to register and make the mandatory rider’s meeting. Then he gets just two practice runs down the course before the real event—the Novice competition.
The few spectators at the event are treated to countless trappings of spectacle. Fluttering pennants, banners and streamers manically vie for attention beneath the bright blue sky of the finish line. Harsh, distorted music pours unrecognizably from hidden PA speakers. Two ambulances park at the base of the slope, lights flashing for no apparent reason; their crisply uniformed attendants study a word puzzle book from some grocery checkout line with identically furrowed brows. The competitors walk about with helmets tucked under their arms, clad from neck to toe in bright plastic body armor like psychedelic knights, leading their elegant, if filthy, bicycles to the staging area with one careless hand on the saddle.
A ‘trials’ rider—a court jester of sorts, in his own peculiar motley—performs bicycle stunts for an audience of two, leaping his bicycle from a dead stop to the top of a picnic table in two sweet moves, then onto a boulder the height of a man’s head. With nowhere to go from there, he falters for a moment, then lurches to the ground with a jarring thud; his audience titters, turns and walks away.
Rider’s meeting over, the competitors burst out of the faux-Alpine lodge into the warm fall morning. There is much macho swagger as riders boast and strut across the gravel to their respective SUVs for their final preparations. Then there is a murmur of interest as Phil rides across the lot; heads turn to follow him. Riders point, tap each other on the shoulder, stop what they are doing. They are noticing Phil’s bike. Phil has suddenly earned a mantle of awestruck, bemused respect from the experienced riders—for sheer ballsiness, if not for common sense.
Alone among the riders, Phil will make his run—his novice downhill run—on a hardtail.
Most downhillers compete on bikes having little in common with ordinary bikes but the number of wheels. Exotic frame designs, space-age composites, sophisticated forks and rear suspensions with complex linkages and high-tech shock absorbers, hydraulic disk brakes—they are more like motorcycles with human engines. Single components can run into the thousands of dollars; lots of bikes here are worth more than the cars that carried them in.
Yet my son (fools rush in where angels fear to tread) will make his run on a bike with a solid frame—a hardtail, as they say. No shock absorber on the rear; just a few inches of travel on a hydraulic fork in front. This makes Phil the shock absorber for every drop, jump, bump, root, rock and stump—all taken up by his arms, legs and back, hopefully leaving something in reserve to pedal, steer and brake, and watch the course ahead. Where other, more sophisticated bikes will smooth the treacherous route for their riders by being supple and compliant, the hardtail will fight him every foot of the way, recoiling and bucking in response to each new event, and it’s not clear who will win.
Riders catch the chairlift to the starting gate on top of the mountain. In full battle regalia, holding their bicycle cross-armed across their chest, they step onto the chairlift platform. With each snatch of a rider by the chair, it hesitates, sways, then yanks the rider and steed ponderously free from the earth, bobbing and swaying as if to spit them back out to the ground again. The chairlift settles down to a modest, nauseating oscillation, as the rider disappears upwards into the distance, another tiny colored bead on a long elastic necklace.
I offer words of encouragement as Phil lines up for the slow lift ride to the mountaintop, then walk towards the course to catch the show. Spectators have already camped out in the prime viewing spots, and it’s understandable why. The crowd favorite overlooks a crater-like pit, thirty feet across and ten deep. The course comes along the side of the pit, then veers onto a wooden ramp leading to thin air; the course picks up again on the opposite side of the pit, heading the opposite direction.
Rider after rider makes their practice run at the pit. Some negotiate the pit with great finesse, blasting off the ramp, slinging around the circumference and shooting out the other side like a marble from a mixing bowl. Others—less skillful or confident—balk at the end of the ramp then drop like Wile E. Coyote into the mud below. Shaken, cursing and raging, they scramble out of the muddy pit with their bikes. I watch a dozen riders try this with varying degrees of success, and wonder—with some concern—how Phil will manage.
Continuing up the mountain, I hear the next rider long before I see him. He crashes through the woods, pushing a non-stop wave of expletives before him as though warding evil spirits from his path. But the evil spirits have had their fill of this particular rider; he launches spectacularly over a fallen log, only to plant his front wheel against a boulder on landing. He briefly adopts a shocked ‘Superman’ pose as he flies through the air, then sprawls belly-first into the rocky forest floor; his bike pirouettes in the air slow-mo and crashes down square on his back. This does not comfort me in any way.
Suddenly it’s Phil’s turn. Before I even find a good viewing spot he streaks past me in a blur, bobbing and weaving through the woods like a prizefighter. I scramble to follow, but the last I see of him is his perfect launch off the ramp into the pit—and then him shooting out the other side like a marble from a mixing bowl.
By the time I get down to the finish line, Phil is propped up on his elbows in the grass, surrounded by a flock of admirers—mostly little kids. He and his bike are mud spattered but his grin tells me all I need to know. Both he and the bike survived intact, and on each run he shaved thirty seconds off his previous time. We hang around waiting for the final results to be posted.
Though he did not place, his times are quite respectable for an experienced downhiller on a fully suspended bike—for a novice on a hardtail, they are astonishing.
I help gather up the sweat-soaked armor he has flung off, and watch as he slowly, painfully hobbles towards the van. As we wind our way down the twisty two-lane road back to the highway, I ask him his impressions of the race. There is a long silence before I realize he is asleep, and will stay that way for the drive home.
It obscures the jagged boulders and gnarled roots, fills the eroded gullies and gopher holes, and wraps a deep, soft blanket over the multitude of hard things with sharp pointy edges. That’s small comfort on a warm September day when you’re poised at the top of a fifteen-hundred foot descent, one finger on the brake lever of your bicycle to hold you in the starting gate. Sure, snow would be nice—but you’re not using the ski slope anyway. You’re following a downhill bicycle course carved with reckless abandon through the woods next to the slope, a path strewn with artfully crafted obstacles.
Whose woods these are, I think I know—and he must be one sick, sadistic son-of-a-bitch. They dump all the debris from smoothing the slopes here, just off the ski trails. Boulders, fallen trees, mounds of dirt and gravel, brush piles, even broken-down equipment. It all takes refuge here, barely out of sight and for sure out of mind. The ten-foot wide path for the mountain bike racers is marked through the woods with thousands of yards of yellow ‘caution’ tape festooned from sapling to sapling—an ironic touch if there ever was one.
You think ‘path through the woods,’ and it calls to mind a pleasant hiking trail, sun dappled and punctuated by bluebirds like a Disney cartoon. But this isn’t remotely like a hiking trail, or even like bushwhacking through trackless forest—it’s worse than that. It’s the opposite of a hiking trail, where somebody worked hard to clear your way.
Here, the path is deliberately made difficult by the addition of log obstacles, ramps and boardwalks to nowhere, and countless other fiendish devices. Only the lowest two-hundred yards of the course leaves the woods for the open slope—then it becomes a serpentine gully carved into raw earth with steeply banked sides and berms—a hellish dirt road lifted straight from a pinball machine.
The course is ‘technical,’ meaning being competent isn’t enough—you must bring a fully loaded bag of tricks, including the abilities to levitate, fly, and to go two directions simultaneously. A high threshold of pain helps, as does a certain lack of common sense. Many of the self-preservation instincts and behaviors most of us take for granted are notably absent from the competitors—at least the successful ones.
This is Phil’s first race; he has never competed in downhill before, nor for that matter has he attempted it; urban BMX—under cover of darkness—has been his thing. At eighteen, he must be the youngest rider here; we are both nervous. Well before dawn, we loaded his bike, tools, gear, and supplies in the van and began the four-hour drive up I-95, stumbling bleary-eyed from coffee stop to coffee stop. We arrived just in time for him to register and make the mandatory rider’s meeting. Then he gets just two practice runs down the course before the real event—the Novice competition.
The few spectators at the event are treated to countless trappings of spectacle. Fluttering pennants, banners and streamers manically vie for attention beneath the bright blue sky of the finish line. Harsh, distorted music pours unrecognizably from hidden PA speakers. Two ambulances park at the base of the slope, lights flashing for no apparent reason; their crisply uniformed attendants study a word puzzle book from some grocery checkout line with identically furrowed brows. The competitors walk about with helmets tucked under their arms, clad from neck to toe in bright plastic body armor like psychedelic knights, leading their elegant, if filthy, bicycles to the staging area with one careless hand on the saddle.
A ‘trials’ rider—a court jester of sorts, in his own peculiar motley—performs bicycle stunts for an audience of two, leaping his bicycle from a dead stop to the top of a picnic table in two sweet moves, then onto a boulder the height of a man’s head. With nowhere to go from there, he falters for a moment, then lurches to the ground with a jarring thud; his audience titters, turns and walks away.
Rider’s meeting over, the competitors burst out of the faux-Alpine lodge into the warm fall morning. There is much macho swagger as riders boast and strut across the gravel to their respective SUVs for their final preparations. Then there is a murmur of interest as Phil rides across the lot; heads turn to follow him. Riders point, tap each other on the shoulder, stop what they are doing. They are noticing Phil’s bike. Phil has suddenly earned a mantle of awestruck, bemused respect from the experienced riders—for sheer ballsiness, if not for common sense.
Alone among the riders, Phil will make his run—his novice downhill run—on a hardtail.
Most downhillers compete on bikes having little in common with ordinary bikes but the number of wheels. Exotic frame designs, space-age composites, sophisticated forks and rear suspensions with complex linkages and high-tech shock absorbers, hydraulic disk brakes—they are more like motorcycles with human engines. Single components can run into the thousands of dollars; lots of bikes here are worth more than the cars that carried them in.
Yet my son (fools rush in where angels fear to tread) will make his run on a bike with a solid frame—a hardtail, as they say. No shock absorber on the rear; just a few inches of travel on a hydraulic fork in front. This makes Phil the shock absorber for every drop, jump, bump, root, rock and stump—all taken up by his arms, legs and back, hopefully leaving something in reserve to pedal, steer and brake, and watch the course ahead. Where other, more sophisticated bikes will smooth the treacherous route for their riders by being supple and compliant, the hardtail will fight him every foot of the way, recoiling and bucking in response to each new event, and it’s not clear who will win.
Riders catch the chairlift to the starting gate on top of the mountain. In full battle regalia, holding their bicycle cross-armed across their chest, they step onto the chairlift platform. With each snatch of a rider by the chair, it hesitates, sways, then yanks the rider and steed ponderously free from the earth, bobbing and swaying as if to spit them back out to the ground again. The chairlift settles down to a modest, nauseating oscillation, as the rider disappears upwards into the distance, another tiny colored bead on a long elastic necklace.
I offer words of encouragement as Phil lines up for the slow lift ride to the mountaintop, then walk towards the course to catch the show. Spectators have already camped out in the prime viewing spots, and it’s understandable why. The crowd favorite overlooks a crater-like pit, thirty feet across and ten deep. The course comes along the side of the pit, then veers onto a wooden ramp leading to thin air; the course picks up again on the opposite side of the pit, heading the opposite direction.
Rider after rider makes their practice run at the pit. Some negotiate the pit with great finesse, blasting off the ramp, slinging around the circumference and shooting out the other side like a marble from a mixing bowl. Others—less skillful or confident—balk at the end of the ramp then drop like Wile E. Coyote into the mud below. Shaken, cursing and raging, they scramble out of the muddy pit with their bikes. I watch a dozen riders try this with varying degrees of success, and wonder—with some concern—how Phil will manage.
Continuing up the mountain, I hear the next rider long before I see him. He crashes through the woods, pushing a non-stop wave of expletives before him as though warding evil spirits from his path. But the evil spirits have had their fill of this particular rider; he launches spectacularly over a fallen log, only to plant his front wheel against a boulder on landing. He briefly adopts a shocked ‘Superman’ pose as he flies through the air, then sprawls belly-first into the rocky forest floor; his bike pirouettes in the air slow-mo and crashes down square on his back. This does not comfort me in any way.
Suddenly it’s Phil’s turn. Before I even find a good viewing spot he streaks past me in a blur, bobbing and weaving through the woods like a prizefighter. I scramble to follow, but the last I see of him is his perfect launch off the ramp into the pit—and then him shooting out the other side like a marble from a mixing bowl.
By the time I get down to the finish line, Phil is propped up on his elbows in the grass, surrounded by a flock of admirers—mostly little kids. He and his bike are mud spattered but his grin tells me all I need to know. Both he and the bike survived intact, and on each run he shaved thirty seconds off his previous time. We hang around waiting for the final results to be posted.
Though he did not place, his times are quite respectable for an experienced downhiller on a fully suspended bike—for a novice on a hardtail, they are astonishing.
I help gather up the sweat-soaked armor he has flung off, and watch as he slowly, painfully hobbles towards the van. As we wind our way down the twisty two-lane road back to the highway, I ask him his impressions of the race. There is a long silence before I realize he is asleep, and will stay that way for the drive home.
Another place I'm glad I don't work:
At the "China National Native Produce & Animal by-Product Import & Export Corporation, Shanghai Native Produce Branch."
Could you imagine having to answer the phone like that all day long?
They are the packers of "Instant Chrysanthemum Beverage," which comprises sugar and (sic) Chrysant HE Mum powder. It may be an acquired taste, but initial impressions are of sugar dissolved in lower Mississippi River water. Perhaps it is what Chinese Astronauts drink instead of Tang; in any case, one is reminded that in the language of flowers, Chrysanthemums represent death.
I will steadfastly resist any urge to acquire a taste for this product. I don't imagine it will be much of an issue.
Could you imagine having to answer the phone like that all day long?
They are the packers of "Instant Chrysanthemum Beverage," which comprises sugar and (sic) Chrysant HE Mum powder. It may be an acquired taste, but initial impressions are of sugar dissolved in lower Mississippi River water. Perhaps it is what Chinese Astronauts drink instead of Tang; in any case, one is reminded that in the language of flowers, Chrysanthemums represent death.
I will steadfastly resist any urge to acquire a taste for this product. I don't imagine it will be much of an issue.
On the historical antecedents of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush policy on dissent: Channelling the Greats
"We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong."
Mao-Zedong, "The Present Situation and Our Tasks" 12/25/47
From my personal copy of Mao's 'Little Red Book,' a Christmas Gift picked up in China by my wonderful niece Katie.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
What a concept!
Did you know that Georgetown is just like a giant shopping mall...but one that you can drive a car through! Why hasn't anybody thought of that before?!
Friday, December 23, 2005
Walking in a Winter Wonderland—for real
Mary's big client was kind enough to include us in their holiday celebration last night, a wonderful dinner in a private room of a very classy restaurant. Good food, good wine, good company, good music, and good spirits all around.
When the celebration finally came to an end around ten o'clock, we decided to do without the exhilaration of a return cab ride to where we had parked; instead, we would take advantage of the relatively mild air and walk back. It was a beautiful crisp clear evening, with a three-quarter moon hanging low in the eastern sky and even some stars visible through the glare of the city lights.
We walked down the cobblestone streets and crossed the old iron bridge over the canal, then continued down to the waterfront. We stood and admired the reflections sparkling on the water, their own special kind of holiday decorations.
As we stood in the night air, Mary saw something moving in the distance, downriver from where we stood. My jaded urban instincts told me immediately it was a rat scurrying from one hiding spot to another. As I followed its movements, I reevaluated; it was way too big for even a well-fed city rat, and moved with too much determination and speed—much to my chagrin, directly towards where we both stood. Opossum, perhaps?
Opossums have their own distinctive, purposeless, shambling way of moving. Whatever this spectral being was, it meant business, and was hustling straight down the narrow walkway we were on. We quickly stepped across the worn railroad ties bordering the path—as though that would deter whatever was approaching if it meant us harm.
Then it emerged into the light—A red fox, in the middle of this most urban of areas. It trotted right past us with insouciant alacrity, tossing a quick glance at us over its shoulder and continuing on its way with, I believe, a smile on its face.
Who would have imagined? What a delightful surprise to cap a wonderful evening.
When the celebration finally came to an end around ten o'clock, we decided to do without the exhilaration of a return cab ride to where we had parked; instead, we would take advantage of the relatively mild air and walk back. It was a beautiful crisp clear evening, with a three-quarter moon hanging low in the eastern sky and even some stars visible through the glare of the city lights.
We walked down the cobblestone streets and crossed the old iron bridge over the canal, then continued down to the waterfront. We stood and admired the reflections sparkling on the water, their own special kind of holiday decorations.
As we stood in the night air, Mary saw something moving in the distance, downriver from where we stood. My jaded urban instincts told me immediately it was a rat scurrying from one hiding spot to another. As I followed its movements, I reevaluated; it was way too big for even a well-fed city rat, and moved with too much determination and speed—much to my chagrin, directly towards where we both stood. Opossum, perhaps?
Opossums have their own distinctive, purposeless, shambling way of moving. Whatever this spectral being was, it meant business, and was hustling straight down the narrow walkway we were on. We quickly stepped across the worn railroad ties bordering the path—as though that would deter whatever was approaching if it meant us harm.
Then it emerged into the light—A red fox, in the middle of this most urban of areas. It trotted right past us with insouciant alacrity, tossing a quick glance at us over its shoulder and continuing on its way with, I believe, a smile on its face.
Who would have imagined? What a delightful surprise to cap a wonderful evening.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Last Call
When I’m dead and gone, stash me on ice.
Let me go without additives, preservatives, or artificial colors. If I’m gonna be displayed, let’s make it prompt and timely, so there’s no need for preservation.
And if I’m on display, let’s skip the ostentatious, garish, or flamboyant trappings; I’ve always preferred things plain and unadorned. If I have to be boxed up, put me in a white pine box made by friendly hands and keep it simple. Stick a Guinness in my hand and slap a pair of Groucho glasses on me and I’ll be fine.
Whether the box becomes my kindling doesn’t matter a bit to me. Once I’m roasted to a fare-thee-well, do what you will with my ashes. I always thought the compost pile was a nice place to end up, since I spent countless hours marveling at its energy and industry. Or you could dump me straight into the garden; who could ask for a better place to be reinvented than a garden, maybe as a beet? (Ashes are good for root crops, so I always heard). Granted, that might make some squeamish, so I leave my final disposition up to you—again, it won’t matter much to me.
As for a service: I have lived my life mercifully free from the ravages of religious leanings, and grant such things no significance. They didn’t take up space in my life, and shouldn’t clutter up things afterwards. So please—no religious trappings of any kind to muddy up my departure. Now, spirituality—that’s another matter entirely.
If folks want to expound on their personal feelings, that would be dandy. I’d just prefer ‘organized religion’ be barred at the gate by a burly bouncer with no neck and wraparound shades. Let’s not confuse ‘religion’ with ‘spirituality’ for this particular event. To you who ascribe to a particular fashion or flavor of religion: Let’s just agree to disagree. There’s no point in fretting about it on my account—if we’re at this point, I’ll probably have the answer you’ve been looking for, and you won’t. (PS: Unless, of course, you can find an Evangelical Atheist minister to preside).
This is what I want for my send-off:
If people want to speechify, that’s okay; it certainly won’t bother me. If long, pointless stories are to be told, they should be off-color and at my expense. The guest list should be as inclusive as possible, but let’s just set the tone by saying: “Bicycle couriers.” Need I say more? This should be a courier party—nothing less.
There should be lots of women weeping and wailing, keening and rending garments and throwing themselves on the ground. I have set aside a small fund to compensate them for their troubles—look in the bank files, listed under “Children’s Inheritance.”
Let’s not forget music—lots of music. It should be sad and tragic: Barber and Tchaikovsky; brooding Beethoven, Dvorak and Smetana. Throw in some Clash, Zeppelin, some Muddy Waters, Rory Gallagher and the Pogues, lots of Motown—and whatever good dancing music seems like fun at the time. Good damn luck finding a DJ, and oh—did I mention loud? *
There oughta be lots of drinking. I want a fierce, ferocious wake, with fountains of fine ale flowing like rivers across the floor; endless bottles of Irish whisky, and lots and lots of champagne. I want everyone in attendance to be wracked with anguish and unable to work for a day or two after—from their horrible pounding hangovers. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVznnoptsmM
And dancing? You bet—lots of dancing. I want a loud and boisterous party where everyone relaxes, laughs, flirts and has a good time while they forget the guest of honor. Make the neighbors call the police—then invite the whole lot of them in for a drink.
I want fire—lots of fire. I want a nice big going away fire, flames and sparks leaping up way into the dark sky. A funeral pyre would be just swell—or even better, a real Viking-style funeral, with flaming longboat pushed out onto the waves, me as its Captain, first mate and crew. But I’d settle for a nice roaring bonfire, since it’s probably hard to find a body of water that allows Viking funerals nowadays. Roast some weenies, toast some marshmallows, and stuff your faces with s’mores—what are fires for, after all?
Obviously, fireworks would add a certain ‘je ne sais quoi,’ in my opinion. Or even better, a bonfire and fireworks. Things that soar and explode and scream, to warn the otherworld I’m on my way and they’d better be ready. The best result would be some combination of singing, dancing, eating, drinking, fire and pouring whisky onto the fire to satisfy the spirits—but I’ll leave those details up to you. And don’t forget the song, which goes like this:
“Gimme that old time religion, that old time religion,
Gimme that old time religion, It’s good enough for me”
“Maw and Paw were druids, they drank fermented fluids,
Danced nekkid in the woo-ids, It’s good enough for me!”
Hey, you know me, just a good old-school Celt—a pagan wandering in a world of Manichean dualism. I’ll probably be around, checking in with you from time to time when the distance between worlds is least. Certainly at Beltane, the great feast of lust and desire, and Lughnasa, the high summer celebration; at dark Samhain, when spirits move most freely, and in the deep cold of Imbolc.
Light the fires, raise your glasses and look to me coming. I’ll hear you call.
*Addendum: "The Night that Paddy Murphy Died," Great Big Sea; "Body of An American" The Pogues; "Funeral for a Friend/Love lies Bleeding," Elton John, because it's 11 minutes long and it's a great song, and "What's So Funny...," Elvis Costello, just because I said so, and it's my party, right?
**Addendum #2: "Solace" by Scott Joplin, the Joshua Rifkin version...just an achingly beautiful song from both a composer and performer who need greater recognition. Joplin was the American Bach.
***"Ashokan Farewell," Jay Ungar & Molly Mason.
Crap. I'll just need to burn a friggin' CD and staple it to my will, otherwise who knows what'll get played, right??
Let me go without additives, preservatives, or artificial colors. If I’m gonna be displayed, let’s make it prompt and timely, so there’s no need for preservation.
And if I’m on display, let’s skip the ostentatious, garish, or flamboyant trappings; I’ve always preferred things plain and unadorned. If I have to be boxed up, put me in a white pine box made by friendly hands and keep it simple. Stick a Guinness in my hand and slap a pair of Groucho glasses on me and I’ll be fine.
Whether the box becomes my kindling doesn’t matter a bit to me. Once I’m roasted to a fare-thee-well, do what you will with my ashes. I always thought the compost pile was a nice place to end up, since I spent countless hours marveling at its energy and industry. Or you could dump me straight into the garden; who could ask for a better place to be reinvented than a garden, maybe as a beet? (Ashes are good for root crops, so I always heard). Granted, that might make some squeamish, so I leave my final disposition up to you—again, it won’t matter much to me.
As for a service: I have lived my life mercifully free from the ravages of religious leanings, and grant such things no significance. They didn’t take up space in my life, and shouldn’t clutter up things afterwards. So please—no religious trappings of any kind to muddy up my departure. Now, spirituality—that’s another matter entirely.
If folks want to expound on their personal feelings, that would be dandy. I’d just prefer ‘organized religion’ be barred at the gate by a burly bouncer with no neck and wraparound shades. Let’s not confuse ‘religion’ with ‘spirituality’ for this particular event. To you who ascribe to a particular fashion or flavor of religion: Let’s just agree to disagree. There’s no point in fretting about it on my account—if we’re at this point, I’ll probably have the answer you’ve been looking for, and you won’t. (PS: Unless, of course, you can find an Evangelical Atheist minister to preside).
This is what I want for my send-off:
If people want to speechify, that’s okay; it certainly won’t bother me. If long, pointless stories are to be told, they should be off-color and at my expense. The guest list should be as inclusive as possible, but let’s just set the tone by saying: “Bicycle couriers.” Need I say more? This should be a courier party—nothing less.
There should be lots of women weeping and wailing, keening and rending garments and throwing themselves on the ground. I have set aside a small fund to compensate them for their troubles—look in the bank files, listed under “Children’s Inheritance.”
Let’s not forget music—lots of music. It should be sad and tragic: Barber and Tchaikovsky; brooding Beethoven, Dvorak and Smetana. Throw in some Clash, Zeppelin, some Muddy Waters, Rory Gallagher and the Pogues, lots of Motown—and whatever good dancing music seems like fun at the time. Good damn luck finding a DJ, and oh—did I mention loud? *
There oughta be lots of drinking. I want a fierce, ferocious wake, with fountains of fine ale flowing like rivers across the floor; endless bottles of Irish whisky, and lots and lots of champagne. I want everyone in attendance to be wracked with anguish and unable to work for a day or two after—from their horrible pounding hangovers. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVznnoptsmM
And dancing? You bet—lots of dancing. I want a loud and boisterous party where everyone relaxes, laughs, flirts and has a good time while they forget the guest of honor. Make the neighbors call the police—then invite the whole lot of them in for a drink.
I want fire—lots of fire. I want a nice big going away fire, flames and sparks leaping up way into the dark sky. A funeral pyre would be just swell—or even better, a real Viking-style funeral, with flaming longboat pushed out onto the waves, me as its Captain, first mate and crew. But I’d settle for a nice roaring bonfire, since it’s probably hard to find a body of water that allows Viking funerals nowadays. Roast some weenies, toast some marshmallows, and stuff your faces with s’mores—what are fires for, after all?
Obviously, fireworks would add a certain ‘je ne sais quoi,’ in my opinion. Or even better, a bonfire and fireworks. Things that soar and explode and scream, to warn the otherworld I’m on my way and they’d better be ready. The best result would be some combination of singing, dancing, eating, drinking, fire and pouring whisky onto the fire to satisfy the spirits—but I’ll leave those details up to you. And don’t forget the song, which goes like this:
“Gimme that old time religion, that old time religion,
Gimme that old time religion, It’s good enough for me”
“Maw and Paw were druids, they drank fermented fluids,
Danced nekkid in the woo-ids, It’s good enough for me!”
Hey, you know me, just a good old-school Celt—a pagan wandering in a world of Manichean dualism. I’ll probably be around, checking in with you from time to time when the distance between worlds is least. Certainly at Beltane, the great feast of lust and desire, and Lughnasa, the high summer celebration; at dark Samhain, when spirits move most freely, and in the deep cold of Imbolc.
Light the fires, raise your glasses and look to me coming. I’ll hear you call.
*Addendum: "The Night that Paddy Murphy Died," Great Big Sea; "Body of An American" The Pogues; "Funeral for a Friend/Love lies Bleeding," Elton John, because it's 11 minutes long and it's a great song, and "What's So Funny...," Elvis Costello, just because I said so, and it's my party, right?
**Addendum #2: "Solace" by Scott Joplin, the Joshua Rifkin version...just an achingly beautiful song from both a composer and performer who need greater recognition. Joplin was the American Bach.
***"Ashokan Farewell," Jay Ungar & Molly Mason.
Crap. I'll just need to burn a friggin' CD and staple it to my will, otherwise who knows what'll get played, right??
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Ghosts On The Wire
(1)
It happened some years ago in the dead of a cold winter night, according to my mother. She and my father were asleep in the master bedroom of an old Virginia farmhouse, nestled somewhere in the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.At the darkest hour, she awoke to a feeling like static electricity crawling all over her. She sat upright to face a lone figure standing across the room on the broad hearth of the stone fireplace. The young man, bore an expression of unspeakable weariness, woe and distress. He wore the tattered, filthy uniform of a Civil War soldier.
They looked at each other for what must have seemed like an eternity—my mother struck dumb, all but deafened by the blood rushing in her ears. The man spoke just four words to her:
“Where is my mother?”
It was all my mother could do to reach out and touch my sleeping father’s arm and rouse him to witness this spectral visitation. Yet at the very moment she touched him, both the apparition and the crawling sensation vanished, discharged like lightning. My parents, now both fully awake, were alone behind a latched and locked door.
I reminded her of this story a few months before she died. She laughed and shrugged. “ I had forgotten all about that. It was so long ago.” She laughed again, shook her head dismissively, and went about her work.
(2)
Not long ago, I had a second phone line installed. Before I had told anyone the new number, I started receiving strange calls at all hours of the day and night. I would answer, and after a long pause of hissing and static, a thin, quavering voice would ask: “…Can I speak…to Joe?”
I was always polite, and explained the number had recently been reassigned, and there was no Joe here. After another pause of hissing and static, the frail quavering voice: “But Joe must be there. Joe is my son; I just spoke to him last week.”
I knew demand for phone numbers was high, but the phone company wouldn’t have reassigned the number in a week. I asked what number she was trying to call. Hissing and static. Then she recited my number, area code, exchange and all. Her confusion turned to agitation, yet there was little I could do but leave her with hollow assurance there was no Joe.
She called many times. The same thin, tired voice, streaked with weariness, woe and distress, so far away on the other end of the line and stretched to the breaking point through the wires. “…Can I speak…to Joe?”
I have come to instantly recognize that plaintive voice. I have tried to help her, to accommodate her inquiries. I know she lives in somewhere in Virginia; because she calls from a private home; she lives alone. Yet my help only seems to confuse her more. She believes I am the phone company, and that I can somehow trace Joe down a wire.
But she still needs my help. I will reach out through those thin wires, through the hissing and static, and connect her with Joe—if there even is a Joe.
I find myself waiting for her call, and I am reminded: “Where is my mother?”
Posture
I spent the first twenty years of my riding career on Campaigner, a BMW R80St. It was originally what was referred to as a "standard" bike, for its upright riding posture—neither slouched like a cruiser nor leaning forward like a sportsbike. After a few years, I installed shorter ("Europa") handlebars which produced a more forward-leaning riding posture—I wanted to emulate the unbeatably cool style of the R90s or R100s.
I always scoffed at the bent-forward, straight armed posture of the sportbike riders, trying to imagine the wrist stress, backaches and hand-numbness that must accompany such a riding position.
So then a couple of years ago I went out and, sure enough, bought a sportbike—Beast, a 2003 BMW R1100sa. (At least for BMW it's a sportbike; some folks still scoff at the idea.) Well guess what—I'm a convert.
Lots of riders have asked me about the riding posture. What's surprising is that not only does Beast have a fairly typical sport-bike riding setup, but I took advantage of the one adjustment BMW allows it's 1100s owners to make. I actually lowered the clip-on handlebars to below the tripleclamp instead of above the triple clamp as they come from the factory, dropping them another inch or two.
What's most amazing to me is how comfortable it is. Many years ago, I used to own a "Balans" chair—one of those wacky kneeling chairs from Scandinavia. It was always my favorite office chair, and I never had any back problems while using it.
Riding Beast is way more comfortable than sitting in the office chair I currently have at work—not to mention way more fun and intellectually stimulating. Unfortunately, the noises I have to make at the office apparently disturb my cube-farm mates, so I have to keep it down.
"BRRRRRRRMMM!" "BRRRRRRMMM!"
I always scoffed at the bent-forward, straight armed posture of the sportbike riders, trying to imagine the wrist stress, backaches and hand-numbness that must accompany such a riding position.
So then a couple of years ago I went out and, sure enough, bought a sportbike—Beast, a 2003 BMW R1100sa. (At least for BMW it's a sportbike; some folks still scoff at the idea.) Well guess what—I'm a convert.
Lots of riders have asked me about the riding posture. What's surprising is that not only does Beast have a fairly typical sport-bike riding setup, but I took advantage of the one adjustment BMW allows it's 1100s owners to make. I actually lowered the clip-on handlebars to below the tripleclamp instead of above the triple clamp as they come from the factory, dropping them another inch or two.
What's most amazing to me is how comfortable it is. Many years ago, I used to own a "Balans" chair—one of those wacky kneeling chairs from Scandinavia. It was always my favorite office chair, and I never had any back problems while using it.
Riding Beast is way more comfortable than sitting in the office chair I currently have at work—not to mention way more fun and intellectually stimulating. Unfortunately, the noises I have to make at the office apparently disturb my cube-farm mates, so I have to keep it down.
"BRRRRRRRMMM!" "BRRRRRRMMM!"
"One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day"—December 18, 2005
Aristotle sure knew about the weather. Today was a pleasant change from the run of weather we've been having recently. Bitterly cold a few days ago, then snow and sleet, then rain and gloom and sogginess. Today the sky was blue with few clouds, the sun bright though low in the firmament, and it was mild enough that a winter coat was more of an annoyance than a necessity.
Needless to say, this struck me as perfect riding weather. And one thing I am incredibly consistent with is underestimating how cold it is—every single time I gear up, I remind myself that I've never come back from a ride too warm, but can't count the times I've come back unable to locate one extremity or another. Well, today was no different.
Even worse, I was taking the Rockster out to blow the cobwebs off and keep a charge on the battery. While I confirmed the Rockster is virtually identical technically to Beast in performance and handling (with just a slight shift in the power curve) there is a crucial difference—the Rockster is currently unfaired except for the bulbous bodywork around the gas tank. (Yeah, I know—there's a nice Parabellum windscreen sitting in a box in the workshop, waiting to be installed...but I digress).
I headed out to my 'test track,' the web of roads I've made reference to several times before here. (Philip and I rode it when he was up over Thanksgiving, he on Campaigner and me on Beast) About a third of the way there, I noted that while most of the sky was clear and bright blue, there was a pale wash of high clouds intercepting the sun.
Hmm. I might as well have been riding under the hunter moon for all the warmth the sun gave. And since we are nearly at the solstice, the sun sat very low all afternoon—caught in the upper branches of the bare trees. While this is very poignantly photogenic, it has a perverse side effect: the relentless shadow strobing from the trees. It seemed no matter which direction I rode, one eye was constantly in shadow and the other was constantly flashing between brilliant sun and deep shade. I have heard that this can, at the right speed, produce a hypnotic, soporific effect; the flickering light induces a sympathetic response in the brain at alpha wave-frequencies, creating a nearly trance-like state of altered awareness.
Good damn thing I was so freaking cold by then; my only altered awareness was the lack of sensation in certain critical areas. I rode the loop, wrung out the Rockster as best I could while still in the break-in period, and headed for coffee stop #1. At one point, anticipating a bump in the road, I stood up on the foot-pegs—or attempted to, anyway. My legs and knees were so stiff and unresponsive that I had barely gotten my butt off the saddle before I hit the bump, and found myself at the point of maximum awkwardness. Oh well.
Coffee helped, a little. But I had reached a point that's in the neighborhood of hypothermia, which when you do it to an engine part is referred to as "cold soak." I was just a little bit too cold all over. Stupid trick #2: I've put a "cold kit" on Beast, which consists of odds and ends of clothing I can throw on for just such an occasion that are worth about 10 degrees improvement. But I wasn't riding Beast, was I? No, my emergency cold kit was safe and warm, at home.
The discomfort is temporary and merely an annoyance—a hot shower pretty much makes it go away in about ten minutes flat. But when you're cold soaked, you don't feel like turning your head to look at your mirrors, or check your blind spot when changing lanes, or look at your instruments to check your speed or a host of other little niceties--that's the stinky part. They say hypothermia affects your judgment, but before you get to that point, you just get lazy.
The really neat part was that there were a surprising number of bikes on the road, mostly oilhead beemers. Each and every one gave and got a hearty wave, secure in the knowledge that they were among the elite, hardcore who knew in their hearts that—
—it was really friggin' cold on the road today.
Needless to say, this struck me as perfect riding weather. And one thing I am incredibly consistent with is underestimating how cold it is—every single time I gear up, I remind myself that I've never come back from a ride too warm, but can't count the times I've come back unable to locate one extremity or another. Well, today was no different.
Even worse, I was taking the Rockster out to blow the cobwebs off and keep a charge on the battery. While I confirmed the Rockster is virtually identical technically to Beast in performance and handling (with just a slight shift in the power curve) there is a crucial difference—the Rockster is currently unfaired except for the bulbous bodywork around the gas tank. (Yeah, I know—there's a nice Parabellum windscreen sitting in a box in the workshop, waiting to be installed...but I digress).
I headed out to my 'test track,' the web of roads I've made reference to several times before here. (Philip and I rode it when he was up over Thanksgiving, he on Campaigner and me on Beast) About a third of the way there, I noted that while most of the sky was clear and bright blue, there was a pale wash of high clouds intercepting the sun.
Hmm. I might as well have been riding under the hunter moon for all the warmth the sun gave. And since we are nearly at the solstice, the sun sat very low all afternoon—caught in the upper branches of the bare trees. While this is very poignantly photogenic, it has a perverse side effect: the relentless shadow strobing from the trees. It seemed no matter which direction I rode, one eye was constantly in shadow and the other was constantly flashing between brilliant sun and deep shade. I have heard that this can, at the right speed, produce a hypnotic, soporific effect; the flickering light induces a sympathetic response in the brain at alpha wave-frequencies, creating a nearly trance-like state of altered awareness.
Good damn thing I was so freaking cold by then; my only altered awareness was the lack of sensation in certain critical areas. I rode the loop, wrung out the Rockster as best I could while still in the break-in period, and headed for coffee stop #1. At one point, anticipating a bump in the road, I stood up on the foot-pegs—or attempted to, anyway. My legs and knees were so stiff and unresponsive that I had barely gotten my butt off the saddle before I hit the bump, and found myself at the point of maximum awkwardness. Oh well.
Coffee helped, a little. But I had reached a point that's in the neighborhood of hypothermia, which when you do it to an engine part is referred to as "cold soak." I was just a little bit too cold all over. Stupid trick #2: I've put a "cold kit" on Beast, which consists of odds and ends of clothing I can throw on for just such an occasion that are worth about 10 degrees improvement. But I wasn't riding Beast, was I? No, my emergency cold kit was safe and warm, at home.
The discomfort is temporary and merely an annoyance—a hot shower pretty much makes it go away in about ten minutes flat. But when you're cold soaked, you don't feel like turning your head to look at your mirrors, or check your blind spot when changing lanes, or look at your instruments to check your speed or a host of other little niceties--that's the stinky part. They say hypothermia affects your judgment, but before you get to that point, you just get lazy.
The really neat part was that there were a surprising number of bikes on the road, mostly oilhead beemers. Each and every one gave and got a hearty wave, secure in the knowledge that they were among the elite, hardcore who knew in their hearts that—
—it was really friggin' cold on the road today.
That may be good enough for you, buddy...
I was at the local-groovy-hippie-national-corporate-feel-good grocery emporium today, doing my semi-annual drive-by shopping spree (lots of looking, little buying) and was stopped cold by:
Natural Wax Paper.
Of course, this was a few aisles removed from the all-natural oreo knock-offs (just the way God intended them to be, fresh-picked by indigenous farmers off the shade-grown oreo trees.)
Apparently this kind of wax paper does not present the lurking menace to body and soul that mass-market, heartless globalized petrochemical wax paper posed. Or something. I really couldn't quite grok the importance of this improved or saftened product.
Nevertheless, I'm no longer taking any chances with the health, safety and well-being of the ones I love. I simply had not recognized the magnitude of risk posed by that insidious translucent threat lurking in the kitchen drawer—and I'm not just talking about that sadistic little knife-edge on the box.
From now on, I'm not just switching to a better, more humane kind of wax paper—no siree. I plan to COMPLETELY REMOVE the wax paper (peeling, removing the rind, as it were) from any foodstuffs I intend for my family to consume. There's just no sense in taking any chances, is there now?
You can never be too safe.
Natural Wax Paper.
Of course, this was a few aisles removed from the all-natural oreo knock-offs (just the way God intended them to be, fresh-picked by indigenous farmers off the shade-grown oreo trees.)
Apparently this kind of wax paper does not present the lurking menace to body and soul that mass-market, heartless globalized petrochemical wax paper posed. Or something. I really couldn't quite grok the importance of this improved or saftened product.
Nevertheless, I'm no longer taking any chances with the health, safety and well-being of the ones I love. I simply had not recognized the magnitude of risk posed by that insidious translucent threat lurking in the kitchen drawer—and I'm not just talking about that sadistic little knife-edge on the box.
From now on, I'm not just switching to a better, more humane kind of wax paper—no siree. I plan to COMPLETELY REMOVE the wax paper (peeling, removing the rind, as it were) from any foodstuffs I intend for my family to consume. There's just no sense in taking any chances, is there now?
You can never be too safe.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Yeah, that's what I'll do...
If I ever get pulled over by a cop (which, oddly, hasn't happened in a really long time...) this is what I will do:
As they walk up to me, I will either roll down the car window(if driving), or very slowly and respectfully remove my helmet (if riding) and I will say to them:
"This is about those songs I downloaded, isn't it?!? Look, man , I was gonna buy the CDs, but like I couldn't FIND EM ANYWHERE! I'M REALLY, REALLY SORRY!!"
Then they will shake their head and leave me alone.
As they walk up to me, I will either roll down the car window(if driving), or very slowly and respectfully remove my helmet (if riding) and I will say to them:
"This is about those songs I downloaded, isn't it?!? Look, man , I was gonna buy the CDs, but like I couldn't FIND EM ANYWHERE! I'M REALLY, REALLY SORRY!!"
Then they will shake their head and leave me alone.
Birdoswald to Walton, April 2004
After a leisurely breakfast and a slow, lingering morning at "Hill-On-The-Wall," we retrace our steps to the Museum and ruins of the Roman fort at Birdoswald.
We walk the ruins of the fort, then enjoy a relaxing alfresco lunch in the cool spring sun. The prior day's long, rugged hike from Steel Rigg along the basalt spine of the Great Whin Sill, combined with the late departure, makes cabbing to Walton an appealing alternative for Mary, Madeline and Philip.
I decide to hike to Walton alone. I'd guess it's only six or eight miles—an easy couple of hours. As I depart Birdoswald, I pass a family hiking eastbound; still within sight of the fort, I encounter another hiker, also heading east. I don’t meet or see another soul until I arrive at our lodgings at Town’s Head Farm in Walton, late in the afternoon.
At one point, far out of sight of any human settlements, I stop and am puzzled by what sounds like at first, the laboring engine of a massive truck—which never seems to get any closer or more distant—then a roaring jet engine, which curiously also neither approaches or retreats. I stand perfectly still for a few minutes, trying to identify the source of the odd sound.
Then I realize it is the wind, sweeping through the forests and fields through which I am walking. I stand still for a few more moments, have walked into a past where man does not seem to exist. I have rarely felt, so intensely, the tranquility of being so utterly alone.
At my feet, there lay a feather—long, elegant, delicate yet powerful. I pick it up, tuck it carefully in my hat, and wear it for the remainder of the hike. It now sits beside me where I write, my one souvenir from that ancient lonely place.
We walk the ruins of the fort, then enjoy a relaxing alfresco lunch in the cool spring sun. The prior day's long, rugged hike from Steel Rigg along the basalt spine of the Great Whin Sill, combined with the late departure, makes cabbing to Walton an appealing alternative for Mary, Madeline and Philip.
I decide to hike to Walton alone. I'd guess it's only six or eight miles—an easy couple of hours. As I depart Birdoswald, I pass a family hiking eastbound; still within sight of the fort, I encounter another hiker, also heading east. I don’t meet or see another soul until I arrive at our lodgings at Town’s Head Farm in Walton, late in the afternoon.
At one point, far out of sight of any human settlements, I stop and am puzzled by what sounds like at first, the laboring engine of a massive truck—which never seems to get any closer or more distant—then a roaring jet engine, which curiously also neither approaches or retreats. I stand perfectly still for a few minutes, trying to identify the source of the odd sound.
Then I realize it is the wind, sweeping through the forests and fields through which I am walking. I stand still for a few more moments, have walked into a past where man does not seem to exist. I have rarely felt, so intensely, the tranquility of being so utterly alone.
At my feet, there lay a feather—long, elegant, delicate yet powerful. I pick it up, tuck it carefully in my hat, and wear it for the remainder of the hike. It now sits beside me where I write, my one souvenir from that ancient lonely place.
Letting go
This spring for her eighteenth birthday, Madeline and I took the day and went for a practice hike with her friend Maddie. They were preparing for their eight day coast-to-coast hike across England, scheduled for right after high school graduation.
We scouted out a convenient section of the Appalachian Trail with good road access. I would hike part way with them, then return to the car, drive to the next road crossing, and rendezvous with them. I think the total estimated mileage was around eleven or twelve miles, a decent stretch of mostly gently-rolling trail through unremarkable eastern deciduous forests.
To reach the Appalachian Trail proper, we ascended through broad open meadows, the path overhung with lush, dripping grasses and weeds. It was overcast and cool, with a gentle mist falling from time to time; on occasion the clouds would part enough to permit views of the distant piedmont.
It did not take long for us to finds our cadence, and by the time we had reached the ridgeline, we were making steady headway. With each step, I calculated the point where I would need to turn back for the rendezvous to time out right.
It so happened that my 'point of no return' coincided, more or less, with our lunch break. We sat on a large fallen tree in the quiet damp woods, eating whatever trail oddities we had packed—trail mix and granola bars, apples and oranges, hot coffee from a thermos (sure sign of a day-hiker)—until the time came to start walking again.
We conferred briefly, looked at the map once more, double-checked the math on our time estimates. Then it was time to go.
I have never experienced such a clearly defined transition. My daughter was eighteen; now we were quite literally turning away from each other and going off in our separate directions. I was trusting her into the wild, hoping that I had prepared her adequately and knowing that if not, it was too late to do anything about it now.
I hit my stride promptly, a good 3-1/2 mile an hour pace. I brushed the tear from my eye and focused on the task at hand—getting back to the car promptly without getting hurt on the way. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, before the hordes of through-hikers arrive, the AT can be a pretty lonesome place if you get into trouble.
Except for one brief stop at a trail junction to wring out my soaking socks, I hiked straight back to the car. The drive to the next trailhead was uneventful, a circuitous route through the verdant Virginia farmland, and I arrived a bare fifteen minutes ahead of the girls, who made a spectacular entrance, striding across a stone-and-timber bridge above a rushing mountain stream.
The return trip to town was quiet, with both Madeline and Maddie sacked out from the day's exertions, none the worse for wear. But I think we all knew then something important had transpired...
We scouted out a convenient section of the Appalachian Trail with good road access. I would hike part way with them, then return to the car, drive to the next road crossing, and rendezvous with them. I think the total estimated mileage was around eleven or twelve miles, a decent stretch of mostly gently-rolling trail through unremarkable eastern deciduous forests.
To reach the Appalachian Trail proper, we ascended through broad open meadows, the path overhung with lush, dripping grasses and weeds. It was overcast and cool, with a gentle mist falling from time to time; on occasion the clouds would part enough to permit views of the distant piedmont.
It did not take long for us to finds our cadence, and by the time we had reached the ridgeline, we were making steady headway. With each step, I calculated the point where I would need to turn back for the rendezvous to time out right.
It so happened that my 'point of no return' coincided, more or less, with our lunch break. We sat on a large fallen tree in the quiet damp woods, eating whatever trail oddities we had packed—trail mix and granola bars, apples and oranges, hot coffee from a thermos (sure sign of a day-hiker)—until the time came to start walking again.
We conferred briefly, looked at the map once more, double-checked the math on our time estimates. Then it was time to go.
I have never experienced such a clearly defined transition. My daughter was eighteen; now we were quite literally turning away from each other and going off in our separate directions. I was trusting her into the wild, hoping that I had prepared her adequately and knowing that if not, it was too late to do anything about it now.
I hit my stride promptly, a good 3-1/2 mile an hour pace. I brushed the tear from my eye and focused on the task at hand—getting back to the car promptly without getting hurt on the way. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, before the hordes of through-hikers arrive, the AT can be a pretty lonesome place if you get into trouble.
Except for one brief stop at a trail junction to wring out my soaking socks, I hiked straight back to the car. The drive to the next trailhead was uneventful, a circuitous route through the verdant Virginia farmland, and I arrived a bare fifteen minutes ahead of the girls, who made a spectacular entrance, striding across a stone-and-timber bridge above a rushing mountain stream.
The return trip to town was quiet, with both Madeline and Maddie sacked out from the day's exertions, none the worse for wear. But I think we all knew then something important had transpired...
Friday, December 16, 2005
Here's a better idea for you, FORD
The Ford Motor Company just regrew its spine after initially caving into pressure from the lunatic fringe and pulling advertising for Jaquars, Volvos and some other product lines from gay-oriented publications. They will resume advertising in these publications which apparently help move lots of FoMoCo products.
What we really need to boycott Ford for —and I'm sure you all can get behind me on this—is their co-opting of Vince Guaraldi's immortal classic "Linus and Lucy" (now 40 years old—when did that happen?) for their goddam ad campaign.
Is nothing sacred? Isn't the true meaning of Christmas carried in those treasured lyrics?
(Oh, wait...it's an instrumental...)
What we really need to boycott Ford for —and I'm sure you all can get behind me on this—is their co-opting of Vince Guaraldi's immortal classic "Linus and Lucy" (now 40 years old—when did that happen?) for their goddam ad campaign.
Is nothing sacred? Isn't the true meaning of Christmas carried in those treasured lyrics?
(Oh, wait...it's an instrumental...)
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Now you know
The wind chill at 17 deg. F. and 95 mph is -13 deg. Fahrenheit. To convert that to Celsius, do the following conversion:
(Really cold F.) = (Still Really cold C.)
(Really cold F.) = (Still Really cold C.)
Monday, December 12, 2005
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Best F-ing Christmas Song Ever — "Fairy Tale of New York"
It was Christmas Eve babe, in the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song, 'The Rare Old Mountain Dew'
I turned my face away and dreamed about you
Got on a lucky one, came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling this year's for me and you
So happy Christmas, I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true
They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you, it's no place for the old
When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome/You were pretty, Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing they howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner then danced through the night
[CHORUS:]The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day
You're a bum/You're a punk/You're an old Slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scum bag/You maggot/You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse I pray God it's our last
[Repeat chorus]
I could have been someone/Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me whenI first found you/
I kept them with me babe I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you
[Repeat chorus]
(Ronan Keating/performed by the Pogues)
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song, 'The Rare Old Mountain Dew'
I turned my face away and dreamed about you
Got on a lucky one, came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling this year's for me and you
So happy Christmas, I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true
They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you, it's no place for the old
When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome/You were pretty, Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing they howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner then danced through the night
[CHORUS:]The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day
You're a bum/You're a punk/You're an old Slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scum bag/You maggot/You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse I pray God it's our last
[Repeat chorus]
I could have been someone/Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me whenI first found you/
I kept them with me babe I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you
[Repeat chorus]
(Ronan Keating/performed by the Pogues)
Thursday, December 08, 2005
A Christmas Story
My mother died at Arlington Hospital at six o'clock on Christmas Eve (just like old Jacob Marley) in 1996, from the results of a stroke she had suffered a few days earlier.
I have a memory of a group of the grown-ups sitting around her hospital bed, chatting quietly that cold, grey afternoon. If I recall correctly, her grandchildren had all said their good-byes the night before, and were off with their Aunt, who took them bowling. It was a pleasant diversion for them at a difficult time, and in years since has become an odd little family tradition—"What, your family doesn't traditionally go Christmas Eve Bowling?!?"
I felt we needed something to acknowledge the season, so I left the hospital and drove, first, to the ABC store, and then to the grocery store, the last faltering incarnation of the once-proud "Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company."
I bought a small flask of bourbon and a small flask of dark rum from the bleak, stale-smelling, harshly-fluorescent-lit, Soviet-inspired ABC store, and a quart of eggnog, a shaker of nutmeg and some cheap plastic cups from the grocery store. I returned to the hospital room with bottles and bags tucked into the capacious pockets of my winter coat, then poured a round of eggnogs for all, spiked them with a bit of bourbon and rum, and dusted each with nutmeg.
We drank a round to Mom, then a second to finish off the container of eggnog. Most of us left the hospital around sundown except Mom's oldest daughter, my big sister, who stayed with Mom until she died and then called us all to let us know. We all cried, a little bit of sadness and a little bit of rage and a little bit of relief and a lot of emotional exhaustion after a week of increasingly despairing hospital visits.
I still have the container of nutmeg, though it's almost all gone now. It gives me some idea of how fast—on average—we consume nutmeg. I never had a way to gauge that before.
Merry Christmas.
I have a memory of a group of the grown-ups sitting around her hospital bed, chatting quietly that cold, grey afternoon. If I recall correctly, her grandchildren had all said their good-byes the night before, and were off with their Aunt, who took them bowling. It was a pleasant diversion for them at a difficult time, and in years since has become an odd little family tradition—"What, your family doesn't traditionally go Christmas Eve Bowling?!?"
I felt we needed something to acknowledge the season, so I left the hospital and drove, first, to the ABC store, and then to the grocery store, the last faltering incarnation of the once-proud "Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company."
I bought a small flask of bourbon and a small flask of dark rum from the bleak, stale-smelling, harshly-fluorescent-lit, Soviet-inspired ABC store, and a quart of eggnog, a shaker of nutmeg and some cheap plastic cups from the grocery store. I returned to the hospital room with bottles and bags tucked into the capacious pockets of my winter coat, then poured a round of eggnogs for all, spiked them with a bit of bourbon and rum, and dusted each with nutmeg.
We drank a round to Mom, then a second to finish off the container of eggnog. Most of us left the hospital around sundown except Mom's oldest daughter, my big sister, who stayed with Mom until she died and then called us all to let us know. We all cried, a little bit of sadness and a little bit of rage and a little bit of relief and a lot of emotional exhaustion after a week of increasingly despairing hospital visits.
I still have the container of nutmeg, though it's almost all gone now. It gives me some idea of how fast—on average—we consume nutmeg. I never had a way to gauge that before.
Merry Christmas.
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