preparing to...

... I don't know, have something to say? (bizarre, yes, but bear with me)

You see, last night I made my virtual way over to the sign up spot for the Dexter Crit and, along the way, to USA Cycling (to get that license thingie). So I'm committed. In shape or not, psyched or not.
Saturday, me be racin'.

So though I've been putting miles in all season, it's all been friendly group ride miles. You know, where etiquette matters and smooth and polite is the order of the day (town sign sprints excepted, of course). So... I figure I better get my fast-n-hard-cornerin' brain in the mood, so I went to the Velo Club crit practice last week and this week. Last week, I was feeling like a punk because I couldn't hang on when the speed cranked up in the last lap or two. This week, the same. But it's a mixed group of people, everyone from newish dudes like me to Cat1/2s. So I wasn't the first to fall off, I'll say. And that if you're not in the lead group going into the finish, it seems that folks are calm and don't exactly sprint for 6th. (it's a practice race, ya know...)

So what's my point in all this? Well, since this is the first race I've entered in... 12 years? (yikes) ... I have NO IDEA what to expect out of the Cat5 race. Compared to riding with the big-lung/big-leg dudes? I guess I'll be preparing to say:

a) how surprised I was at how slow the race was
b) how surprised I was at how fast the race was
c) how good I felt (if I did well)
d) how badly I felt (if I did poorly)
e) all of the above

Am I nervous? Yeah, sure. Am I worried? No, I guess not (worried about what?) Anxious? Sure.

Hell, I could go 'round and 'round for hours like this. I need to quit thinking like it's life-or-death. It's just ridin' a bike around town, goin' hard and tryin' to do it harder and faster than other dudes.

Right?

Freakonomics

I picked up Freakonomics from the library a while back. Interesting, but not nearly as fascinating as I was led to believe by the Really! Great! Reviews! And! Radio! Interviews!

While it satisfies some of my hankerings for complexity, it does so at a rhetorical level, making a point about how fascinating X, Y and Z are because the author is so revolutionary in thinking of them this way. And if you're wondering: "So... is he saying that 'Freakonomics' falls into the category of 'mental masturbation'?" Yes.... yes I am.

Regardless, I'll just say that if the popular buzz of 2005 (when the book came out) does anything for people looking at life's events in a more nuanced way, then I guess it has done some good. Would I recommend it? Sure. It's a relatively short/quick read - good for bedtime or bathroom reading, or if you're the voracious-reading type, it's maybe a day or two diversion from whatever you're using to tide yourself over until the final installment of Harry Potter and the Splendiferous Obsession With Countdowns comes out in hardcover. (hey Wendy, yes, that means you... And I have just three little words of tenderness to say to you: gimme some cheesecake.)

Notable Quotables that stuck out in my brain enough that I made note of them:
----------------
When discussing how Experts are not necessarily always working in the best interests of their clients - i.e. Real Estate Agents, Cardiologists, Political/Journalist Consultants - pg 148: "[an] expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance doesn't get much attention."

How true. And how sad. Like the evening local TV news - if it bleeds, it leads. No actual news, just violence, tragedy, and scandal.
----------------
In the chapter about how the Ku Klux Klan behaves in a incentive-based way like Real Estate Agents selling houses, he talks about how the Klan incentivises docility in the black community by terrorizing people - pg 62: "and there are few incentives more powerful than the fear of random violence - which, in essence, is why terrorism is so effective."

When I read that, I'm not seeing how the threat of terrorism is used by terrorists, but how the threat of random violence by some sort of unknown... somebody... is used by Bush, et. al. as a tool to get whatever they want. As long as people are constantly made afraid, and afraid of unknown random violence, they will become docile and compliant.

Ever notice how the middle setting of the threat advisory is "Elevated"? Essentially, on a scale of 1 to 5, the middle/average still is designed to cause fear. Makes you really wonder who is terrorizing whom.

What are YOU afraid of today?

(and how can someone else use that fear to manipulate you?)

sex and taxes

OK, so I know my life is lacking in some ways, but I assure, I have good reason to have been searching tax documents this afternoon. Really, I swear, it's not because I couldn't find anything better to do.

And along the way, searching for the things I want, I notice all kinds of other things... that are irrelevant, but nevertheless fascinating... Did you know: being a paid informant is income-tax free?

From the 2007 Federal 1099-MISC tax form instructions:
--------------------------------------------------------
Fees paid to informers. A payment to an informer as an award, fee, or reward for information about criminal activity is not required to be reported if the payment is made by a federal, state, or local government agency, or by a nonprofit organization exempt from tax under section 501(c)(3) that makes the payment to further the charitable purpose of lessening the burdens of government. For more information, see Regulations section 1.6041-3(I).
--------------------------------------------------------

... so does this mean that if Larry Flynt set up a 501(c)(3) and found out something about a Senator that ended up just happening to be illegal where they did it (e.g. polygamy, sodomy, adultery, bestiality, necrophilia), the person who gives up the info gets the $1M tax-free? How funny would that be?

dork crush

Holy crap... I saw "Pipedream" at the St. Paul science museum, checked out this guy's stuff, and I just have to say that I got a big old mental boner looking at his work. Check out some of his projects at www.taomc.com.

I am so gushing... I think I want to be this guy when I grow up. I looked at his mini-CV and wondered "why did he give up a career in internal medicine?" Well, it's pretty obvious... if you can make a living out of doing cool stuff like this... well, I can definitely understand giving up a lot of stuff.

notable quotables

mental debris of late, accumulating and peeking out here and there...


"Nearly all men can withstand adversity. But if you want to test a man's character, give him power"

- Muneer Malik
(president of the supreme court bar association in Pakistan speaking at a seminar and addressing the Musharef/Judicial situation, but telling a truth that applies far and wide)

"'You don't need to' I say, 'you are normal.'... I cannot say the rest, that I think, that he is easy in his body, that he sees and hears and tastes and smells and feels what others do, so his reality matches theirs."

- from The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
(while about the interior world of a man with autism, the notions of consensual reality in the "normal" world apply too)

"He was a fierce satirist of his own culture, but nursed what he called a 'romantic love' for the U.S. For him, the country represented a vigorous modernity, unencumbered by history."

- blurb on the wall about artist George Grosz next to his work on display at the Walker Art Center (which seems so relevant in these days... while the U.S. is a relatively new nation compared to old world european nations, we're accumulating baggage and becoming encumbered by our own history more and more)

"It's really easy to get out of the habit of intimate socializing"

- excerpt from The Amazing Adventures of Captain Bland and Dr. Sabbatical

"You there... able-bodied lazy rich white girl. Yes, you... You are not old, injured or incapable. Pick up your fucking feet when you walk. You are lazy shuffling moron, and showing contempt for the soles of your shoes (and the pavement) only proves how spoiled and worthless you are."

- Me

buncha assholes

So here we are in the lovely Twin Cities of Minnesota, G and I... me with the lounging about town, her with the work, digging in the archives and public records. Staying with gracious hosts Fred and Mona for the week and cavorting about town on occasion. Yesterday morning, she's leaving in the morning to go out into the wild and woolly world when she comes back in with just a single sentence.

"The bikes are gone"

What? (the fuck?)

Her bike was missing along with one of Fred's. (After a phone call, it seems Fred rode into work, but hers was definitely gone.) We'd brought our bikes along as a way of getting around town (and me, I was of the mood to put on some miles too), and were parking them in the garage, right near Fred's bikes. The garage where Fred keeps all his bikes. And overnight, someone went to some trouble to break in, and took her bike. After more than a year of bikes being stored there, the fuckers pick THIS week to break in, when the out-of-towners are visiting. And while there's beau coup pricey bikes around once they were in the garage, they steal the one with the most sentimental value to it's owner. Fucking assholes.

We made a police report and all that but there's harsh reality - it's not likely to be recovered. There's just too many places it could go, so many bikes in this town, it's not so unique a bike it doesn't get lost in the multitude of other bikes, and cops don't exactly consider it as seriously as they would violent crime. Nevertheless, my font of anger bubbles about such things.

I think back to the days back at the shop I worked at in my youth. Occasionally, a bike belonging to a shop regular or employee would get stolen, a bike near and dear that was known around town. The word would go out on the street, and every now and then, bike people would get lucky and someone would see the bike somewhere. Revenge and reclamation ensued, whether it be a confrontation, a call to the police, or chasing the fucker down and knocking their sorry ass off it.

If it could happen more often, the Brutal Reclamation...

My angry self tells me this.

In the place where there used to be trusty transportation, a light breeze, and a smooth rolling along, there's sadness and pockets of anger.

But there's memories, too. Lots of old ones. And a couple of new fresh ones that are happy and good. There's more memories to come, with a bike that will come anew to a home that's already ready to welcome it.

roll-a-dahby/run-run-run the weekend

An action-packed weekend it was... Not only did I get flashed (and offered to have the sweat licked off me) by ****y [Who shall remain nameless, to protect the guilty. You know who you are, Madam Feistiness.] during the Normal Park yard-sale-a-palooza, but Stacey and I went to the Derby. Roller Derby, that is.

It seems that Detroit has quite the roller derby league going on, and it's a nationwide phenomenon to boot. I didn't quite know what to think going into it. There's so much pagentry and attitude about it, I was partly suspecting that it was more entertainment than competition - a la WWF/WCW/world-wrestling-whatever. But after the first period, I got a better idea of what's going on in the rink (er, I mean "flat track" - do they have banked oval derby leagues? apparently so). In the second period, skaters were starting to work harder so the spectacle of it gave way to the competition of it. And regardless of the fact that Stacey and I didn't have nearly enough tattoos to be considered as part of the cool kids, it was a pretty good time. You know there's hilarity to be ensuing when a couple hours before going out, sitting on Stacey's porch with folks drinking beer, T says "you're going to roll a doobie?" "uh... no, we're going to The Roller Derby." Freudian slip of the ear? You be the judge.

And then on Sunday came the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run. I didn't run (translation: "hell with that.. running is too much work"), but volunteered to help out with lead-biking the course for the half-marathon and calling in times as the leader passed mile-markers. I wasn't expecting to get soaked by rain on the ride out to the start in Dexter though...

Anyhoo, I'm not a runner, but this I do know: when a runner can hit the 10-mile mark at 47 mins, they are a bad-ass mofo. Sub 5-minute miles for 13 miles? Wow. The dude who won (Alene Reta) was leading from the start - a group of 4 off the front in the first 1/2 mile split to 2 by the 4th mile, and then Reta started slowly pulling away from home-town favorite Brian (who had quite the cheering section along the course, I might add), adding about 5 seconds of lead every time he passed a mile marker.

Pretty big turnout for what seems like a local thing - thousands of people. I heard a bunch of different numbers - there was a bib# 3000 among the marathoners apparently, but registration was 2300. In the 10k, Suzanne said she finished mid-pack at 900th, and if you guess at the number of 5k-ers, I'll go with something on the order of 5000-8000 people total. And then at the end of it all, it rained again. But I had already been wet and gritty for a couple hours already.

After the running stuff, a shower, and a disco-nap for me, some folks met up at Connor O'Neill's to celebrate Suzanne's birthday and running of the 10k. Fred was in town for a wedding and came out and hung out, drinking beer and chatting with Georgina and I in multiple pubs about multiple topics, which was so much more than fun. Quite the fortuitous opportunity - Fred getting to meet and chat with G before our roadtrip up to the Twin Cities. I'm pretty stoked about it, and am not only glad that we'll get to hang out with Fred and Mona and the kids (in between my goofing off/riding the bike/touristing, and G's intensely worky researchy city-archive-digging), but thankful to them being gracious hosts and putting us up for the week. Heck, I'm even stoked to be manslaving to progress their house remodel/redecorate/rewhateveryoucallit.

Management and The Condor

A couple weeks ago I was giving some customer training to plant floor folks (hourly union skilled tradespeople) when the small talk in between training tasks drifted to the vagaries and ineptitudes of management. Since I'm in a position of getting supervised/managed and have had to be supervisory/managerial myself, I found my self fence-sitting and doing devil's advocacy work. And what I heard was something I have heard at least a dozen times before. That management has no idea what's really going on, middle managers get cycled in and out and have no experience, that they're just messing up the works. To which I ask: "Well, if you were in their position, how would you handle it? What would you do differently?" The response comes, like it always does: "Just get out of the way, stop trying to tell people what to do and just everyone do their jobs the way they know how."

On it's face, sure, there's not much to argue with... if people know their jobs, trusting them to be conscientious and diligent should result in a smooth running machine of industry. People are happy, the plant is productive, everyone wins, right? I don't doubt that it's possible for 10, 20, 50 people to work in an egalitarian environment, in a flat structure, where everyone contributes their experience to decision-making. There's plenty of examples of co-ops, kibbutzes, etc. where that works.

But put 1000 people on the same shift into the synchronized human/machine organism of industrial manufacturing, and there just have to be organizing principles. Someone to resolve disputes, someone to coordinate schedules, someone to decide between equivalent options, someone to look out for safety, someone to distribute paychecks. So even if the Standard Argument ("just get out of the way and let people do their jobs") were put into play, eventually the functions of management would evolve anyway out of necessity. And engineeering, and product development, and marketing, and accounting, etc.

It seems I'm siding with management today. Call me an pawn of The Establishment, but how often can one have revolution after revolution and not end up in a state of constant upheaval? And what makes revolutionaries think that they won't, in time, be revolted against themselves? That somehow their received wisdom is more perfect than that of those they overthrew?

Why, you ask, would I be blathering about this now? I saw "Three Days of the Condor" last night, and at the end, as Condor confronts Higgins about why all the killing went on, what possible purpose the cold war intelligence games have, and Higgins makes a relevant point:
---------------------------
Condor: "What is it with you people? Do you think not getting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth?"

Higgins: "No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years, food, plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are going to want us to do then?"

Condor: "Ask them."

Higgins: "Not now, then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them."
----------------------------
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, when there's someone planning or anticipating the future, there will always be those who will pass judgment after the fact. But the question I ask is: If you were in their place, in the same situation, balancing the same issues, with the same pressures, what makes you think that you would have come to a better solution? One that is the best result, the least evil, and in the time required?

Hindsight is 20/20, and I'm as guilty as the next in Monday-morning quarterbacking, but I guess what I'm saying if that for Management to be able to trust Labor's intentions to "just do their job because they know what to do", Labor needs to trust Management's intentions the same way.

fingers

A dream that comes back in snippets occasionally - about fingers. Five of them (ok, 4 and a thumb). I'm walking through Home Depot, for some reason looking behind a shelf/display, and seeing 5 severed fingers just sitting there on top of an old spool of wire. The spool is dusty, but the fingers are fresh (but not oozing, which is clearly a continuity problem in my dream). There's no one around, so I pick them up, thinking "someone is gonna need these"

From there, I wander around the store, 5 non-oozing fingers in my hand, sometimes doing my shopping along the way, not trying to conceal the fingers, but I recognize how disturbing it might be for people to see severed fingers in a fellow shopper's hand. The thing is, I don't have a speck of self-consciousness in this... I'm ok with the fact that I have someone else's fingers in my hand. I came by them honestly, and I mean to do good by them. It's just kinda weird that they were just left there. You'd think someone would care about them more.

One "dream symbolism" site says: "To dream that your fingers are injured or have been chopped off, denotes your anxieties about your ability to accomplish some demanding task or perform in some waking situation." and "To see a wire in your dream, symbolizes your short but frequent journeys. To see old or rusty wire in your dream, signifies your bad temper." and "To see a spool in your dream, symbolizes your need for order and structure. Things need to be neat." And if I paid attention to horoscopes and other malarkey, I would say "[shrug] well, 2 out of 3 ain't all that wrong"

... but see, they're not my fingers. Is it a conservation thing? (trying to clean up a little and just waiting to walk past a garbage can) It is anxieties about someone unknown to me? (someone else's fingers)

Or is it just weird middle-of-the-night meanderings of my brain? It's not lost on me that there seems to have been product placement/branding in my dream. Who put that in there?

print media vs. bloggage - now I understand...

I've often been puzzled by the enthusiasm over the past few years - I mean, bloggers as a news source? Are you kidding me? I mean, seriously folks... who is kidding who? When boneheads like me can do something as silly as what is essentially composing an email to themselves (and then, in a fit of narcissism, showing the whole world), how seriously can you take it?

I was a hold out for the vaunted prestige of print journalism... until about 5 minutes ago. You see, I thought "These folks have the momentum of professionalism behind them - careers, printing presses, advertisers... the whole shebang. Surely they know what they're doing." Well, that was until today during my morning constitutional. I was reading a copy of Road Magazine that I picked up from a newsstand. I'll admit, I was enticed by the glossy shiny bike porn pictures. But when you actually read it, they have 8th graders writing the articles and interviews. Seriously. For a magazine that must pay gobs of money for the photos (and I'll admit, they're pretty damn good photos indeed), you'd think they would actually read what they're writing and realize how tepid, dry, and inane it is. If I want short, declarative sentences that describe nothing, I'll read Hemingway.

And this is when I realized that the Rise of the Blog is not necessarily because of its innate superiority, but more because most print media has set the bar so low.

At least some rags have decent online writing. And for the fun about dudes and dudettes riding bikes, it's Smithers, Vanderpoop, et. al. I might not live anywhere near Cali, but that Vanderhoot, he sure is fun to read.

And to make matters worse, the evening news no longer contains actual news - just crime, disaster, and scandal, followed by sports and weather (translated into emotional responses in the viewer of "be afraid, be afraid, be afraid, buy things you don't need, take an umbrella"). The same seems to be true of local newspapers. Every Monday, the Ann Arbor News newspaper delivery boy delivers free copies on my doorstep to try to get me to subscribe. It's the local rag, but it's a crappy paper (and I'm annoyed by the litter on my doorstep). The Detroit News and Free Press aren't much better. Where are the decent local newspapers? The Chicago Tribune ain't exactly local, but it's midwestern and decent. It might be in for some changes though... And going out to either the East or West Coast for news obviously is problematic in the context of "local".

Ok, damn, I'm blathering. Blue skies outside. Good time for a long ride.

Daywatch

Coming in June... part 2 of the Nightwatch trilogy - Daywatch. If you didn't catch Nightwatch and are a fan of the epic-battle-between-good-and-evil set-in-a-modern-day-shoot-em-up with-cool-soundtrack-and-reluctant-hero type of movie, you should definitely check out Nightwatch. Getcha started, ya know?

(of course, the whole "Chalk of Destiny" thing sounds a little too much like Bulletproof Monk or Tenacious D, but I'll give the Russians the benefit of the doubt and see it anyway)

to save or not to save

A weekend that includes spring cleaning, and the pile of mail that I have ignored for the past week or two. Among them, a thank you card for a wedding gift. For about two seconds, I pondered "is this something people save?" I'm genetically predispositioned to packrat-itis, but there's a rudely pragmatic and non-sentimental streak in me too - so bad that I had to be put in my place once by a friend-in-law who witnessed me disposing of a birthday card she sent me a few weeks previous. My reasoning: "why should I hold onto a $2.50 card that just has 'Hope you have a great one!' in it? I mean... the sentiment is nice, but I feel no emotional connection to this card" Her objection: "well don't do it in front of me..." (ok, I learned my lesson, I'm a tactless nob)

The thank you card at least had two sentences in it by way of thank you, but it went in the trash anyway. As much as I love my paper shredder though, I didn't shred it. 'Cause that would just be callous.

I fingure I have to draw the line somewhere.

road trip...

Haven't been out of town in a while (ok, a couple weeks). The summer has a finite duration. I, like all living organisms, will eventually die.

Put all of those things together, and the appropriate action is to hit the road and see more of the world now, while I can. I went to Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit with Fred and Mona about a year ago, so how 'bout going there again? Go riding the hilly bits with Fred before going out to Cali for Death Ride.

Sounds like a plan. I'm a-lookin' forward to it.

Now, all I've got to do is hope Matthew and Sandra bought a similar house out in Portland (similar in that they're enlisting manslaves to lift and tote and scrape paint and move furniture and such) so that I can have an excuse to road trip out that way and fuss around in Portland.

... is/does not _____

They lend themselves to cliches, so I write them down. Sometimes, I even type them... these things, they creep into my head and somehow I manage not to say them aloud. I'm still pretty lucky about keeping them inside my head - I haven't said them to the people I thought them at.

Having Seniority does not mean necessarily having Skills.

Being there is not the same as working.

Training is not the same as education.

Education is not the same as intelligence.

Education is not the same as creativity.

Keep saying "not my job"... eventually none of them will be.

How I Luvs My Glasses (or...How Spring Vegetation Makes You Pretty)

Went for a long ride in the dirt, and while there's a certain amount of hassle with getting gear together and into the car to go out to the good trails, I discovered today that the eyewear I was hating on the road (the bottom of the frames really get in the way of looking over my shoulder), I'm lovin' on 'em today.

Ok, maybe it doesn't look bad now, but when I came down the hill and around the bend, got clocked in the face with a surprise branch and it wrapped around my neck before ripping away, I was a little surprised at how easily I bled. It was just a branch and leaves, fer cryin' out loud.

Thus is the story about how I'm so happy with having eyewear. I still have both my eyes, neither collected any twigs along the way, and they still function quite well, thank you very much.

weekend movie review

Saw a couple movies/talkies over the weekend - only one good.

Fast Food Nation: blech.
Gerg Kinnear is a funny guy, and the fast food shenanigans amuse, but you saw everything you needed to see in the trailer when the exchange goes "...and the fecal coliform counts are off the charts. Do you know what that means?" "uhm.. not really" "There's shit in the meat."

Spiderman 3: another stinker. Just waaayyy too preachy with the "revenge is not the solution" and "we all have the capacity for good or evil, and it's up to you to choose" messages. And even though he's part of the baby-faced white-boy twink trio (along with Jake "I can't quit you" Gyllenhaal and Elijah "someone take this ring from me" Wood), Tobey MacQuire just isn't that interesting to watch. The transition between good/evil spiderman was fairly lame and he didn't sell it worth crap. And all the silliness with side mini plots took way too much time.

The Last King of Scotland: The one redeeming spark in the weekend. Forrest Whittaker rocks. And that Idi Amin? Big-time nutjob, lemme tell ya. Just go see the movie. If you don't know much about him, check out the Wikipedia entry for him first. The bit about deciding on his title cracks me up: "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular" The saddest part of it all - the people of Uganda celebrate his rise to power after his coup against Obote... and the echoes of other celebrations of the vicious-dictator-after-vicious-dictator cycles of coup in African/South American countries. I'd wail to the skies "when will we learn!?", but we ain't quite learned in this country on not repeating mistakes, so it's not like it's anything not seen before.

burf.

Did some ridin' today... but none of the normal roadie hoosey.

Met up with G to go ride some of the unofficial trails out on the east end of AA - basically public or Uni land that people have walked/rode on enough that they turn deer trails into human-passable trails. Some of it might technically be... uhm... without invitation for the landowner... but I can't imagine, other than maybe stumbling on a meth lab, that anyone would care. Of course, if we strayed onto the golf course, we'd probably be shot on sight, 'cause you know how those golfers get about people that don't ascribe to latest fashion. Anyway, a little sunshine, a little muck (still a little squishy down by the river), but a good time for a couple hours.

Then she scooted off to a musical extravapalooza with the family, friends, and neighbors, and I caught up with Pete downtown for a smoothie, a coffee, and then to go to my first Ann Arbor alleycat race. Now, while I don't really identify with the bullhorn-brigade fixie hipsters, a bike is a bike, and were all just a bunch of kiddies on two wheels havin' some funs. Me, I was caffeinated and chompin' at the bit for the go-go-go. I was still on the knobby bike, and when I paid in and got the map with checkpoints, realized that it would be a total pavement non-stair-jumping kind of a thing. With 30 minutes to go before the start, I scootched home, swapped out the dirty bike for the road bike, and came back. This particular event was of the out-and-back to checkpoint (4 times) variety, which, while I enjoyed it, might have preferred a looped or meshed or more interpretive/creative checkpoint distribution. Where choices of route are more up to the individual, and can make/break your time. Of course, the checkpoints were all along decent roads, most with bike lanes, so that was nice for safety, but heck, proper lane usage and complete stops at signs ain't exactly one of the biggest priorities in one of these kinds of things, knowhahumsayin?

So now you're wondering: "so... how'd you do?" Dismal. I blame... myself. On the way back from the first checkpoint, I did a stupid cut through a parking lot, had to get up a curb in a tight spot, and burfed it pretty hard, pinch-flatting the rear. I had a tube, but no pump. So now this basically turns into a brevet for me. I'm walking/jogging back the last mile from the checkpoint to home base, scouring my brain for bike shops around here (yeah, at 5:30 on a Saturday?) or gas stations. No dice. But, I go back to home base, and decide I'll ride the flat [gently, please] about 5-6 blocks to a gas station that might have air. Change the tube, and off I go. 2nd checkpoint and back, and then my stupidity kicked in. Tried a shortcut in a part of town I don't know well and overshot the turn, ending up on Plymouth instead of Broadway. Had to go way out of my way, and deal with hills I shouldn't have needed to, adding to my failings.

Never the less, there was the last checkpoint, the jam to the finish line BBQ, and a solidly mediocre middle-of-the-results finish. Pissed about my mechanical, bio-mechanical, and navigational stupidities, but was cranked up on endorphins by the finish, so all happy-go-lucky. Some grilled meat and salty chips later, yackety-yack with fellow riders, and all a good time.

Pete smoked me, by the way - and on his coaster-brake Schwinn cruiser. His knowledge of Arb shortcuts, other navigational oddities, and robustness of steed won him a nice 6th. That, and he's a gonzo badass who has a bunnyhop on that cruiser that... shit... I'm still in awe of. Tip o' the cap you, Herr Peter VonGonzo.

Alberto/Ollie/middle east, hate crimes, and seatbelts

I don't normally wax political, but I just can't resist.

A couple weeks ago, when Gonzales was testifying that he "can't recall" this, and "can't recall" that... surely the connection to the Ollie North testimony during Iran-Contra isn't lost. Didn't Ollie sort of have to fall on his sword on that one? How come Gonzo isn't? (I love this picture of Gonzo and Dubya, btw. All it really needs to complete the train is Cheney pulling Dubya's strings as Dubya manipulates Gonzo's.)

But wait... Iran-Contra? Wasn't Ollie selling weapons to the same country that Dubya is now saber-rattling with? And back a couple decades ago, wasn't there a significantly cozier relationship between Bush (41st) and Saddam Hussein? And now look at it... they just can't be friends anymore. Not to dig at a sore spot, but back when Afghanistan was all Soviet-ized and the U.S. was messing around with the Mujahideen to tinker with their government against the U.S.S.R., we found out 20 years later that it came back to bite us in the ass.

Call me crazy, but why the hell do we keep getting involved with countries/revolutions/cultures that we don't really understand? (By involved, I mean that in the teasing, flirting, no-strings-attached, "I promise I'll respect you in the morning if you just let me stick it in a little" kind of 'involved') And even worse, when it's nowhere ear a balanced relationship - culturally, economically, militarily, etc. Sure, we're all gushy over happy relations with Vietnam these days, but I don't see N. Korea being our friends any time soon. I really wonder what's kind of messed-up shenanigans are going on in Africa right now that we're going to hear about in 10-20 years. Maybe are we backing some rebels right now against some government, and along the way those rebels become brutal dictators themselves? Shee-it.
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And as the House passes the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, Dubya suddenly is making noises about keeping his veto pen warmed up? What the hell... the guy hasn't vetoed a damn thing in the first 6 years, and now all of a sudden he's poo-pooing everything that comes his way. Could this possibly be just to distract from all the other BS that seems to be falling down around his administration? Or is this just a last-ditch method of exerting republican legislative control - that the republicans can't control what's going on in Congress, but since democrats don't have a supermajority, the veto is still a potent tool to avoid actually having to communicate across the aisle in Congress.
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And it gives me great pleasure to hear NJ Gov. Corzine apologizing to his constituents for not wearing a seat belt in the crash that put some serious hurt on him. Sure, he was being driven by a NJ State Trooper, and troopers get lots of driving training, but still - no one is invulnerable. The thing that's most remarkable? Corzine broke ribs and legs and ended up on a ventilator. His driver, the trooper that was seatbelted, basically walked away from the accident with cuts and bruises. Of course, a trooper and governor getting into an accident driving 90 mph kind of adds to the whole notion of setting a bad example. It's not like they were trying to flee from paparazzi or anything.

randoms

In my non-posting-for-a-while, little things been building up... like the recent book club selection The Brief History of the Dead, which, though initially promising, was ultimately disappointing. Too many concepts not fleshed out. Too many suspensions of disbelief required. Too many ideas included when they were only fleeting distractions and would've better been left out. I did like the cover art though, which reminded me of an "empty coat" sculpture at the Walker Art Center sculpture garden... which is, by the way, a pretty damn nice place. I wish there were more sculpture gardens in the world. Especially in the world near where I live, dammit.

My folks live near the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park and it's pretty nifty to have something like that right in the neighborhood. Especially since it essentially is re-purposing land-fill-ish land that borders one of the sanitary canals (er... I mean "water reclamation district"). When I was a kid, it was just this crappy stretch next to the canal. Now it's a perfect place for a post-dinner walk. Except of course, that I don't live there any more. That's a bummer.

And lastly, while rummaging about in some old photos, I came across this little gem... (if you're squeamish, probably best not to look at the full-sized photo). Kind of wacky, that a bird would get caught like that. I mean... it's not like the bridge is moving fast or anything. Not like the bridge can deviate from its course... Slow and ponderous river-spanning monstrosity, but somehow this avian dumbass managed to get killed by... a bridge. It probably better for the survival of the species that this one won't get to breed any more. A pigeon-ey kind of Darwin Award.

my new weight-loss plan

Get sick. Don't eat for 2 days.

It's really that simple.

I went to the doc after my sore throat and body ache didn't go away, and yup, it's official: streptococcal whatchamohoosey. But on the way in, I got my stats taken and when I stepped on the scale I thought... "hey, that's not right - that's my butt nekkid weight, not my shoes + keys + clothes + whatever weight". Well, that's what you get for not eating. Not that I'm gonna miss the 5 or so pounds or anything, but it's not like it's gonna stay off once I'm feeling better.

On the downside, I'm really pissed that I missed a couple days of killer sunny Michigan spring weather while I was inside laying in bed in feverish pain. But, I'm glad I now have drugs that will make me non-infectious, and healthy to boot. And apologies to anyone I might have unknowingly infected over the past week. Sore throat? Go get you some antibiotics.