mostly harmless, almost useless: February 2006

DOH!

I just re-read some correspondence of mine. MY GOD I NEED TO PROOFREAD BETTER. Hart instead of heart! Seriously what the hell? Write more talk less.

What more proof do I need than two, two, errors in just this post. Took me until 6 to notice.

Tuesday morning grump fest

Grump 1

I couldn’t sleep last night so I decided to turn on the TV. Have you ever watched late night TV? Well there were about 60 infomercials a few really bad movies and some rerun regular stuff. Normally it would be some stupid film for me but not being able to sleep was kind of getting on my nerves so I surfed commercials for a while then ended up on Animal Planet. They were doing a show called animal cops or something like that. It was shot like COPS but instead of following two barely educated police officers that chased poor people they were traveling with the ASPCA to various poor people’s houses in various cities. The show follows each pet from the initial contact to the conclusion of its case. Sometimes that was a happy ending other times it wasn’t. It was the sort of thing that confirms my worst fears for mankind and my best hopes. If how we treat our “pets” isn’t indicative of how we soon will care for the rest of society, or sick or elderly, I don’t know what is. I came away from it with two things. First the people who work at the ASPCA are made of much tougher stuff than I am. The second is that some people need to be hurt, not fined, for what they do to animals. Apparently this issue is something I feel strongly about. I really can’t write what was done to some of these creatures. Doing that gives it some sort of permanence in my psyche that I don’t want any part of. I am going to have to think more about how to have some part in effecting change. I was so upset at the end of the show I couldn’t even consider sleep. The BBC fixed that a bit later.

Grump 2

Yes old farm houses can be great. Yes living in the country (although just barely) is nice. It’s just that sometimes I would really like to just be able to turn the knob and have hot water without fear of propane levels or if I did a load of laundry. NO HOT WATER THIS MORNING. Oh sure it was an easy fix and the hot water showed just a little bit late but crap man I smell and didn’t get enough sleep. I just wanted a hot bath and a slow morning. I know the whole home ownership thing is a constant find and fix but aaargh!

Grump 3

The world is at war. Civil rights are rapidly leaving the United States. The White House is breaking the law on a daily basis. What makes the news this morning? Anna Nicole Smith @ the Supreme Court fighting for her widowed husband’s estate. I don’t even know where to begin but it sure does put the hot water grump into context. When is the mother ship coming to take us away?

My..lungs...aaargh!

Gary and I went for a fairly short ride today. Only about an hour. We tried some roads out by my farm. Nice little circuit. KICKED MY ASS. I swear i felt like I was gonna vomit about 60% of the time. It was great! I think that it will take more than just the standard regimen to fix the mess I've made of my body. So tomorrow it's back to the, groan, gym. My chest still hurts. Tifosi indeed man. one nice thing about my place is the bicycle trail runs right over my driveway. I can suit up here and ride all over the damned place without having to hit many surface streets. The weird part of it is I really love riding on the street.

later
Sam

unconnected stuff I thougt to post.

This morning I am doing standard house stuff. Laundry, trash, dishes. Dishes ah, the dishes, doing the dishes is quite possibly the thing I like least in the world. I would rather have the flu than do dishes. There is no great back-story here I just hate doing the dishes. Laundry, windows, vacuuming none of that crap bugs me but the dishes just suck. I have the first part of the day to myself so its time to catch up on the house work that gets avoided during the week. This afternoon Gary, and I are gonna get a ride in. Tony said he might tag along. I hope he shows. Tony hasn’t been on any rides since he got back from Iraq. Tony, for those of you who aren’t privy to my small world, is my business partner and with Dean we own the bike shop. Dean is in Afghanistan now I think. He doesn’t communicate much so you never really know where he is. My cat Keno (keek, stink, pets here have names like characters in Russian novels, five or six names for each.) caught a mouse today that was really impressive. If I lived in the city I would have called it a rat but it really was just a giant field mouse. The most important thing here is that he inhaled that mouse. Poof! It was just gone. Something to think about when he is attacking my head at four in the morning to wake me.

Lately I’ve been forced to do a lot of writing. I’ve noticed several things in the process.

1. I love writing.

2. I hate all of the stuff I’ve written. Everything needs about a dozen re-writes.

3. OH and I use “I” WAY to much.

4. Short sentences, I like short sentences.

5. Sentence fragments are my friend.

So what to do? Obviously keep writing. I need to either make my writing read more like my speech or make my speech sound more like my writing. Probably both.

Alright enough whining! My life is really pretty damned great. I have a business that I love no money mind you, but a fucking great job. The dogs are beyond happy. My farm is a blast. Tearing out new growth saplings that have sprung up in the last few years is ridiculously therapeutic. We started riding/training again. Sorry to be so unnervingly positive but hell I’m going with it. No doubt it will subside soon enough. Things are going really well lately so it begs the question what’s gonna happen? Meteor shower? Russian mob? Another republican presidency?

Portishead selling bras!?
i just heard the song "All Mine" used in a Victoria's Secret ad. I really don't know what to think about that.

The fullscreen/widescreen rant. Ok does anyone really like fullscreen movies? Losing a full third of the image sucks. While I'm here typing and not doing the dishes I have the tv on. "In the line of fire" is on and it is fullscreen. So far every time I check the screen they are doing that fast pan thing they do when the character you are supposed to be following leaves the piece of the screen they are showing. It just bugs the crap out of me. Yeah yeah I know. Look it's my blog and so far as I know only about 8 people have ever looked at the thing. This really is more of a cathartic thought vomit space for me anyway. While were at it why is it that no one ever leaves a comment? I'm off to avoid doing the dishes in new and exciting ways!

Later,
Sam

Life is good today

A few days ago a customer who is a casual rider was asking me about my riding schedule. He was doing what so many do and comparing someone else’s cycling to his own. I tried to explain that it wasn’t about cadence, speed, distance that those were only technical pieces used to help you become more efficient rider. We just started training again this week. I had an injury early last season that forced me off the bike for almost 8 months. My god that sucked. So far only a few days of riding and the miles are still depressingly low. It’s definitely not the 250+ a week that I was pulling last season. My legs are not gone but they sure as hell aren’t here either. The endurance and power will take all of March to get back but it will be back with more. Already the fires are burning stronger. My shop is sponsoring at least one team for the MS150 this year and I intend to do that plus a few centuries. While I admit that I and my riding partner Gary do tend to get a bit techie with it all, the core of it is something else. Getting up and on a bike at 5:30 am every day, cold, wet, hot, whatever, dressed like a bad ‘70s tv alien really isn’t about becoming faster or bragging rights. The peace and emotion that comes from banging out a killer hill, from working through the pain and nausea, or even from just cranking out 10 miles at lunch is hard to describe. It is an addiction for sure but more so. The high from a good ride can last days. There is a word for it in Italian, tifosi. The literal translation is fan or fanatic but the general meaning is the afflicted, someone who simply cannot help but be that emotional and involved in their passion. Think wandering Zombie. The zombie needs your brain. A life without brain sucking just isn’t a Zombie option. It is at his* very core. Zombie = brain sucking. Cycling is like that for some of us.

The time off the bike forced me to see how important riding is to my life and general mental fitness. A few years ago while laying in bed in a hospital room my roommate, Larry, asked me what I did for a living and then when I finished telling him about networks and corpotate politics and the image needed as a consultant he,with barely a pause, asked what I wanted to be doing. My answer was sell, ride and fix bikes. Just like that. It all seemed very simple. Larry was a hell of a guy. He had survived lung cancer once after returning from Vietnam only to later get throat cancer from the radiation treatments that had saved him the first time. He was getting a feeding tube put in prior to the throat surgeries. It was made very clear to him that at best he was going to live another year. I asked him why go through with all of the chemo and surgery and not just try to live out the remainder as happily as possible. He told me about his favorite secret fishing hole. Then he told me about his grandson and how this year he would be old enough to go fishing with his grandpa. Larry was willing to endure all of that crap so he could teach his grandson to fish at his spot. If that isn’t a lesson I don’t know what is. Sometimes the world will just come up and punch you in the face when you need it. Apparently I have to learn things repeatedly before they stick. Well I gotta go to the shop. The brains need sucking.