Oversharing 2007
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” In particular, if you will forgive my sending 5 pages of self indulgent blather, I will totally forgive your not reading them.
Events
Meredith and Paulie got married. Other than that nothing happened in our lives this year unless you count one of the following.
We each stubbed a toe. Still tender many weeks later.
Tore rotator cuff. Doc said the tissue was TOO OLD to repair.
Attended the Starbucks corporate meeting. Howard Schultz is a remarkable presenter.
Coyote den in the woods behind the house. Pups played in the yard. Very cute.
Lost two chickens. One to coyotes, one to raccoons we think. Saved two others from the jaws of the same predators. Coyotes leave feathers at scene of crime. Raccoons do not.
Beth did not renew her OT license. I guess she really is through working.
Drove with Mere to D.C. Great trip. It’s a big country we live in.
Passed a week in February near Lake Tahoe, some skiing, lots of lying about talking.
Attended Miss America pageant
Bought Honda Civic
Lost my warts. They just went away.
Ran Green Lake in 28 minutes in spring. (10 min miles) By fall hardly able to run 3 miles. Felt like I aged perceptively this year.
Rode bike in the Fremont Summer Solstice parade. No Clothes. Ugly, but not the ugliest.
Painted south side of 1722.
Paid for new roof for 1722. Felt queer having some hired guys doing my work.
Disposed of the ’81 Tercell
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Clean(ing) Thoughts
Reasons To Put Off Cleaning
1. In order to get anything clean you must get at least one other thing dirty
2. A bunch of friends are expected. They’re just going to make things dirty.
3. A bunch of friends are expected. It would be hypocritical to create a false impression of how one truly lives.
4. Once the worst looking space has been cleaned, it just makes what had been second worst, first worst and now something of an eyesore, so where’s the benefit?
5. A. The dirtier any particular place is, the greater the psychological payoff of cleaning it. B. Doing anything a lot robs it of pleasure. For both these reasons frequent cleaning is the enemy of happy cleaning.
Reasons to Go Ahead and Clean
1. In order to put off doing something even more onerous
2. Vacuuming is actually a failsafe way of fending off Common Household Chill
3. Eating off dirty dishes actually is sort of nasty
4. There are potential relationship benefits
Rules for Operating a Vacuum Cleaner
1. Insure the bag is not full
2. Start at the wall socket and work away from there so that the cord is behind you and not in your way
3. There are no more rules for vacuuming
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Headaches By Type
1. Tension headache
2. Hangover headache
3. Migraine headache
4. Falling off your bike without a helmet headache
And our most common headache this year:
5. The Electronic headache. A metaphorical headache, also known as a royal pain in the ass, in my case caused by attempting to go places where it was never intended for me to go, such as the world wide web, and wireless hot spots.
The Purpose of Life
(A Speculation)
Suppose there is a divine intelligence that created the universe and suppose it is not indifferent to how we carry on here. Suppose there is an afterlife with a good place and a bad place to which we will go according to how well we behave. But suppose what the deity desires from us is not recognition of his divinity and humble devotion, but that we eat as much ice cream as possible. Suppose that the actual purpose for which we were placed on Earth is to eat ice cream. In this case how would one go about getting to heaven? Surely a strategy of eating only ice cream is not best as your early demise from some obesity related cause would keep you from maximizing your long term consumption. Clearly the maximum possible short run intake would not be optimum until, that is, you’ve come near to the end. In your last days, perhaps your last weeks or even months, a diet exclusively of ice cream is just what you should choose. And, of course, that is just what people do. Check it out at your local nursing home.
Another Inconvenient Truth
Smugness is its own reward.
Definition
The Right to Life Theory of Writing: 1. The belief that for a sentence life begins at conception. To snuff it out is wrong. It may be added to, or moved around, but it must never be edited out. 2. A theory of writing practiced by your author. Counter indication: Brevity is the soul of wit.
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Aerobics
I did a class this year. In my mind’s eye I was Nureyev vaulting across the stage. Alas what I saw in the mirror was Don Quixote flailing gangly limbs at invisible windmills.
Age
Beth received a birthday card with this interesting idea. If you didn’t know your age, how old would you be? (These days I think of my age and mortality, probably a dozen times a day.)
Cognitive Dissonance
(Or is it just ordinary hypocrisy?)
Reading Waldon Pond while lying in a bed between 400 thread count sheets
On Living Well
Embrace the mundane. There’s so much of it.
Introspection
(Recall the Overall Title)
I wonder how much time people spend thinking about themselves and when they are doing so, what are the things they think of? Having quite a bit of idle mind time, and also perhaps some degree of inclination, I think I am probably well toward the high end of the self reflection spectrum. When I think about myself common thoughts include: my age and possible or likely longevity, my health and physical capabilities or lack thereof, the rate of change in these, our net asset position, and given the famous unfairness of life, how lucky I have been. I no longer spend the time I once did thinking about my children, my personal charm, my career. (Now is when you are supposed to laugh.)
Appendix One
Thinking About Thrift
It should be remembered that private, individual thrift is in many cases also social, collective thrift. If I salvage 10 inches of duct tape from some first use and wrap it back on the role then society has a reduced need to produce 10 inches of duct tape. (Of course, as explained elsewhere, the alert cyclist never has any need to buy tape of any kind. All one could possibly need, be it masking, electrical, adhesive, cellophane or what you will, is there in the street waiting for you to pick it up.)
Thrift manifests itself in a variety of ways. There is miserliness, the simple disinclination to spend money, the predilection to do without rather than part with any cash. This is only slightly different from wanting and seeking the best possible price once a decision to buy is reluctantly made.
Thrift may also be said to lie behind a compulsive need to accept whatever goods might come one’s way. There are people all around who have stuff they don’t want. Sometimes these people try to give some of it away. The thrifty person has a hard time saying no to such offers. Whatever the stuff, potential uses spring to mind like August sweat bursts on a New York brow. Once a person becomes known as an accepter of other people’s castoffs the opportunities multiply. The obverse of this is the inability of a thrifty person to give away or otherwise discard the meagerest of possessions. The accumulation and retention of stuff for merely speculative purposes mark the truly thrifty individual. Your humble scribe is so thrifty that he cannot bear to throw away something as ephemeral as a sentence, which goes far to explain the length of these yearly letters. (See above: definition)
There is also an intergenerational aspect to thrift. What parent ever thought a kid too miserly? Quite the contrary. But the perception often runs the other way. Despite years of resolution to be different, of late I’ve felt my tipping practices beginning to tip toward the range that would embarrass Nat or Mere.
Appendix Two
Why Soccer Is A Low Scoring Game
In which it is explained why hitting a baseball is not necessarily the hardest task in sports
Those who think hitting a baseball is the toughest act in sports should consider kicking a soccer ball. The roundness of a bat has a lot to do with the difficulty of getting hits in baseball. In cricket where the bats are flatish the scores go into the hundreds and the games go on over night. The foot however is not only roundish, as a baseball bat, but also irregular in its roundness. The surface is concave behind the toes, but convex at the arch. If you swing your foot at a soccer ball there are several things that can happen and only one of them is good. You might catch it on the center of your instep, right on the laces and drive it exactly where you want, but hit it a little to the left or right of center and the ball goes careening off in some unintended direction. Or your foot can arrive at the ball a little early so you hit it with your toe or an instant too late so it hits your shin. Again off it goes in a crazy direction. About one time in twenty I miss the thing altogether and end up staring dumbly at my feet wondering what went wrong. You can get underneath the ball so it shoots too high in the air, flying over the goal or an open teammate. You can hit it too hard making it impossible to be played by your guys or too softly making it an easy play for the other guys. The face of a soccer goal is big, but not as big as an outfield. And goal keepers are also big and agile and tend to be fearless. Kicking the ball where they are not, usually requires a split second evaluation of the situation just to decide where to try to place your shot. Furthermore soccer balls, especially shots on goal, are often kicked while running at full speed, possibly with an opponent running along side doing his best to interfere. No standing with feet solidly planted, fully concentrating on a pitch that must be delivered within a specified space. And finally in soccer the player’s most dexterous and developed anatomical part, his hands, are taken completely out of the game, for all, that is, except the goal keeper. You gotta do it with your feet.
It is little wonder that ninety minutes of continuous action rarely generates as many as four goals total. A four hit baseball game is a pitching duel.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Thursday, July 31, 2008
The road store merchandise that I brought home
A bunch of other stuff was either used up or given away. Here's what's in the picture: A John Deere baseball cap, some nicely rolled up nylon line, a very nice flag, a defunct inner tube which contributed parts of itself to any number of fixes of various kinds, considderably used duct tape and electrical tape, an S hook, sun glasses, a tie, price tags, cigar with case, sheet rock screws retrieved from the street in front of our nations's capital as I hummed America The beatiful, two bungee cords, a 7/16th inch end wrench.
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Sunday, July 20, 2008
Fw: Saturday July 19 Day 64 No Riding
The day began as the previous day had ended, poring over maps and searching the internet for a good route west from Pittsburgh. There were several options, but none was very appealing. In the night I had decided to give Myrtle to Gail as a thank you present and then she could turn Myrtle loose and both would be happier. Although I really liked having Myrtle with me I did have some regrets about taking her from her normal environment and had considered setting her free if I could find a good place. It turns out that Gail's yard is a good place for turtles and a number live in the adjacent woods and stream. So Myrtle is free.
I am starting this entry while sitting in the boarding area of the Pittsburgh airport. The decision to abandon an activity like a bike ride has an interesting asymmetry. One can, or perhaps even must, decide to continue, over and over again with each passing day, but the decision to abandon is a one time decision. You decide to quit. You act on your decision and it is over.
And so it happened for me. By 11:00 I had decided and called Beth. Within an hour and a half she had booked a flight for me, I had packed and Gail had called a taxi. It was almost stunningly fast.
As to reasons, there are those that are immediate and those that are longer term. Regarding the latter, I now realize that in the convoluted course that I had chosen, I had left the least interesting part of the country to the last. Most of the friends had been biked to and there were going to be long stretches with small rewards. I also found myself unable to bike as far in a day as I had anticipated. Further, the pleasures of being home had grown more enticing.
Perhaps the decision was made at this particular point because there is only one good way to enter and leave Pittsburgh on a bike and that is the way I came. By utilizing the 300 plus miles of trail north and west from Washington I had put myself in a place from which it was hard to go on, or at least so it seemed. This difficulty in continuing by way of the road system was no doubt exacerbated by the great pleasure it had been to ride free from the noise of motor vehicles. In a way the trails of the past six days had spoiled me as a highway rider. Also Pittsburgh is in a hilly place and they are steep hills. If you look at a road map you will find that about 100 miles west there are roads that run in straight lines. There are no such roads around Pittsburgh, because near Pittsburg the roads are winding all around following contours on the uneven land. In any case I had been vacillating about the idea of quiting for a while. The moment of decision came while I was reading an online commentary on biking west out of the city and it was full of places where caution would be required. There are in fact many places where, beyond not being reckless, there is no way to be cautious. In such places a biker can only hug the fog line and hope that the drivers are paying attention.
There was little emotion as I dismantled my bike, got it into its travel bag and said goodbye to Joanne's siblings. (I regret that I failed to take their picture.) However, in the waiting area of the airport a TV was showing some skate boarders competing in a half tube event at the X Games. These young athletes were propelling themselves into the air, gyrating wildly and returning to the surface with breath taking grace. Seeing them brought my first moment of mild remorse over my decision to abandon what had been a very long time aspiration. Later as I sat in my seat, 35,000 feet above the passing land, I was still feeling a bit down in the dumps. Then it occurred to me that if I still wanted to be on a bike ride, in stead of changing planes in Vegas I could just bike home from there. There were still plenty of miles to do and it would be in country that was more appealing. That thought cured my melancholy in an instant. Regrettable though it may be that I did not accomplish what I had hoped, I am now ready to be home.
Did any learning go on?
The next to last day on the trail I checked my odometer against the mile markers and found that it was recording speed and distances about 10% higher than what was actually happening. Adjusting for this I rode in all about 2,400 miles. I was disappointed that I couldn't do more miles per day. I had expected to match the 90 and 100 mile days I had done on my trip to Wyoming in the early 90's. Thus the vanity that I had not aged over that time took a hit. It was very clear, and a bit unexpected that companionship mattered, even while riding. Also I learned that there is a better kind of riding than just riding to cover distance. It is a ride that allows for or even is designed to absorb and appreciate what is available along the way. Finally the last piece of riding that I did, getting from the trail to Gail's house, involved climbing a very long, steep hill, on what everyone from Pittsburgh was calling a really hot day, riding a bike with gear that weighed in at the airport the following day at 75 pounds. It was tough. I did not stop until I reached the top. I am not the toughest and I am not as tough as I liked to fancy myself, but I guess maybe I am medium tough. That's OK.
It's nice to be home although we sure have a lot of stuff. I'm feeling a bit of culture shock. The road demands a simplicity of living that is not a bad thing. Maybe I should read again that first chapter of Waldon Pond.
I suppose this is the place where I am to write, The End. As I am finding that nearly impossible to do, it makes me realize how much pleasure has come from the exercise of recording all this. I am most grateful to any and all who have looked in and especially to those who have commented either on the blog itself or separately. I will try to post as an addendum the 2007 letter that was being delivered.
The End
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Friday July 18 Day 63 Dawson to West Mifflin 48 miles, The end of two months
Got off from Dawson shortly after 8:00 on my last day on this trail. After about an hour I gained a riding companion, Armand, who rode with me for about 10 miles. I welcomed the conversation. It kept my mind off the mile markers. When we reached his town I stopped at an information office and there ran into a guy from Maine, of about my age, with a fully loaded bike, heading west in quite a similar endeavor. He had crossed the country a couple of times before and impressed me with his level of organization, and confidence. I have been pondering the fact that the back roads of the central states, while more pleasant to ride will presumably not have much by way of tourist accommodations. He spoke very assuredly about sleeping in small town parks, etc. There was no question that we would go together since he was following a southern route.
When he had gone I got into conversation with a pair of locals, out for their exercise and we ended up riding together most of the rest of the trail. The wife will be attending a conference in Seattle in March and our rapport was such that I invited. them to call on us and perhaps stay with us when they are there.
Both Armand and the couple, Rebecca and Art, rode a bit faster than I had ridden while alone so I got to McKeesport by mid afternoon. I called Joanne Yablonsky's sister Gail, who lives in the adjacent borough, and advised her of my coming. I got some directions, climbed a really steep hill, in high heat of the afternoon and finally came to her home by use of the GPS on my Blackberry. This was really the first time to use it to get to a specific place. Joanne and Gail's brother Mark saw me biking by and called out to me. Gail immediately began to care for my needs which included a shower, food, and most of all a plan for what happens next.
Have I made it known that I am wavering in my resolve? My first hour of the day had been spent in heavy consideration of the idea of flying home from Pittsburgh. There are still lots and lots and lots of miles between here and Wolf Point Montana. Does it serve any purpose to ride them? I am very ambivalent, but comments such as the one from Shoes On certainly encourage me to continue. With Gail there was no talk of stopping and much attention to how to get through and beyond Pittsburgh. As I write this on Saturday morning, that question is still not resolved, but progress is being made.
Gail, who is a vegetarian outdoors person, does not approve of me taking Myrtle from the wild.
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