This your brain on Popeye's spicy chicken

More precisely, this is my brain on leftovers: Popeye's spicy chicken, green beans, baked beans, a hard biscuit, and an Oreo (which, in some parts of the world, is also a biscuit). Turtle, at least, attributes last night's dream—an unlikely mishmash of plot elements seemingly stolen from The Core, Get Smart, and Pee Wee's Big Adventure—to the choices I made when I prepared my own dinner last evening.

It all started when two men showed up on the stoop of my Miami-style bungalow. They were wearing suits the same greenish-yellow color that was all the rage at The Limited stores in the mid-'80s, which I think was called "mustard". Under their jackets, they wore t-shirts printed to look like a tie and vest.

They looked like live-action versions of Bert and Ernie, from Sesame Street.

"You have to come with us," Bert said. "Your house is the epicenter."

I glanced down and saw that both men were wearing red leather clogs. This rendered me momentarily incapable of speech, but I took a moment and finally found an appropriate response.

"Huh?"

"Come on," Ernie said, placing an arm around my waist and nudging me toward a battered tow truck that looked like it had been on its last legs since the early '60s. "You don't want to be here when it comes."

"'It'?" I muttered, reluctantly allowing myself to be led to the truck. "What 'it'?"

Ernie smiled the sort of reassuring smile usually reserved for small children and the very senile. "Everything's going to be all right," he said. "Everything's just fine."

"The hell it is," Bert said. "There's a space-time rift [insert dream-ish technical mumbo jumbo here] alignment that's going to cause a softball-sized tunnel all the way through the planet, and it's going to come out through your kitchen."

Ernie rolled his eyes and scowled at Bert, irritated. "You know he's not cleared for that information yet."

"Look, just shut up and get in the truck," Ernie said, not unkindly.

[At this point, some of you may be wondering where Turtle was while all this was going on. She wasn't in the dream, which suggests to me that she has a better agent than I do.]

The next thing I knew, we'd arrived at a checkpoint that looked just like the turnstiled entry gates at Disney World.

"Here you are," Ernie said. "ESCIA headquarters."

"What's ESCIA?" I asked.

"'Extra Secret Central Intelligence Agency'," Ernie said.

"Wait... if it's so extra secret, then why's there a big sign over the entry that says 'ESCIA'?"

"Shaddap," Bert said and slapped me across the back of the head. "Just go."

"Aren't you guys coming?"

"Nope," Ernie said. He pointed to a torpedo dangling from the tow truck's hook. "We have to get that over to research ASAP."

"It's a torpedo," I said.*

"Dang, this guy's good," Ernie said, poking Bert. "Poke, poke, poke."

I walked over to the turnstiles, where I became the charge of a guy who looked just like Francis, Pee Wee Herman's arch nemesis in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt, red tie, and white patent leather shoes.

"C'mon," he said. "Let's get you checked in."

Francis then proceeded to take my thumbprints using an electronic scanner, and then various other combinations of digit prints, including my pinky toes ("The most important ones!"). I was photographed and blood typed. Finally, Francis punched a button and a machine spat out an ID card with my holographic likeness, thumbprints, and transparent window with a drop of my blood all laminated in.

"Here you go," he said. He handed me my ID card and nudged me toward the turnstiles. "But before you go in, I want to share a tip that will help you to assimilate."

"What's that?"

"We all wear suits in the ESCIA, but the way you dress can make you or break you," Francis explained. "Take me, for instance. I've chosen my ensemble to convey a sexually disingenuous image that cuts way down on distractions on the job."

"I bet. But don't you mean 'sexually ambiguous'?"

"I MEANT WHAT I SAID!!" Francis snapped. "Now get in there!"

Next, I was taken to meet my mentor, a veteran agent played by Stephen Dorff. Dorff was wearing a black pinstriped suit, a black shiny shirt open at the collar with no tie, and full-quill ostrich skin boots with silver toe caps. His hair was spikey, and he slouched insouciantly with one hand in his pants pocket and the other holding a cigarette.

He took a slow draw and squinted through the smoke. "So you're the new guy, enh?"

I shrugged and looked at my surroundings. We were in an office building, in a common area that looked quite a bit like the waiting area at an airport gate. Off to one side, there were about a dozen men and women wearing brown suits, doing some sort of slow line dance to the tune of Trio's "Da Da Da".

"Weird," I said.

"Yeah, well don't let 'em fool ya," Dorff said. "They're the ones with the power around here. Those are the office manager moles. There's nothin' goes on that they don't know about."

"I always heard that you shouldn't wear a brown suit to an interview because brown gives an impression of untrustworthiness," I said.

"Shit, I don't know," he said. He paused for a moment to drop his cigarette on the floor, ground it out with the toe of his boot, and ran his fingers through his hair. "I always figured it was because office managers order the coffee service, and coffee's brown."


From there, I don't remember details. There was some business about crawling through ventilation ducts and having to time it so we were only moving when the fans were on, but my alarm clock went off before I had a chance to find out what that was all about.


* I know what prompted this, at least. Last night, I watched an old Peter O'Toole movie called Murphy's War in which O'Toole's character sinks a German U-Boat using a recovered torpedo, which he drops on it from a crane on a barge.

Weekend update

RBENT Ride

Bright and early Saturday morning, a group of us recumbent riders got together for our own little parade. About a dozen of us met up in Richardson and rode down to the head of the White Rock Creek Trail, where we met up with about a dozen more before continuing down the trail to White Rock Lake.

Unlike my usual club rides, this one included a fair share of the sort of slower rider that most people associate with recumbents—which was fine, because motoring along an eight foot wide bike path at much more than our 12-13 mph pace would've been irresponsible. There's just too much bike, roller blade, stroller, and pedestrian traffic on the trail to get up a good head of steam without the risk of hurting someone.

But once we got down to the lake, that was a different story. We split into a faster group and a slower group with the fast group taking to the road and the slower group sticking to the trail. Each wedgie that passed us and each remark like "Oh! Look at the senior citizens!" drew whimpers from my Corsa (or Ba-Cheetah, as some of the group refer to the highracers), but FlyingLAZBoy calmly reined us in until after the first rest stop. And then it was time to "do the demo", charging north along the west side of the lake into a slight headwind at around 20 mph, dropping wedgies like junk mail.

Photo by Paul Brown

After a couple passes like that, we'd gotten the demo out of our systems and made our way back north to the cars, after which we garbaged up on quesadillas and burritos as big as your head. Much fun was had by all (and I didn't fall over).

Out on a limb

Or, more to the point, up on a ladder.

Last weekend, Turtle and I bought a ceiling fan for what we affectionately refer to as the library. All week, it sat in the garage, and all week Turtle—either distracted by her own goings-on or simply displaying monumental patience—didn't harrass me about it.

Yesterday, I decided I was going to put the thing up.

Now, I've never been much of a do-it-yourselfer. I lack the necessary skill, tools, and extra hands necessary to complete most home improvement projects to my exacting standards. I'm also terrified of electrocution and drowning, so I avoid wiring and plumbing tasks like the Black Death.

However, after thinking about the installation process, I reckoned that the trickiest part of putting up the fan was going to be taking down the chandelier that was already hanging where the fan needed to go. At this point, I'll spare you the blow-by-blow of assembling and installing the down rod, blades, light kit, etc. and just say that after 2 1/2 hours of standing on a stepladder, grunting and (at times) cursing, Turtle and I stepped back to admire our new fully functional ceiling fan.

We were both impressed with the fact that it operated with nary a wobble, and that flipping the wall switch didn't start a fire. Probably because I had my fingers properly crossed.

I love a parade

Actually, I don't; but we sure had a doozy last night.

By now, many of you will have heard about the slow-speed chase that wound its way through three north Texas counties yesterday evening, but for the benefit of those who haven't, here's the short of it:

• A 32-year-old man stuck a gun in the face of a customer in the parking lot of a Lowe's in Carrollton.
• He then proceeded to wreck the stolen car, and when a local pulmonologist stopped to see if he was okay, the gunman stole his car
• Next stop: Fairview, TX. Fairview is a very small town with practically nothing in it but farmland and very large, very expensive houses. It's also the northern neighbor of Allen, where Turtle and I live. We ride our bikes there. In Fairview, the gunmen left the doctor's car and hijacked a bright red semi (with trailer) owned by an Allen couple. He kicked out the husband and held the wife at gunpoint, making her drive the truck.
• From there, they headed south through Plano, Dallas, and Oak Cliff before heading west on I-20.
• The police spiked several of the tires, but the truck continued west, riding on the front rims, all the way to Ft. Worth
• After shooting out some more tires, the radiator and (according to one report) the gas tanks, the police finally got the truck stopped. The gunman released the hostage, and the police shot tear gas into the truck cab, forcing the gunman out. So no one got killed.

Link - Dallas Morning News (use BugMeNot to acquire a login/password)

Granted, this sort of thing has become sort of passé since the O.J.-in-a-white-Blazer incident back in '92 or so, and I'm pretty sure the Los Angelenos would tell me this is a daily occurrence there.

What bugged me is that, once the local TV stations started televising the progress of the chase from their helicopters, literally hundreds of people began lining the overpasses along the chase route, all straining to catch a glimpse of the truck. Turtle and I cringed as, at each overpass, people dashed from one rail to the other—oblivious to slow but still-moving traffic—to make sure they didn't miss one second of the spectacle.

What's wrong with people? (The question is rhetorical, for the record.)

Ride Report: Tour de Paris (Texas)

I've done more than a dozen charity rallies over the last couple years. Some have been scenic, others were challenges to my endurance and stubborness, and others just plain miserable. But yesterday's Tour de Paris was a new high point for me, because it was the funnest 62.8 miles I've ever ridden at one swat.

The Foo Family had originally planned on loading up The Grape with bikes and gear and driving up to Paris together. Unfortunately, Turtle came down with a sinus infection that turned into a once-every-fifteen-seconds cough that won't let her sleep, much less do a bike ride. That combined with the predicted triple-digit temperatures led to the decision that I should go on alone.

I woke up at 4am, half an hour before the alarm was set to go off, showered, finished packing my car (not a grape), and hit the road. The drive to Paris took me about 90 minutes, instead of the two hours that Yahoo! Maps had predicted, and I attributed this to the fact that there were few vehicles on the road, except for ones with bikes strapped to them. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of anything along the route and my plan to pick up breakfast as I neared Paris turned out to be a bad one. Clif bars and water for breakfast will get the job done, but Foo prefers to start a long ride with a bit of sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit percolating in his gut.

I arrived with plenty of time to pick up my and Turtle's packets (she might as well have her T-shirt, no?), get my bike set up, and apply sunscreen. I parked next to Safeman9, another BikeJournal.com member, and we had a nice chat while setting up. A friendly bumblebee became intrigued with my black and yellow bike and my black and yellow cycling duds. Too friendly perhaps. As Safeman9 noted, it appeared the little hummer was looking for a date.

The Tour de Paris is a mass start, which means that instead of the longer distances going off first, everyone goes off together. This has always made me a bit nervous, because it means that you spend the first five miles or so just trying to work your way through all the bike path wobblers and slow-paced social riders to find some "clear air" to ride in. On the recumbent, it's even dodgier because I'm just not as agile as I was on my wedgie.

But I got the job done and by about 20 minutes into the ride, I was in the open and cruising along the flats at between 18 and 22 mph. Soon after I hit clear air, I noticed a guy in full Liquigas kit riding with a woman in pigtails and a lot of pink stuff on her bike. Aha! I thought. Allez and Lancenotstrong from BikeJournal.

"Allez! Allez! Allez!" I yelled out, both because that's cyclist for "faster!" and because... well, I was trying to catch their attention. I think my sudden appearance was sort of a rolling non sequitur, because as I pulled up next to them, Allez gave me the sort of look one might reserve for something just scraped off the bottom of one's shoe. Lance, however, clicked on the situation right away.

"Foo man!" he hollered, grinning. We shook hands briefly, peloton style, and I rode on, not wanting to interrupt their conversation any more than I had. But how cool was that? Not even half an hour into the ride, and I'd already met three people I recognized from the BikeJournal forum.

Not long after, a rider called out to me as I was overtaking him. It turned out this was royshiro, a BikeJournal member who had been trying earlier in the week to arrange for a group of us ride together. And so we did, Roy and I, and we had a blast just riding along and chatting. I've rarely had more pleasant company, on or off the bike, and it made for a very enjoyable ride.

By the time we reached the midpoint of our 100K route, the temperature had become noticeably hotter. My computer showed an average speed of 17.7 mph to that point, but we decided that we'd take it easier and conserve energy on the return leg. To punctuate the point, I had a concentration lapse as we were leaving the rest stop and promptly experienced a gravity failure that left me with a dinged knee and some road rash down the length of my shin.

Later, while cleaning that up, I came to understand that hardcore riders don't shave their legs to be more aerodynamic; they shave them because it's easier to clean road rash without all that fur in the way.

At about 9 miles to the finish, we came into some rollers, and I temporarily took my leave of Roy and agreed to meet him back at the parking lot. With the first climbs of any significance coming up, our rhythms were bound to get out of synch and I wanted to maintain as much momentum as I could. When I rolled up to the finish, the LED sign out in front of the high school read "106°", and the cheerleaders were bouncing around like they were at a cool autumn football game. God bless 'em.

I finished the 62.8 miles with a 16.5 mph average. According to my heart rate monitor, my theory that my max heart rate has dropped from 193 to 188 isn't worth the blog it's written on. After the ride, it showed my max for the day was 197. Must've been the heat, because I really couldn't recall any point in the ride during which I'd been working that hard.

After Roy arrived, we went inside to change out of our wet cycling duds and spent some time yukking it up with RBENT's Bob McClure (of yellow plasticard-faired recumbent fame) while cooling down. Roy and I then drove to Ta Molly's, a local Tex-Mex restaurant, where he graciously treated me to lunch using a gift certificate he'd brought with him. No quesadillas ever tasted so good.

After lunch, we said our goodbyes and I headed down the road back toward home. Heading west on highway 82 out of Paris, I passed an entire field parked hub to hub with rusted farm tractors and moved "compact digital camera" a position further up the list of things that I'd like to have once Turtle and I have more money than we know what to do with.

Tour de who?

To all my friends and acquaintances who have ever asked, "So what's up with that Tour de France thing?" I offer the following sublime explanation, courtesy of Bob Roll:

The hierarchy in the peloton has another parallel: "It's basically a penitentiary," says Bob Roll, a former Tour rider and an anchor for OLN TV. "You've got your walking boss, you've got that sneaky little bastard who was in The Longest Yard, you have the honorable veterans, and then the guys who are just doing time, which is most of them. Nobody wants to be anybody's boy, but sometimes you have no choice."

Link (FORTUNE)

If you've ever had even the slightest interest in what all the fuss is about, I highly recommend spending five minutes of your time to read this article. It's colorful and well written, and it's about as clear a capsule explanation of professional cycling (and yes, the free market economy) as I've seen.

Spelling with flickr

That's right: still no inspired amusement or wry anecdotes about postnasal coworkers. But I do have a new toy for you guys to play with.

Some mad scientist has used PHP scripting and random images from flickr to generate words like this one:



It's almost as much fun as composing refrigerator magnet poetry. Try it here

Best of FooMix #2 (sort of)

As I went to grab the next in the series of tapes, I discovered that #2 and #3 had gone missing. I've since looked every place I can think of, but it's probably a case of my having carted them along somewhere without putting them back where they belonged. Given my relative lack of participation in the packing process when we moved to the new house, the tapes could be anywhere, including in one of the boxes in the attic, dubiously-labeled "Foo's Stuff".

Mea culpa.

In the place of #2, I offer the contents of a mix CD I made much more recently, but which nevertheless spans the '60s and '70s, skips the '80s, and in one instance covers something from the '70s in the '90s:

1. Blackfoot - "Train, Train"
2. Bullet - "White Lies, Blue Eyes"
3. Cliff Richard - "Devil Woman"
4. Michael Nesmith - "Cruisin'"
5. Jerry Reed - "Amos Moses"
6. Manfred Mann - "I Came For You"
7. Ohio Express - "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy"
8. Cat Stevens - "Jzero"
9. Bread - "If"
10. Petula Clark - "I Know A Place"
11. Small Faces - "Itchycoo Park"
12. 1910 Fruitgum Company - "1, 2, 3, Red Light"
13. Webb Wilder - "Ain't That A Lotta Love"
14. The Buoys - "Timothy"
15. Focus - "Hocus Pocus"
16. Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs - "Wooley Bully"
17. The Nightcrawlers - "Little Black Egg"
18. The Castaways - "Liar, Liar"
19. The Blues Magoos - "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet"
20. Desmond Dekker & The Aces - "Israelites"
21. Electric Prunes - "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night"
22. Left Banke - "Walk Away Renee"
23. Bobby Fuller Four - "I Fought The Law"
    

Best of FooMix - #1 (ca. 1984)

Over on My Big Gobhole That Girl's Gobole Gobhole Girl, Susie put out a plea for '70s and '80s love songs and power ballads. I wasn't much help, since I couldn't remember any, off the top of my head.

What did come out of all that was this notion that it might be interesting revealing to share the track lists from the mix tapes I started making sometime in the mid-'80s and continued through #26. By 1998 (or thereabouts), I had pretty much stopped. I can no longer remember why.

Anyway, here you have it: the track list from the first one.

1. Mountain - "Mississippi Queen"
2. Loverboy - "Teenage Overdose/DOA"
3. Dire Straits - "Espresso Love"
4. XTC - "Senses Working Overtime"
5. The Pretenders - "The Phone Call"
6. The Cars - "Moving In Stereo"
7. J. Giles Band - "Rage In The Cage"
8. Pat Benatar - "Out of Touch"
9. The Go-Gos - "This Town"
10. The Cars - "Shooby Doo/Candy-o"
11. Led Zeppelin - "Immigrant Song"
12. The Babys - "Anytime"
13. Nantucket - "Rug Burn"
14. Rossington Collins Band - "Don't Misunderstand Me"
15. Talk Talk - "Talk Talk"
16. The Romantics - "Rock You Up"
17. Baxter Robertson - "Green Light"
18. Rush - "Distant Early Warning"

Worth continuing? A show of hands, please...

When you're hot, you're hot

I received this from Turtle a while back. Since she's not using it, I will.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN TEXAS IN SUMMER [May - October] WHEN...

• The birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.
• The trees are whistling for the dogs.
• The best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.
• Hot water now comes out of both taps.
• You can make sun tea instantly.
• You learn that a seat belt buckle makes a pretty good branding iron!
• The temperature drops below 95 and you feel a little chilly.
• You discover that in July it only takes 2 fingers to steer your car.
• You discover that you can get sunburned through your car window.
• You actually burn your hand opening the car door.
• You break into a sweat the instant you step outside at 7:30 a.m.
• Your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, "What if I get knocked out and end up lying on the pavement and cook to death?"
• You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.
• The potatoes cook underground, so all you have to do is pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.
• Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying boiled eggs.
• The cows are giving evaporated milk.

Ah, what a place to call home. God Bless the State of TEXAS!!

Turtle adds...

• You take out an equity loan to pay the AC bill.

The karmic bog roll

During yesterday's afternoon commute, I noticed in my rearview mirror a black Murano making multiple aggressive lane changes, and I prepared myself. Ommmmmm, I thought, imagining myself on my back patio, wearing shorts and sandals, drinking a cold Shiner Bock.

Sure enough, it came my turn, and as the Murano elbowed past to cut me off and brake hard to avoid hitting the car that was ahead of me, I noted with some smugness that the driver was as I had predicted: a crisply dressed Joe Cool with a flashy watch and a cell phone grafted to his left wrist.

Ommmm... The beer in my mind's eye mouth was cold and refreshing, and I wriggled my imaginary toes, noting that the nails needed trimming again.

And then I saw it: stuck to the rear suspension of Joe Cool's Murano was a plastic shopping bag, flapping in the breeze like a length of toilet tissue trailing from a Bruno Magli dress loafer. Karmic balance was restored, and I laughed out loud, quite happy to trade a few feet of pavement for a tasty helping of irony.

Random misfire

I was out riding my Corsa (a.k.a., "the rolling lounge chair") after work, when I rounded a bend to see half a dozen barely-teen boys making their way down the center of the street. Two were walking; the other four were on two BMX bikes. One of them must have heard the buzz of my rear hub and turned to look.

"[incestuous offspring]!" he yelled to his buddies. "Look at this [canine son]!"

I blushingly admit that I cut quite a dashing figure in my black lycra shorts, Canari-yellow sleeveless jersey, and red headband flapping Rambo-esque from beneath the back of my helmet, but I'm reasonably convinced he was reacting to the bike.

"Catch up with him!" one of the boys yelled, and I could see in my helmet mirror that one of the bike riders had stood up and was pedaling like mad.

Rotsa ruck. I was doing 15 mph when I passed them and 20 by the time I heard one of them (faintly) yell "Holy [excrement]! Look at 'im go!"

Don't mess with the bull, young man. You'll get the horns.*


* Fairly blatant toilet-paper-on-a-shoe reference. Anyone?

Mental housecleaning

• Why do we say we're "losing our temper" when what we've actually lost is our patience. I typically know exactly where my temper is, and (to my chagrin) it's far too often on public display.
• Why is it that, when it comes to crossing a speed bump or pulling in to a parking garage, some of the prissiest people are the drivers of SUVs and pickup trucks? They creep over these smallish obstacles as if picking their way through a mine field. Ironically, the guys driving those ground-hugging riced-out street racers blast over the same obstacles without a second thought.
• I'm apparently heading into another of my spells where I can't get a decent night's sleep. Last night, I became desperate enough that I actually gave that beach visualization relaxation exercise another try. I managed not to step on any jellyfish or food packaging waste, and things were going along all right until I looked out to sea for the glowing orb.
  
  Fortunately, I spotted the tsunami in time to get to safer ground.
  
• A little something I swiped from The Gobhole Girl:

  Ten Top Trivia Tips about FooRider!

  1. FooRider will often rub up against people to lay his scent and mark his territory. It's a fair cop, but society's to blame.
     
  2. Banging your head against FooRider uses 150 calories an hour. But I wouldn't recommend it.
     
  3. FooRider cannot be detected by infrared cameras! 'Cause I'm such a cool guy.
     
  4. The most dangerous form of FooRider is the bicycle. I'm especially treacherous on wet pavement.
     
  5. In 1982 Time Magazine named FooRider its 'Man of the Year'. Only because everyone else was glued to the sofa watching MTV.
     
  6. If a snake is born with two heads, the heads will fight over who gets FooRider. This is not common occurrence, fortunately.
     
  7. FooRider can't sweat. Untrue. Ask my wife (or anyone who's ever drafted off me).
     
  8. The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armour raised their visors to reveal FooRider. It's actually more likely they were keeping an eye out for seagulls.
     
  9. Three seagulls flying overhead are a warning that FooRider is near! Seagulls... buzzards. Tomayto... tomahto.
     
  10. FooRider has only one weakness - the colour yellow! LiveStrong!
      

  I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem
• For a month now, we've been under watering restrictions due to the severe drought that's planted itself on Texas like a sumo wrestler's butt on a cafeteria chair. Which is to say "widespread and immovable".
  
  Once a week, on trash day, we're allowed to run our sprinklers for just long enough to keep our sickly yellowish-green lawns from spontaneously bursting into flame; and yet most mornings when I head out at the crack of dawn to embark upon my morning commute, the guy across the street has his system going full blast. The only theory I've been able to come up with to explain why the city hasn't come around and put a lock on his water meter is that he must have incriminating photographs of someone important at the North Texas Municipal Water District rubbing... elbows with Paris "The Ubiquitous Bimbo" Hilton.
  
  Or something.
  

Freitag

Auto-tagged by Tink:

Here are the instructions:
1. Choose a search engine (e.g. Google).
2. Pick 5 random blogfriends.
3. Think of a word or phrase that describes each friend (or use their blog name).
4. Do an image search of that word or phrase.

(I was feeling guilty about bandwidth theft, so I've only linked to the images, instead of embedding them on this page.)

Turtle (blog)

Tink (blog)

Susie (blog)

Gwynne (blog)

Eric (blog)

Wellness training

I attended a brown bag lunch thingy about stress management and personal wellness at work today. My hope was that there would be something in the program about how to cope with the annoyances that come from working in cubicles, but that sort of useful material was studiously avoided. Instead, there was a lot of perfectly good information about how to manage deadlines, how to let it go when someone is too preoccupied to say "good morning", etc.

Pointers that would be useful in a work environment that's not as dysfunctional and organizationally abstract as ours is.

As a parting gift, the speaker turned on a white noise machine that made sounds like ocean surf and sea birds. She told us to close our eyes and then led us through a visualization exercise in which we were walking down the beach in our bare feet, alone, completely at peace.

So there I was, walking down the beach, watching the waves—and I stepped on a stranded jellyfish. I muttered a curse, hopping around while rubbing my foot and trying to remember if dead washed-up jellyfish can sting, before losing my balance and falling face first in the sand.

"Now sit down in the sand. Wiggle your toes..."

Spitting salty grit, I sat up and started rooting my feet around in the sand. I promptly cut the ball of my foot on a half-buried Pringles top.

"...and look out across the water to the horizon. You see a warm glimmer of light, and as you watch it comes closer, closer... but you're not afraid."

What the...

"The glowing orb approaches you, and as it hovers over your ankles, you feel warmth."

Probably the blood spurting from my foot.

"Slowly, the orb makes its way up your legs toward—"

Whoa. Hold up, there. This was starting to sound just a little too much like some weird-ass Philip José Farmer novel.

That's when my visualization took a detour. I walked off the beach to my car, unloaded my bike, and rode away—leaving my stress, a dead jellyfish, and a bloody Pringles top behind.

Pop quiz

Since people insist on testing my patience, I didn't want to be left out. Or bored.

You Are 52% Cynical

Yes, you are cynical, but more than anything, you're a realist. You see what's screwed up in the world, but you also take time to remember what's right.

How Cynical Are You?

You Are 24% Sociopath

From time to time, you may be a bit troubled and a bit too charming for your own good. It's likely that you're not a sociopath... just quite smart and a bit out of the mainstream!

Are You A Sociopath?

Arms race

This year, for the first time, I've been following the Race Across America (RAAM)—a 3000-mile ultra-endurance bicycle race that starts in Oceanside, California, and ends in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I won't go into how that works, but if you're interested in some details, go check out RAAM 101.

So why the sudden interest? Well, at first it was because I caught wind that Jim Kern would be making his first solo attempt (as in "3000 miles, one set of legs, and nearly no sleep") on a Bacchetta recumbent bike. Things got more interesting when I learned that there was also a two-man recumbent team (Volae Wolf Pack), that a couple people from the BikeJournal.com forums would be riding on the Cyclonauts four-man team, and that a woman I know from the local cycling club would be riding as part of the JDRF four-person tandem team.

What I didn't expect was that I'd find myself rooting for the RC-Enjo Vorarlberg six-man handcycle team from Austria. At first, the notion of cranking a handcycle not much different than Turtle's through the desert, through the mountains, through the howling prairie winds—all day and all night—was quite enough to impress the hell out of me.

It wasn't enough for the RCV team, though. While Jim Kern succumbed to pulmonary edema and had to withdraw, while the Cyclonauts struggled with bad luck and mechanical problems, and while Team JDRF and the Wolf Pack fought to keep up, the Austrian handcycle team continued to crank right along. According to the official statistics, they have maintained an average of 12.77, as of their check-in to time station 44, in Circleville, OH.

Using just their arms.

Just think about that for a moment. Most of us have to sit down and rest if we have to pull the starter cord on our lawnmowers more than a few times.

Ride Report: Tour d'Italia (Italy, TX)

For a couple years, I've been hearing that Lone Star Cyclists' annual Tour d'Italia is one of the best-organized, most fun rides around, so Turtle and I were really looking forward to a day of small-town charm and scenery. Unfortunately, after 39 straight days without a drop of rain, the weather forecast for the day of the rally called for 60% chance of strong thunderstorms for the entire weekend. Turtle decided that although she wouldn't melt in the rain, she didn't want to risk the possibility of having to drive home in a downpour with our bikes exposed to the wind and rain.

So we went to plan B. Turtle would give this one a miss, and I would go ahead and give it a shot—but only if I could somehow manage to fit my bike inside my car.

After some experimentation, I discovered that, by removing the seat from my bike and sliding the passenger seat of my Civic foward a bit, I was able to fit the Corsa and all my crap in like a jigsaw puzzle and it would be protected from the elements.

On the way to Italy, the sky began to brighten. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds a couple times, and I thought of how disappointed Turtle would be if the weather turned out to be crying wolf (as it likes to do, in Texas) and she missed a sunny ride. But not to worry, because by the time I arrived at the high school for the start of the ride, it was sullen storm clouds as far as the eye could see.

But still no rain.

I was running late, so I ended up having to park a couple hundred yards from the registration area. By the time I'd walked there from my car, walked back to my car, assembled my bike, rode to the start, remembered that I'd forgotten to pin my bib number on my seat back, rode back to the car, rode back to the start—well, I didn't get to start with the main group.

And it had started to spit, but not much.

I headed out onto the route all by myself and decided that since I wasn't really going to be part of the group, I might as well hammer. Which, of course, meant that I caught up with all the really slow riders who had left a bit earlier. The promotional materials for Tour d'Italia claimed that all the routes but the 62-miler were flat, except for one good climb. Judging from the number of people I saw littering the rolling hills along the route, I wasn't the only one whose idea of "flat" differed from that of the ride organizers. Oh, there was nothing really vicious, but I was having a tough time keeping any momentum because of all the people who couldn't go on and simply stepped off their bikes to stand in the middle of the road while they sipped water and caught their breath.

I've never seen anything like it, especially in light of the fact that the route was out and back. There were riders coming the opposite direction, as well, with motorists driving down the middle of the road to avoid the idiot cyclists who refuse to keep to the side. I just want to scream at these people, because not only are they taking their own lives in their hands, but they're creating a lasting impression (read: "resentment") in the minds of drivers who will subsequently try to crush me under their wheels, despite every attempt I might personally make to follow the laws and be considerate of my fellow vehicles.

But I digress.

By a couple miles out, it had started to rain lightly, but I pressed on. By five miles, it was raining harder, and the pavement had changed from rough blacktop to worn, smooth blacktop that was collecting water into nice little puddles. By seven miles, riders coming from the opposite direction were urging everyone to turn around. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what they were saying. Some of it was lost in the rumbling of thunder.

I turned around and hammered back the way I'd come, sometimes as briskly as 32 mph down the rollers. In fact, I hammered right out from under the rain and on to dry pavement. I wavered but held to my decision all the way back to the car, where I disassembled my bike and had just placed the last piece of the packing puzzle when the sky opened up and poured cats and dogs and buckets of frogs.

15 miles with a 15.3 mph rolling average, and I didn't even get far enough into the ride to be able to tell you how the rest stops were. As I drove home in the rain, I took some comfort in the thought that my lawn would be getting a good watering, but as fate would have it, none of the storms ever made it as far north as our place.

Ah well. At least the T-shirts are kind of cool.

Ride Report: Collin Classic (McKinney, TX)

After last year's ride and the long stretches of large-aggregate chip seal I had to endure, I seriously considered giving this year's Collin Classic a miss. In fact, I had some serious doubt that it would survive the well-published complaints from participants, in the wake of last year's event. Not enough food and drink variety at the rest stops, some said. Others were enraged that they didn't get a t-shirt, despite the organizer's clear statement that only the first 1500 to sign up would be guaranteed shirts. Too hot. Too many hills.

Bleat. Whimper. Moan. We cyclists have become really spoiled—but that's another topic.

The point is that the organizer, instead of wasting energy getting defensive, really put in a lot of work addressing all concerns, whether reasonable or not. It showed, and I think it's safe to say that the Collin Classic has reclaimed its place as one of the premier rides in the area.

My ride

Turtle was signed up for the 22-mile route, and since I serve as her "pit crew" when she does a ride, I was still futzing around, waiting while she made her final preparations. But not to worry. One of the improvements for this year's rally was the more organized staging for the start. I was doing the 55-mile route, but because I didn't want to mass start on the recumbent amid tightly-packed upright bikes, I made my way to the rear of the 75-mile staging and went off with that group.

Picking my way through the pack. I get some strange looks on this thing. (photo courtesy of bicycle-stuff.com)

The first few miles were slow-paced, because we'd be warned there would be a number of turns. Traffic control was excellent, so even with the turns the pack started to space out pretty quickly. My only issue with this was that I kept getting hung up behind slower DF riders so that when we got into some rollers, I couldn't carry any momentum and had to work harder climbing.

I skipped the first rest stop, which came at about 8 miles (and made for a longish wait for the second one). With some much-needed breathing room, I was able to pick up the pace a bit and was soon rolling along at about 20mph. Before long, I caught up with a couple recumbent riders. Not long after that, we picked up a fourth, and we rode together in a little pack, chatting and getting a kick out of the DF riders' comments. The pack fell apart when we were climbing a steep hill, and a rider in front of me threw his chain. He panic stopped, which forced me to panic stop without time to downshift to my granny ring, which meant I had no chance of getting started again on the hill. So I walked it. Meanwhile, one of the other 'bent riders—a diabetic—took the opportunity stop and check his blood sugar. I didn't see any of them again until much farther down the road.

Once I got going again, I just rode my ride, looking around at the scenery, and trying to find a good compromise between passing as many DF riders on the hills as I could and saving my strength by keeping my average heart rate low. I ended up with an average of 84% maxHR and a maximum of 91% maxHR, but considering the heat (which indexed at 105 °F) and the amount of climbing I did, that seems pretty good.

It's certainly better than last year, when the heat nearly destroyed me and I dragged across the finish in my granny ring behind some 300-pounder on a mountain bike.

I didn't eat along the way, wanting the 2350 calories I burned to count toward the 10 pounds I've been trying (and failing) to lose since I started road cycling a year and a half ago. I did stop briefly at each stop after the first for a couple cups of PowerAde and some ice chips, which I loaded into my helmet vents to help keep my head cool.

You know what they say: "Cooler heads prevail."

And so it went. I had a great, challenging ride topped off at the finish with some bottled water and some soft tacos from Chipotle. The Corsa was a joy to ride out on the flats, and even with the climbing, I finished with a 16.6mph rolling average. That's close on the pace I've ridden hot, hilly routes in the past; however, while I don't feel like I left much out on the course, it didn't kick my butt and leave me wrecked for a couple days, as others have.

Yesterday was a good day.

Evil as an art form

My grandfather, when he was alive, was an avid observer of world events. He'd sit in his recliner, smoking a cigar, grunting or harrumphing occasionally, and take it all in.

The rule was that no one was allowed to talk to him during the evening news, except during commercials. Eventually, Wheel of Fortune would come on, and Grandpa would reach down to the side of his chair and flip the lever to drop the foot rest with a loud thunk. He'd then lean forward with his hands on his knees, sigh deeply and shake his head.

"I don't know what the world's coming to," he'd say, summing up all that he'd seen.

Maybe it's just a normal part of growing older, but I increasingly find this phrase running through my head when I look at the things going on around me. There are times, like this morning, when I even say it out loud.

I was reading today's offerings from Reuters, and this one caught me like a drop kick under the ribs:

April belongs to serial sex killer John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 young men and boys, while May is for Jeffrey Dahmer, who ate 17 men. June features Satanic worshiper and murderer Richard Ramirez.

The grisly 2007 Serial Killer Calendar produced by a Maine businessman depicts some of the world's most notorious murderers painted by "the vampire of Paris," Frenchman Nico Claux who himself served 7 years for murder.

Purple Inc., the Bangor, Maine-based company that produced and distributes the calendar in specialty retailers and the Internet, said initial response has been so strong that the company is planning a sequel and a line of posters.

"A lot of people are titillated by serial killers," said Lana Wachniak, a sociology professor and associate dean of Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

Link (Reuters)

"A lot of people are titillated by serial killers."

Now there's a thought to keep you awake at night and never ever let your children (or pets) out of your sight.

Look. I'm not as devout as I would like, don't read the Bible like I should, and am in general a very flawed creation. I admit it. But isn't this "titillation" just the sort of thing that's meant by "glamor of evil" when we renew our baptismal vows?

Do you reject the glamor of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?

Yes... and just to get off on the right foot, not only will I not be purchasing a serial killer calendar, but I won't even post a link to the company's web site. Frankly, I don't want my blog showing up in their referrer list.

The case is frequently made that each generation looks at the one succeeding it, shakes its collective head, and concludes that the world is going to hell in a handbasket—and that this is normal. Elvis (anagram: "evils". Hmm.) was evil in the eyes of my grandparents. KISS were evil in the eyes of my parents. Marilyn Manson is... well, he's certainly a sick little puppy. Just a matter of perspective.

But is it? Is it really? Bring me the 19^th century script for a musical comedy about the life and times of Jack the Ripper, and maybe I'll concede the point.

For now, though, it really feels to me like the "glamor of evil" is alive, well, and gaining ground.

Random Thursday

My well of inspiration seems to be suffering a drought of its own, so borrowing the Random Thursday concept from Eric, I offer the following misfires:

• I was listening to the radio on my way to work this morning, and the host was discussing one of Google's little in jokes with the news guy. You know: type in "failure", click "I'm feeling lucky", and up pops Dubya's bio at www.whitehouse.gov.
  
  I find this sort of joke a bit tiresome, but more because this sort of thing is just so 20^th century than because of an unswerving allegiance to President Bush.
  
  What I did find interesting was the news guy's observation about Bush's bio page. At the bottom, there's a link to the same bio En Español. Not Vietnamese, not French, and not whatever it is that the friendly guy at the corner 7-11 speaks. "Why just Spanish?", he wondered.
  
  "Because," I said to no one in particular, "the Vietnamese, Koreans, Pakistanis... all those folks bust their butts to learn English from pretty much the first moment after they step off the [metaphorical] boat."


• This month's search terms:
  
  c++ program for parking garage Technology is not a toy. Our parking garage doesn't have anything fancier than a card reader for opening the gate, and the blasted thing only works half the time. Adding computer logic to the mix could only end in sorrow.
  
  it's five o clock and just to keep our jobs, gotta find my way to the whistle , sounds of the morning, in my brain, while another day goes down the drain, Could you be more specific?
  
  finger goat colon coworker Could you be less specific? Or just go away?


• This morning, as I was heading out the door, Turtle warned me that she'd heard on the radio that there was a big wreck on the northbound side of my primary route to work. I thanked her for the information and promptly dragged it to my mental Recycle Bin (for you Mac users, that's the file deletion limbo where Windows accumulates all the deleted files for a second deletion when you're really, really, really sure you don't need it any more), because I was headed south.
  
  And yet, as I approached the location where the accident was reported to be, my progress was blocked by four entire lanes of bumper-to-bumper morons who, at the first sign of flashing lights, had slowed to a crawl in the perverse hope that they might catch a glimpse of someone's brains and teeth scattered across the road on the other side of the concrete barrier.
  
  Call me detached, but I figure that unless I'm in a position to help, the victims' situation is significantly less my business than getting to work is. If you want gore, go rent Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the meantime, eyes forward and full speed ahead.

Pachyderm in the pipes?

That's what we residents of Lower Cubeville have been treated to since about Thursday of last week, when the ductwork above us began thumping (all. day. long.) like it had something large and claustrophobic in it. Something that wanted out.

Or maybe tennis shoes in a dryer.

Starting yesterday, the maintenance guys began gathering. Walkie-talkies blaring unintelligibly, tool belts and trousers riding low (too low), they held a colloquium on the matter.

"SURE IS MAKIN' A RACKET," one shouted over the radio/badge of honor on his hip.

"YEP," another clarified.

"I THINK I KNOW WHAT IT IS," said a third, "BUT Y'ALL WON'T LIKE IT."

"WHAT?" asked the second.

"I SAID 'I THINK I KNOW WHA—'"

"NO," interrupted the third. "I MEAN 'WHAT IS IT?'"

"OH!"

...

"SO WHAT IS IT?"

"WELL," said the third, "I THINK THERE'S SOMETHIN' THUMPIN' IN THE DUCTWORK."

That was yesterday. Today, I feel like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day.

These caricatures characters must be paid by the hour. I'm pretty sure if I had a stepladder and a length of 2x4, I could have propped the section of duct that's flexing by now.

And there would be peace in Lower Cubeville.

I hear dead people

The Mona Lisa's smile may always remain a mystery, but it is now possible to hear what her voice would have sounded like, thanks to a Japanese acoustics expert.

Dr Matsumi Suzuki, who generally uses his skills to help with criminal investigations, measured the face and hands of Leonardo da Vinci's famous 16th century portrait to estimate her height and create a model of her skull.

"Once we have that, we can create a voice very similar to that of the person concerned," Suzuki told Reuters in an interview at his Tokyo office last week. "We have recreated the voices of a lot of famous people that were very close to the real thing and have been used in film dubbing."

Link (Reuters)

I'll admit to being a bit skeptical about how well this actually works, but it appeals to the same part of me that is alternately skeptical toward and fascinated by the various technologies depicted on TV shows like Bones and the 31 flavors of CSI.

It appeals to the part of me that wonders, while reading Mark Twain, what extra dimension his true voice might have added to his wit. When I read the Lincoln's Gettysburg address, I wonder... did he have a deep, authoritative voice like I always imagine? Or did he sound like Wally Cox?

Obviously, Suzuki would be unable to ascertain from bone structure such things the subject's regional accent, whether he whistled through his teeth when he pronounced the letter 's', and if she had an annoying nervous giggle; but it sure would be interesting to see if analysis of the cartoon version of The Tick pointed to Patrick Warburton.

Rolling along, singing a song

It's not called Singer-poor for nothing...

Out of Singapore's 20,000 taxis on the road, Jeffrey Tan's is arguably the most memorable.

Having put a hi-tech karaoke machine in his cab, customers are all together too happy to keep the metre running on their journeys with Tan.

Link (video)

Now that's what I'm talkin' about! We had some darned fine drivers during our cruise, but if this guy had been around instead of Moms Mabley the voodoo priestess, I'd have flagged him down quicker than you could say, "Hi... I'm Johnny Cash."

Which X-man are you?

As long as we're in quiz-taking mood, and in light of the fact that X-men: The Last Stand hits theaters today, I present yet another quiz:

Which X-Man Are You?

You are Cyclops! Strong-willed, disciplined, and an all-around good guy, you are probably the envy of most others around you. As Cyclops, you are committed to your family and lovers, even if you sometimes lose your patience. You will find best times with Colossus, with his sense of virtue, but will be at odds with Havok due to his insecurities.
Take this quiz!

This is most perturbatory, since Cyclops is probably my least favorite X-man of all time and because I've always considered myself to have a lot more in common with Nightcrawler.

The test must've been rigged. I demand a recount.

Daily tipple can bring health benefits

LONDON (Reuters) - Moderate drinking reduces the risk of heart disease but the beneficial effects of alcohol seem to work differently in men and women, Danish researchers said on Friday.

They found that for men drinking daily seems to have the biggest positive effect on health while in women the amount of alcohol consumed may have more of an impact.

"The risk of heart disease was lowest among men who drank every day," said Janne Tolstrup of the National Institute for Public Health in Copenhagen.

Link

It's okay, Sweetie; I have a prescription!

Now playing: Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Burn To Shine

Bejeweled

By popular and unpopular demand, The Object That Shall Not Be Named (and its solitary companion):

(Photo by Turtle)

Big Red Button

First of all, let me just clear the air* and admit that I still find this thingummy to be outrageously funny.

Don't ask me why; I don't have an answer.

On a more practical note, I wish someone would install a saucer-sized red button just inside the doorway of the men's room where I work.

I don't mean to say that I work in the men's room, though far be it from me to deny inspiration wherever it strikes. I just know that there are times when I walk through that door and wish there were a big red button I could slam with the palm of my hand. An alarm would sound, and the interior lighting would switch to red. The toxic atmosphere would be vented out of doors to share airspace with the smell of boiled goat colon, and a battery of atomisers would fill the air with the scent of oranges or clove. A sultry but kind feminine voice would then report when untainted oxygen had once more reached breathable levels.

Big Red Button. Good Thing™.


* Foreshadowing.

My brain has a stem

Turtle's always telling me that I think like a woman, and it was starting to give me a complex. So I took the test.

Your Brain is 40% Female, 60% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

I'm only 60% reassured. 65%, if you count the fact that the brain in the picture above looks to me like a woman's shapely bottom (Paging Dr. Rorschach... Dr. Rorschach to the admitting desk...).

We be back, mon

After seven busy, wonderful days spent cruising around the Caribbean, Turtle and I are back to real life and the pile of work that accumulated in our absence.

Until I get my pile shoveled down to a reasonable height, I won't have much time to post, but here's the trip in a nutshell (click here for some pictures):

13 May

Flew down to Miami a day early so that we could spend an evening with my old college pal, The Buckethead. Got to know the desk clerks at the hotel and had an odd but not-unusual (for me) discussion about why many native Spanish speakers are reluctant to say the words "South Beach", instead tending to just say "South..." and then waving a hand as if to pantomime the ellipsis.

Coincidentally, it hadn't been more than half an hour since a conversation Turtle and I had over lunch, during which I related how my Cuban-born high school Spanish teacher wouldn't say "beach" in front of the class. I assume her reasons were similar to the desk clerk's.

14 May

Hit the continental breakfast and learned the truth of recent news articles about Chinese rudeness. Caught the airport shuttle back to the airport where we caught the cruise line shuttle to the ship. We arrived in plenty of time to embark, check out our spacious balcony stateroom, and find where the 24-hour pizza window was before our friends the M&Ms arrived. Later, the ship set sail and the reggae music began. After dinner, we and the M&Ms went to check out the karaoke show and were underwhelmed with the emcee.

15 May

Up bright and early (daily habits die hard) for breakfast and to pick up my rented tux (we have pictures; be patient). Began noticing that

1. My fears that I might not be classy enough or well-dressed enough for a cruise were entirely unfounded.
2. The bulk of Americans sure are fat. (No pun intended)
3. The ocean really is an incredible, deep shade of blue.

In the evening, we and the M&Ms took in the Vegas-style revue and, while I'm generally in favor of thongs, I completely failed in my attempts to understand their relationship to this particular performance.

16 May

First stop: San Juan, Puerto Rico. We didn't get into port until evening, so this was a quick one, but we did get to visit old San Juan and explore the old fort for a bit. With the M&Ms, we grabbed dinner in San Juan at the (infamous) Señor Frog's. Later, went for karaoke again and found the emcee drunk and unprofessional. She proudly proclaimed that she'd spent the last five hours at Señor Frog's, so no wonder. We didn't see her there, but she was probably on the floor giving body shots.

17 May

Up early for breakfast. Spent some time planning the next day's excursion and then debarked to Phillipsburg for our day on St. Maarten/St. Martin. Had a great tour guide—a shorter, slightly more Caribbean brother to Jamie Fox, named Dennis—and really enjoyed seeing the sights. Did a bit of shopping but only bought a couple small souvenirs.

18 May

Up early for breakfast because we had to clear immigration before debarking for our day on St. Thomas. I was disappointed that I didn't get a stamp for my shiny almost-new passport.

Compared with St. Maarten, St. Thomas looked very American, what with all the U.S. automobiles and fast food chains. Unlike St. Maarten, however, all those American cars were driving on the left side of the road, which felt really weird for the first 15 minutes or so. Was humbled by the thought of bicycling on the island, with its very hilly, curvy, narrow roads.

Did some serious jewelry shopping this time out and came away with a new diamond-encrusted wedding band for Turtle.

Found a wristwatch styled like the one I've been seeing in my mind's eye, but it had an 18k gold case and cost $4500. None for me, thanks; I just recently dropped a couple grand on a recumbent bike.

19 May

A day at sea. Turtle and the M&Ms wanted to bake in the sun, so I took the opportunity to find a shady spot on a deck along the side of the ship, where I plopped my butt down in a lounge chair to sip iced tea, read my novel, and nap while looking out over the ocean. Greatness.

20 May

Another day at sea. Up early for breakfast and to return my tux. Bummed around the ship all day, then at dinner said our goodbyes to Claudia and Carlos, our waiters for the week. They called us their family, and we tipped them.

Karaoke again, this time with a sparse crowd. Guess the word got around about the emcee (or perhaps the fact that I'd be singing). Sang three times because... well, hardly anyone else was signing up.

21 May

Up early to grab some breakfast and prepare for debarkation. Caught the shuttle to the airport, checked the bags, and then enjoyed some good hearty Miami airport TSA attitude and just short of a cavity search—which would have been fruitless, since I had bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Everyone knows that it's against the law to bring fruit into the U.S. from out of country.

Sat at the gate with the M&Ms until time for our flight. Got home and "endured" much rubbing and snuggling from our furry dependants.

It was a great trip, and we're already trying to figure out when we can afford to go again!

There's no "I" in team

...so I'm going this one solo.

I wasn't tagged with this meme, but I saw it over on Fire Ant Gazette and thought it looked like more fun than trying to come up with something original.

• I AM the firstborn among my siblings, and I have the neuroses to prove it.
• I WANT enough money to live comfortably but not so much that I have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to manage it.
• I WISH my coworkers were equipped with a mute button.
• I HATE waking up 10 minutes before the alarm is going to go off.
• I MISS the toilet bowl, sometimes.
• I HEAR the neighbor kids outside, screaming like they're being skinned alive and having a ball.
• I WONDER what it would be like to be over 6' tall and whether God really has a beard.
• I REGRET all of the harsh words I've ever spoken to my wife and my parents. And I regret my fear of taking risks.
• I AM NOT as pedantic in real life as I seem in text. In real life, I'm much worse.
  
• I DANCE only when the alternative is death by midget cannibals.
• I CRY only around my wife, and then I'm embarrassed about it.
• I AM NOT ALWAYS in a bad mood.
• I MAKE WITH MY HANDS strange, mystic sigils in the air to reinforce otherwise indecipherable monologue.
• I WRITE things pretty much the way they spill out of my brain.
• I CONFUSE Samuel L. Jackson with Lawrence Fishburn, sometimes, but not because I can't tell them apart.
  
• I NEED a vacation.
• I SHOULD learn to keep my mouth shut and listen, and not be That Guy.
  
• I START to fall asleep by around 10pm every night, regardless of whether I have to get up early in the morning or not.
• I FINISH about 70% of the sentences I
• I TAG Neil Gaiman, Turtle, Tink, and Leadfoot.
  

Eye opener

Ever since that whole cancer thing a few years ago, I've a tendency to be a bit anxious about the various small, unexplained pains and anatomical anomalies that we all experience from time to time. Lately, the focus of my hypochondria has been my eyes.

No pun intended.

I'm extremely nearsighted*, and the last time I went to an optometrist he informed me that, as a consequence of this, my eye pressure was quite high and should be closely watched. He said that if I ever felt any shooting pains in my eyes, I should immediately go to the nearest optometrist as this was a sign that my retinas were separating from my eyeballs. Further, he stressed the importance of coming in for a checkup at least once a year.

That was over three years ago, so when I started occasionally getting short, sharp pains in my eyes, I started thinking about finally getting around to finding a new eye doctor to go with our new town. And yet I kept putting if off, because the word "glaucoma" had got pretty firmly lodged in the back of my mind and I didn't want to risk having that confirmed before Turtle's and my big vacation.

Not knowing about any of this, Turtle scheduled me an appointment with an opthalmologist.

So I went, remembering that the last time I went to an actual eye doctor—as opposed to a vendor of prescriptive lenses with a license to prescribe them—I passed out. Something about the whole process of numbing and dilating the eyes and pressing some sort of sci-fi blue light against my eyeballs makes me squeamish. When I get squeamish, my blood pressure drops (and so do I).

When I arrived at the doctor's office, I warned them of my swoonish tendencies. They told me to warn the doctor when I was called in for my exam. I told the doctor. The doctor told me to try not to hit my head if I passed out.

What a stitch, this guy. [click-click. BOOM!]

A couple things happened, and one didn't. I learned that my previous eye "doctor" should have been selling shoes, because I do not have glaucoma or even high eye pressure. I also learned that because of the shape of my eyeball cup (or something), my risk of ever having those problems was minute.

And I didn't pass out from the pressure test.

But wait! Having got my pressure test out of the way, I still had to go through the whole dilation process, at which point I learned something else that's useful to know: it's the sensation of my pupils dilating that makes me queasy, not the blue light. Seated safely in the staging area, I put my head between my knees and fought through it without incident.

It would have been really embarrassing if I'd passed out in front of the elderly lady with the drool running down her chin.

Finally, I was finished and, much relieved about the results of my checkup, I ventured outside and gave thanks to my Maker that my appointment had been scheduled on a very cloudy day. Though I was squinting even with my sunglasses on, I decided it wouldn't hurt anything to stop by the bike shop to pick up a few tubes (since I'd given away my spare).

At the bike shop, I had great fun showing my freaky eyes to a couple of the staffers with whom I've become friends.

"Holy crap," one of them said. "They're all black! You look like that one guy from Carnivàle. Or... or..."

"One of the tar alien-infected characters from The X-files?"

"Yeah. Or like that."

Unfortunately, half an hour was plenty of time for my luck to run out. By the time I left, it was a beautiful, horrible sunny day out.

Oh yeah... and I need bifocals.


* There is a space of about two inches, about six inches from my eyes, within which I can see clearly without corrective lenses. We're talking somewhere north of 20/1200. Yet every time I go to an eye doctor, he or she confiscates my glasses and asks me to read the chart waaaaaayyy down at the far end of the room.

"Can you read any of that, Mr. Mafoo?"

"Gee, I don't know," I say, not at all sarcastically. "Can you give me a hint? Like, say, turning my head generally in the direction of whatever it is I'm supposed to be reading?"

$20

I'm not usually big on inspirational chain letters and the like, but I received this one from my sister today and felt it was worth sharing:

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?"

Hands started going up.

He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.

He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.

He then asked, "Who still wants it?"

Still the hands were up in the air.

Well, he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.

"Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air. My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.

"Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.

"But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.

"Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who do love you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by who we are.

"You are special- Don't ever forget it."

Ride report: Wrong way, Feldman

At the urging of CliffyB and FlyingLaZBoy—both friends and fellow BikeJournal members—I made plans to do the Greater Dallas Bicyclists' Airport Ride. The previous weekend, I logged a 37-miler on my new bike, and the 50-mile Airport Ride would be a new landmark. It would also be the greatest distance I'd ridden at one swat since last year's Peach Pedal rally, when I rode 54 miles (and nearly caught a dose of heat exhaustion).

I showed up at the start point at 8:00am, watching the skies for signs that the ride might fall on the wrong side of the predicted 50% chance of thunderstorms. As I got out of the car, a young woman came over and introduced herself as Mary Beth. She seemed relieved that someone else had shown up but was concerned that there weren't more riders there yet. I explained that people didn't usually arrive in force until about 15 minutes before the ride.

Sure enough, by a few minutes before the 8:30 start, there were about 10 of us geared up (get it? geared? bikes? oh, never mind...) and ready to go. And that's when the trouble started. One of the guys I know from GDB came over and explained that our ride leader had changed the start time for the ride to an hour later. Knowing that the later we started, the greater the odds of getting caught in the storms that were predicted in the early afternoon, we eyed the skies.

Mistake 1: One of the riders—a gentle giant of a man, named Dave—said he knew the route and offered to lead anyone who wanted to go ahead and leave at 8:30. Five of us, including CliffyB and Mary Beth, took him up on it. No sign of FlyingLaZBoy.

Our ride went smoothly enough for about 18 miles, when we reached the 7-11 that's the customary first rest stop. One woman who had been lagging behind for most of the ride hadn't arrived yet, so we waited. And waited. And finally her husband's phone rang. She'd ridden across a bad expansion joint and pinch-flatted both her tires. She only had one spare tube, and being the only other person in the group with 650c tires, I surrendered my only spare. It seemed like a bad idea, because if I flatted, I'd be stranded. But I did it anyway.

Note to self: Toss a patch kit in the seat bag.

Dave the Gentle Giant rode back with my tube and to help with the tire change. After 15 minutes or so, there was another phone call. Something was wrong with the rim, and they'd punctured one of the spare tubes. The woman's husband was riding back to get the car, and Dave needed to turn around and head back because of other time commitments.

Mistake 2: Mary Beth and I allowed CliffyB to convince us that we'd have no problem finding our own way along the rest of the route. This turned out not to be the case, but after some false turns and backtracking, we did manage to get on the loop around the airport.

Between the time spent waiting for the flat tire situation to play out and the time spent trying to get unlost, we met up with the bulk of the club group, who had waited for the 9:30 start. They were headed in the opposite direction on the loop.

FlyingLaZBoy, riding at the head of the group, saw me and started digging for his camera. In his hurry to snap a picture (at right), he dropped something on the ground and didn't seem to notice.

I hope it wasn't his wallet.

Foo: "Hey Cliffy! C'mon, let's turn around and let them lead us out!"
CliffyB: "Nah... we'll just meet them coming around the loop."

Mistake 3: We never saw the group again.

By this time, Mary Beth was starting to run out of gas. As fit as she was and as game as she was, she'd only been cycling for a month, and all the extra miles we were logging had started to take her away from her happy place.

Finally, we got back to a point where we could retrace our route home and stopped at a filling station for necessary breaks and water.

CliffyB: "Man, we should have turned around and followed the group. I was waiting for you to talk me into it."
Foo: "What? I tried."
CliffyB: "You should have tried harder."
...
Foo: "Why you...! Dude. Just walk away."

As we got back under way, poor Mary Beth was obviously suffering. I could see that she was spinning smaller and smaller gears and still laboring, so I fell back to ride with her and tell her incredibly boring stories. I figured that if she was focused on how badly she wished I'd just shut up, maybe she wouldn't be thinking about her overworked legs.

Finally, within smelling distance of the barn (so to speak), we got turned around in some labyrinthine neighborhood and I'd had enough. While CliffyB blazed onward, I stopped and flagged down a homeowner on his riding lawnmower.

John Deere: "What can ah do for y'all?"
Foo: "This is a little embarrassing, but we seem to be trapped in your neighborhood."
John Deere: "Trapped, y'say."
Foo: "Yes. We're trying to get to the Preston-Forest shopping center. I know we're close but we seem to be going in circles."

Oh, he got a big kick out of that, but he got us out of the neighborood. Six hours after we'd started out, we rolled back into the shopping center parking lot. Mary Beth was so overjoyed to see her car that she hugged me, and I thought she might weep for joy.

Our 50-mile ride had stretched to 68.5 miles, and I logged my first metric century of the year. I've dubbed this one the Wrong Way Feldman Epic.

But lest my account give anyone the idea that I was miserable (aside from not caring for the feeling of being an Israelite lost in the wilderness), I wasn't. If it sounds like I'm P.O.'ed at Cliffy, I'm not.

This, my longest ride to date, could have gone more smoothly, but at the end of it I wasn't wiped out. At the risk of becoming repetitive, none of my body parts was screaming in agony, as had been the case on more than a few occasions when I rode my Trek 1500 in rallies over shorter distances. My quads and gluts were feeling a little wrung out, naturally, and my right knee was feeling a little tweaked. Minor complaints, considering I'd just ridden farther than my longest previous distance.

It's a disgusting world out there

Two stories have made me think that my encounter with dirty plasticware may be the least of my worries.

I'll have mine from the bottle, thanks

Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.

According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.

Link

News-wise, we seem to be scraping the bottom of... the...

I'm sorry, but I can't say it. That would be cheap.

Even for me.

Note: Bret rightly points out that this article sounds suspiciously like an urban legend that has been documented over on Snopes.com. I'm not sure which I find funnier: the possibility that the Hungarian story is true, or the possibility that some fact checker at Reuters got snookered.

黏 液*

Beijing has launched a campaign to make its citizens more "civil" in the run-up to hosting the 2008 Olympics. Games organizers have repeatedly said the city needs to teach its people to stand in line, stop spitting and littering and generally be better mannered.

Past efforts to stamp out the spitting habit, like a 2003 campaign to help curb the spread of SARS, have not been very effective, partly because many people believe clearing the lungs and firing away is good for your health.

Link

This ties in to Bret's recent posting, over on Random Walk. Frankly, I think China's just positioning itself to sell a lot of rain ponchos during the Beijing Olympics.

* The Chinese characters for "mucus".

Now playing: The Hives, Veni Vidi Vicious

Open letter

To my esteemed coworkers,

If I ever find out which one of you returned your Spaghetti-Os stained spoon to the box of clean plastic spoons in the break room, I will throw you out the nearest window.

If you do this when the bird flu hits, I will throw you out a window, retrieve you, drag you by one ankle up the stairs, and throw you out again.

Kindest regards,
Grossed Out In Cubeville

Message for you, suh!

I don't like spam.

[ENTER vikings]

VIKINGS: (low, building) Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam...

That said, every once in a while something lands in my e-mail box that's so pathetic... so polite... so out there... that it's worth a moment, if for amusement purposes only.

Subject :_ ENQUIRY

DEAR SIR,

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We also ensure that the orders are shipped on time and received by the customers on time. We believe in long term relationship with our customers and their satisfaction to the fullest. We also welcome small orders. Give us a chance and you will never approach any other manufacturer which is a guarantee, be it on the terms of quality or price. Awaiting your valuable reply.

Regards, Muhammad Amjad
Customer Service Team

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As if.

VIKINGS: (quite loud now, insistent) SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! SPAM!
FOO: SHAAADDAAAP!!!

[vikings EXEUNT]

Madre, May 1?

So here we are. The first day of May... Uno de Mayo. The day when those who support illegal immigration to the United States say they're going to knock its citizens off our high horse. They claim they're going to shut the economy down and show us that we can't possibly live without them.

Maybe they will; maybe they won't. Maybe we can't... but maybe we can.

Stage set. Moving along.

Before going out for Saturday's bike ride, I was flipping around the morning news programs and came across some cabeza que habla delivering his dire warning about the crushing blow his group planned to deliver to the U.S. economy on May 1.

I have to tell you, it got me stirred up and feeling patriotic. It made me feel like waving around my flag, so I trotted out the Iron Eagle jersey.

After my bike ride, I stopped by Schlotsky's Deli to pick up some lunch. While I was standing at the pick-up window, waiting for my food, the young man who was slicing and wrapping the sandwiches on the other side of the counter eyed my attire.

I'm used to this, of course. A middle-aged guy in brightly-colored, form-fitting lycra should be considered a source of some amusement.

"Hey," he said, giving me the chin jerk. "That's a really cool shirt, man."

"Thanks," I said. "I was feeling patriotic this morning."

In response, one of the women working nearby turned to a couple of her co-workers with a smirk and fired off a machine gun burst of Spanish that may or may not have included the word "gringo".

"Yeah," I continued, "as a citizen of the United States, I have the right—no... the duty—to express my allegiance as I see fit."

And if that means strutting around a sandwich shop looking like a chubby, sawn-off Captain America knockoff, then so be it.