A samurai in a latrine; outside, his three attendants hold their noses. Colored woodcut by Hokusai, 1834. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Thanks to one and all for standing guard outside my little shithouse this week.
I was called to jury duty again, and this time they actually required me to do something other than show up and wish I were elsewhere, running or riding a bike.
The judge sprung us Thursday afternoon, and though yesterday was my last official day in the three-week-long jury-selection barrel, I knew I would not get hauled in again. So I went for a leisurely 5K run. Today I’ll ride a bike.
And sometime later I will have some thoughts about my four days as a juror. Though Roy Blount Jr. beat me to a few of them in his essay “I Always Plead Guilty,” from the collection “What Men Don’t Tell Women.”
Especially when he wrote: “Fucking up also comes from doing things that deep down inside you know better than.”
Why is a Steelman Eurocross better than a BMW 7 Series?
Well, for openers, it’s a Steelman Eurocross. And you can’t just slide on down to your local Steelman dealer and drive one off the lot, because Brent Steelman isn’t making them any longer.
Even if you could, its touchscreen wouldn’t be showing you an ad for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” the instant you climbed aboard, which BMWs are doing. My Steelman Eurocrosses ain’t got no steekeeng touchscreens. Oh, sure, they share an ancient Cateye Velo 8, but it doesn’t say shit to me because it saw what I did to Herself’s sportswatch with a claw hammer when the fucker started beeping and wouldn’t shut the hell up.
I knew this day was coming the first time I pulled into a gas station for a tank of the cheap stuff and the pump started shrieking advertising bullshit at me. I nearly drove off right then and there, but I was running on fumes, and figured that if one station was doing it, they all were.
And they all are.
The Eurocross “touchscreen.” One button, no Spider-Men.
So, guess what? If six-figure BMW 7 Series sedans are inflicting advertisements upon their owners — and nobody at BMW gets fed feet first into a wood chipper over it — your $24K Kia Shitbox will soon be pitching Happy Meals, weight-loss programs, and boner pills at you.
My 2005 Subaru Forester? Not so much. The only screen in that sucker is the windscreen, as the Brits call it. The clear one I look through to see where in the hell is it that I’m going.
This is absolutely insane, especially for cars that people own. If you own a car and an ad is shown in your car, you should get paid for the ad. And you should need to agree to it first. BMW is supposed to be a luxury brand, and one meant for driving enthusiasts. This is so absurd it’s hard to believe it’s real.
Well, the good news is, I won’t need fenders and a rain jacket for the ride downtown to collect my Subie from the shop.
The better news is, it is raining.
Reincarnation (the shop, not my hope for higher rebirth) just texted to say the old bucket of bolts is still deep into its semiannual wellness check and won’t be ready to come home until tomorrow.
It should go without saying that I had just pulled a fendered Soma Saga off its hook, aired up the tires, and lubed the chain.
But no matter. That needed doing anyway. And I got a couple hours of saddle time in this morning when it was still windless, cool, and dry, noodling home from the shop on the fenderless Soma Double Cross.
Besides, I may need the Saga tomorrow. The weather wizards are calling for a 70 percent chance of rain.
Half-stepping: checked only two gas stations instead of four today.
Can you feel the savings? The economy roaring?
During my errands this morning I noticed a gas station on Montgomery rocking the $3.99, so when I slipped out for a short bike ride later in the day I checked half of my usual suspects and they were as you see — up a dime since March 14, and up 40 cents or better since March 10.
I’d expect to see some even steeper prices at 7-Eleven directly. 7-Eleven Inc. may have its headquarters in Irvine, Texas, but it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Seven-Eleven Japan, and I can’t imagine Corporate found Cadet Bonespurs’ little jape about Pearl Harbor a real knee-slapper.
Hell, I do this a couple times a year. Drop the Subie downtown for a little love at Reincarnation, ride a bike back to El Rancho Pendejo. Repeat in reverse to collect the old warhorse and drive ’er home. Ain’t no thang.
Except Tuesday, it kinda was.
God damn, but it was cold.
I had been expecting a temp in the low 30s, which for some reason sounds a lot warmer than high 20s, which is what it was. So I wore a jacket over a long-sleeved jersey over a long-sleeved base layer, tights over bibs, wool socks, cold-weather shoes and gloves, and tuque.
Wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. And I knew it at 9 a.m., a half-block into the 14-mile ride home.
O, lawd, I will never be smart. I had Buff neckwear, beefier tights, an old balaclava, and an even older pair of sure-’nough winter gloves … and they were all in a drawer back at the Rancho.
“Well,” I thought, “at least it’s all uphill.” And so it was, 1,200 feet of up, not including a long stretch of that fabled “invisible hill,” which is to say a damp, bitter wind out of the NNW and straight into Your Humble Narrator’s chattering choppers.
Whoever coined the phrase “What can’t be cured must be endured” was probably not thinking about stupidity. But I was as I grumbled my way up the North Diversion Channel Trail, whenever possible sitting bolt upright with hands tucked into armpits.
At Montgomery I came upon a street person’s smallish campfire underneath the bridge. I couldn’t decide whether to report him or join him. So I did neither. Onward!
By the Arroyo del Oso Golf Course, with six miles to go, I had gained some altitude, caught a soupçon of sun, and warmed up just a bit … so much so that I began contemplating some extra-credit stupidity, to wit, leaving the pavement at Juan Tabo for the trails that wind through Bear Canyon Open Space to the Embudito trailhead.
Now, in my defense, we’re talking extremely non-technical trails here, and I was on the Soma Double Cross with its 42mm knobbies. Easy breezy like a cover girl! Assuming she were properly dressed for conditions and had a pro mechanic to get her rolling again in 30 seconds after a puncture.
I, on the other hand, was dressed for conditions that existed only in my head, which was up my arse as per usual. I would be fixing my own flat with half-frozen fingers, only 80 percent of which are fully functional when warm. It would take longer than 30 seconds. Finally, there was the absolute certainty of some rapid evaporative cooling on the 1.5-mile paved descent from the trailhead to the Rancho.
So for a change I did the smart thing: took the pavement home, slammed a steaming mug of tea, and spent way too much time in a hot shower. Around 3:30 I got back on the bike and zipped down to fetch the Subie. Didn’t even need the jacket for the return trip. Ah, the desert Southwest, with its 30-degree temperature swings.
This is hardly the stuff of legend, or even unpaid bloggery. There was a time when I would drive for hours in much worse weather just to race bicycles in it, then tidy up at the car wash afterward. But that was when I was a man — a slightly better insulated man — instead of whatever it is I am now.
Plus my auto mechanic was only 14 minutes away by bike. Sometimes I’d just run home.
Mad Blog Media 