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.”
“Some poor unsuspecting person is going to trip and fall into that stuff and become a @Marvel supervillain.” — a commenter unearthed by Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place.
Actually, it’s too late for that: Marvel Comics already has the Green Goblin, one of Spider-Man’s earliest adversaries. Dude experimented on himself with an unstable chemical and developed an alternate, evil personality that became the president of the United States — twice.
OK, so I made that last part up. But it would explain a lot.
Somehow I’ve managed to bollix my back again, possibly the upshot of doing a wee bit too much of what’s supposed to be fun and good for me.
P’raps at my advanced and ever-accelerating state of disintegration it’s not smart to follow a 120-mile week with a few days of caroming various cyclocross bikes and a rigid mid-Nineties 26er off rocks in various calibers while rolling the foothills trails? Plus a trail run and adding a couple elbees to the ol’ dumbbells, like a dumbbell?
Well … you know what we say about “smart” and Your Humble Narrator — rarely seen together, like Clark Kent and Superman, and without all that useful Kryptonian super-strength and invulnerability, too.
Anyway, shit took me right out of the game. I never know precisely what triggers this old injury, acquired in college while delivering appliances for beer money. And there’s no curing it, not since we headed south from Bibleburg and my miracle worker Doc Lori took that long road west.
So when it pops round like the taxman, a cold-calling insert-your-home-improvement-project-here rep’, or a chirpy acolyte of the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, I just wait it out. No sudden movements, no heavy lifting, and definitely no bicycling. A little gentle stretching, a few equally gentle walks, spasms working their way up and down the carcass looking for structural weaknesses, and, inevitably, finding them.
A severely restricted news diet is a must as well. Ping-ponging between the hysterical laughter of disbelief at the countless teensy weenies being so fiercely trodden upon and a shrieking “Follow Me Up to Carlow” rage (up with halberds, out with swords, etc.) is not a balm for the slowly recovering organism.
Thus the lack of recent bloggery. I’m feeling much better now, thanks. Though I can’t remember where I parked my halberd, goddamnit. ’Twas a nice Rivendell model too.
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.
God of War Henery “Pistol Pete” Hegseth (major, National Guard, ret.). Apologies to Chuck Jones/Warner Bros.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and God of War Henery “Pistol Pete” Hegseth is no exception.
Left unsatisfied by (and roundly criticized for) sinking small craft in America’s Oceans® — including a double-tap that finished off a couple survivors of one such strike — the retired National Guard major and Faux News foghorn set out after bigger game.
Not that he’s taking the credit for that particular kill, mind you.
Writes Stars and Stripes:
“Secretary [Pete] Hegseth authorized Adm. [Frank M.] Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority, and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
The buck stops where? Tell you what, grunt — uh, pardon me, admiral, sir — you don’t want to be on duty when that particular dollar lands in your lap.
Just ask Herbert “Spermwhale” Whalen, a major in the U.S. Air Force Reserve who flew in World War II and Korea before joining the Los Angeles Police Department. Speaking of a superior officer in Joe Wambaugh’s novel “The Choirboys,” the burly street cop observed:
“I always knew he was behind us. I felt him there many times.”
Mad Blog Media 