further signs my Buddhist mind control is working - the singing lobster, in person

My manager, who I still dislike after spending two days in person with him, gave everyone on his team calendars that he had made at shutterfly using photos he's taken over the years. I guess that was a nice idea. I'm trying to not be insulted that he gave everyone else (guys) calendars with hiking themes, and I got a calendar called "sunrises and sunsets". To be honest I do like sunrises and sunsets (perhaps an indication that some of my thoughts are leaking into my manager's head? let's hope not!). Well, the insult wasn't so much the theme of the calendar but his surprise that I had done almost all of the hikes that he put in the guys' calendars. As if women don't hike...

Anyway, I was flipping through my calendar, and most of the pictures were taken at the beach. And at the bottom of the square date boxes on the calendar, for every beach picture, he included a little graphic. For his birth month, he included this graphic:

SERIOUSLY!!!!!!! I know you won't believe me, but that is the EXACT mental picture I had of the giant singing lobster

He made the calendars THE DAY AFTER I implemented the giant singing lobster plan (I asked him, pretending that I wanted to make a calendar). And it was only while trying to figure out the significance of the month the lobster appeared on (with the help of my admin) that I found out it was his birth month (everyone in my group gets cake or whatever on their birthday).

Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not.

Any Buddhists with ideas of what this means should feel free to let me know.

rats! delays!

First, may I say to Southwest, just schedule the 8:30 Oakland to Denver flight for 8:55 PM since the flight is ALWAYS delayed.

I had an odder than usual "adventure" flying home last night from Oakland. The flight was late, as usual. But there were only 47 of us on the flight (which is funny, because I was A47 so figured I'd be last on the plane but there were some B and C boarding passes - WTF?) We boarded by 8:50 but a baggage truck pulled up around then to load some boxes (assume this is because the flight only had 47 people on it so they had room for extra cargo). I was sitting at a window seat and watched the baggage guys SLOWLY load the boxes. Seriously, it took them 19 minutes (I timed them) to load 30 boxes (I counted them). Then we got out on the runway but had to wait for 3 planes to land.

Also, I had made the mistake of sitting in the "creepy consultant" area of the plane.That's the area where all the middle age guys in suits with expensive watches and little briefcases sit. It is to be avoided at all costs, but I guess I was tired and not thinking. 

The guy sitting in the aisle seat kept trying to offer me drink tickets (as if I've never been on a plane before and would be impressed he had so many drink tickets he would give them away to strangers) while also bragging loudly to his colleague seated across from him and in front of him about some great deal they did. They were high fiving each other and generally being obnoxious. 

And then they complained to the stewardess about the box loading guys, as if she could do anything to make them go faster. And of course they had to flirt with her and ask personal questions. I felt bad for her. 

We finally left the runway after waiting for 3 planes to land (20 minutes) and I put in my headphones and ignored the creepy consultants (I LOVE the this american life phone app) until the creepy consultant sitting in front of me (in a row all to himself) leaned over the back of his seat and said "would you mind if I put my head in your lap?" I gave him my asperger's stare until he sat back down. He moved to the seat in front of me and reclined his chair all the way back. I would have called him an asshole but I'm still working on my Buddhist thing.

We got into Denver at 12:32 am and I ran to the train (they only run every 10 minutes when you fly in after 11:30 pm) to get to the main terminal (you can't walk from C gate, which is where I was). The trains arrive in a hall like area, with a train potentially showing up on either side of the hall. 

A train showed up right away but after I boarded it the lights went out and a computer train voice said "this train is out of service". So I crossed over to the other side of the hall and another train showed up about 2 minutes later. Everyone got on it and then the lights went out again and the voice said "this train is out of service". So we crossed back to the other side of the hall and finally a train showed up and we got to the main terminal. I would add the train was going so slow in the tunnel that all of us in the car started laughing because it seemed like the stupid train was trying to prevent us from ever getting to the main terminal. One guy even said he was going to get out of the train because it would be faster to walk.

To complete this bizarre experience, as I was leaving the parking area I got stuck behind a bunch of construction trucks going 10 miles an hour. They were blocking both lanes. I have NO idea what they were doing besides causing a traffic jam.

Finally got home at 1:45 this morning. 



 

melatonin nightmares

It's that time of year where the weather gets cold and my zombie knee starts hurting. My brother Bob recommended I try melatonin as a natural sleep aid to help me sleep through the night (normally I wake up 3 or 4 times a night because my knee hurts), and it works. Except he forgot to tell me that one side effect is weird nightmares.

The other night I had a dream that an ex boyfriend invited me to go look at houses with him. He was going to buy a new house and had narrowed the decision down to two houses. The first house was really narrow with no windows and these weird boxy rooms that I could barely fit into. It was like a house made out of small cardboard boxes. After climbing into three rooms I felt claustrophobic and was like "this house sucks!"

The second house he took me to was a lot like his real house, except that it had a more open floor plan. I was like "yeah, this seems like a nice house" but then we got into the living room and there was a green microfiber sofa sitting in the middle of the room. There was no other furniture in the house. I thought it was odd that the sofa was there.

Then my ex sat down on the sofa and I noticed there were two dead bodies, both guys in their 20s, stuffed under the sofa cushions. As my ex shuffled around on the cushions to get more comfortable on the sofa the arm of one of the dead bodies fell out from between the cushions and was hanging down the side of the sofa. I was like "oh my god! there are dead bodies in the house!" and my ex was like "what are you talking about?" For some reason he couldn't see the dead bodies. Then he reached between the back of the sofa and the cushions and pulled out a snickers bar and started eating it. I was like "that snicker's bar belongs to one of the dead guys! I hate this house and want to leave now!"

Then I realized my ex was going to kill me and stuff me in the sofa with the other dead bodies.

Then I woke up. I haven't taken melatonin since.

thanksgiving project

Every time I go to my parents' house there's always some project that has to be done. This thanksgiving the project was finishing the attic. My brothers put up paneling and built some shelves. I helped my brother Steve build a box around some piping that my dad didn't want exposed. It took us almost a day but it looked pretty good:

I love that ladder, it's at least 45 years old

And no one was injured despite us using a saw and power tools.

My brother Steve is really getting into carpentry, and I used to refinish furniture. My aunt told me that we had italian relatives who were carpenters (like my great grandfather). I also found out the name of the village in Italy that my family is from, Caserta. We still have relatives that live there (I was able to see their houses using google maps) and my aunt is going to get me some contact information for them. I am thinking to go to Italy next fall to visit them. I once did a trip from Rome to the amalfi coast and must have driven right through my town without knowing. Caserta is known for a huge castle that's in the town and for being the village that Dr. Amalfi's (from the sopranos) family is from.

I also had to carry 5 bookshelves worth of books from the second story of the attic down to the first story, organize them, and then put them on the bookshelves. That took me 8 hours and then my dad mentioned, on the ride to the airport, that I had missed two boxes of books in the back of the attic. Oh well.

I would also mention that I was not sure how my Uncle Joe would react to my pink hair. At first he was feeding me shit about it and then, at thanksgiving dinner, he said "I actually really love your pink hair." Nice.

pets

I just returned home from visiting my family in Williamsburg. Of my siblings, I am the only one without a pet.

Their pets:

My sister's dog Max is staring at the door at the right of this picture because my brother's cat is in that room. Max sat there for at least 2 hours waiting for the cat to come out (we never introduced them because of the last thanksgiving disaster).

My brother's cat Greta hanging out next to a floral arrangement...

...and then hanging out in the floral arrangement.

universal conspiracy

Last night I was supposed to attend an alumni event at a ping pong bar called Ace because I'm trying to be more social and network and all that shit that normal people do without trying. My friend and I got there and we didn't see any people who looked like alumni so we decided to go somewhere else. As we were leaving Ace we noticed a group of about 5 men in their 60s wearing name tags standing in a darkened area on the enclosed patio. Guess that was the alumni event. 

We went to Beast + Bottle, which is a very cool restaurant, and we split a flat bread pizza thing. We sat at the bar and the bartender mixed all the drinks right in front of us and kept spilling stuff on my hands. Finally he dropped an ice cube almost in my glass of wine and I picked it up and started explaining the limited science I know about ice cubes. Suddenly he decided to go mix his drinks somewhere else and my friend was like "why don't you put the ice cube down now that you've managed to scare every guy in this place away".

Well, my attempts at being social aren't always well received.

Then today I was walking home from getting my hair done and I decided to take a route I've never taken before. I ran into a guy I see all the time on my walks, except that he was at his home, in the front yard, washing his dog.

We've always just said hi to each other but this time he introduced me to his dog (Meathead) and then told me his name, Errol. He complimented my pink hair and then asked if I wanted to come to an art gathering he's having at his house in a few weeks. He's an artist, though he shows in Arizona because he said the art market in Denver doesn't allow an artist to have a good living. He lives in a really cool building so I was like "of course I'll come!" because I want to see the inside of the place. He's having a gathering of up and coming new artists in Denver.

Should be fun. And another chance to meet people in the neighborhood...

if you love animals, recycle your toilet paper tubes

One of my neighbors has decided to start hosting dinners so people who live on our block can meet each other and hang out. The first neighborhood dinner was Tuesday. A couple who just moved into a house a few doors down from me came (unfortunately a few other neighbors who were invited couldn't make it).

The couple, Mike and B, have just moved to denver after living overseas for 2 years in new zealand and asia. It was interesting to hear about their experiences since I've not been to most of the places where they lived. They are self described urban hippies, and at some point the conversation turned to vegetarianism (my neighbor made a dinner that was mostly meat). Mike and B hardly eat any meat, and B was commenting how most people have no idea where meat comes from and how meat gets wasted in the US.

So I mentioned something about eating squirrels since I hate them and want the squirrels in my backyard to die. Mike agreed with me but B got upset and said I shouldn't kill animals even if they are annoying squirrels. My neighbor agreed with B and then recounted the following story which I found hilarious.

My neighbor was watering his front yard when he noticed a squirrel running around with a toilet paper tube stuck on its head. Being an animal lover and all that shit, he tried to coax the squirrel over to him so he could pull the toilet paper tube off its head.

Unfortunately he startled the squirrel right as it got close enough for him to remove the tube, and the squirrel went darting into the street and was almost immediately run over by a car.

I guess it's true that no good deed goes unpunished...

buddhist thinking - it works?!?!?!

On Monday I implemented my new Buddhist thinking plan at work to see if I could change things with my micro managing boss. My experience with Buddhism consists of an hour and a half documentary I watched, and an email from my brother Steve:

If you really would like to understand the Buddhist mind, you should find a teacher who teaches Transcendental Meditation (http://www.tm.org/).  You may want to read Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s book, but it’s really quite bad and full of nonsense statements.  A better book of meditations is Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life.

 

But you have a fundamental misunderstanding.  The practical Buddhist is one that can, “Let those things that truly do not matter slide,” as described by Tyler Durden.  

 (side note: I wonder if he was joking about the transcendental meditation thing, he's a republican)

So, not actually knowing how to officially Buddhistically implement a plan I decided to take Steve's "let things slide" idea and mash it with the "relieve human suffering" idea and then I created a plan:

1. start every interaction with my new boss in the most positive way possible by complimenting something about him
2. ignore the negative things he says (let things slide, he's negative because he's suffering), and when he says negative things...
3. conjure an image of him sitting in a restaurant surrounded by good food with soothing music playing in the background (his favorite thing to do is go to nice restaurants and eat good food) and project this image at his brain (basically make him think my thoughts are his own thoughts)
4. if more negative comments continue add a water feature in the restaurant, then a fish tank, and maybe more food since I'm not sure the food dishes I put on the table at the beginning of my meditation thing are food dishes he likes
5. if that doesn't work, imagine a giant lobster serenading him with Frank Sinatra standards- I know for a fact he loves to eat lobster

While all this meditation does make it hard sometimes to follow the conversation, I've found, since Monday, that my plan works! In Monday's interaction I had to go to step 5. Tuesday, I only got to step 4, water feature. And I found that when I get to the water feature now he might be negative but he also is at least listening to me.

In fact today I had a goal review meeting with him, which I was dreading, and it went really well (confession: I went straight to the singing lobster because I had to pay close attention in that meeting). He even said he wants to schedule more meetings with me since I'm his only remote (not in california) person. And I made some suggestions to improve (i.e. make less dictatorial) some administrative processes he's put in place and he not only agreed with me but even sent out an email updating the processes after my call with him.

So, I'm pretty much all about the Buddhist thing now. Except that when I was talking to my mom she said something about Buddhists being vegetarians. Which would mean no more pepperoni pizza or bacon for me. I'm going to have to meditate on that.

cook central

For some odd reason people keep inviting me places...

Last night a friend invited me over for dinner. It turned out everyone at the dinner was in the restaurant business. John, who trained at the CIA in NYC and cooks at a well known japanese restaurant, made the dinner, and was kind enough to let me sit in the kitchen and watch what he did. He also answered all of my questions, even the ones unrelated to dinner (e.g. how to make bone marrow soup, what brains taste like).

John made this meat thing that's like filet mignon but a cheaper cut (can't remember what it was called, I should have written it down). He said that it's cheaper because people don't like the way it looks (it looked like a just born puppy still in the birth sack until he cut it up). He also made au gratin potatoes and broccoli rabe. Everything was excellent.

There was also in attendance M who's been John's best friend since he was 4, a guy who is opening a ramen place near my house, and another guy, K, who invests in restaurants among other things. Ramen guy invited me to the soft launch of his restaurant and was lamenting the fact that there are "so many fucking foodies" in my 'hood. John and K discussed what it would take for John to open his own restaurant. When the shop talk got too technical I talked to M who used to be a marine.

The conversation kept turning (and not because of me, I swear) to offal and eating things like squirrels and snakes. Apparently with offal you should cook it down and wash it a lot (John said for 10 lbs of raw offal you should end up with 2 lbs when it's done cooking and that it should be washed 5 times, else you are eating, as he eloquently put it, "some animal's poop"). Then K and ramen guy tried to convince me that they could cook a squirrel in such a way that I would think it was the best thing I'd ever eaten. John said he was sure he could get me to eat liver. I was like "why can't you guys make me a pizza instead?"

They also talked about some cooking contest thing that had just gone on. John and ramen guy were talking about the prize, the big green egg. Both John and ramen guy are obsessed with it and want a big green egg (ramen's wife won't let him buy one until he gets rid of other kitchen stuff, and John doesn't have room for one at the moment). Ramen said the contest is kind of bullshit because if the winner already has a big green egg (at this point in the evening there was a lot of drinking going on, I was told that's what people in the restaurant business do, so some of the stories were a little unclear) they don't get to take the big green egg as a prize, they just win the contest. John said "I think that's the same fucking big green egg from 10 years ago".

Around 8:45 I decided it was time to head home. My friend called me 10 minutes later to say I broke up the party and then asked if I had any extra dish soap.

No shock my contribution to the dinner party was a cleaning product...

eastern thinking

I have a new boss at work and at least at the present time I can safely say he's the worst boss I've ever had. I've had bosses who were assholes but never a boss who is an asshole and a micro manager. Without going into details, he has also said a number of humiliating things to me in meetings in front of my colleagues (I suspect, among other issues, he doesn't respect technical women, or maybe women at all). I would also mention that other colleagues are having, or have had, the same experience that I'm having.

So I will freely admit I've devised a number of ways to subtly torture him. He's asian and has a hard time pronouncing some words, so I ask questions which he has to answer using the hard to pronounce words, and then I ask him to repeat himself, saying that I can't understand him. Someone even suggested I change my name to "lobster claws".

I also send purposely complex emails to him because he has a tendency to cc everyone on the planet and make derogatory comments about what ever topic I've emailed him on in an attempt to make me look like an idiot. Unfortunately for him, his reading skills aren't great, so what ever he responds with is usually unrelated to what I've emailed him about (it can take up to an hour for me to craft these emails, putting in key trigger words that I know he wants to rant about but that turn out to be unrelated to the email topic). He's stopped ccing everyone or attacking me via email because people were responding to him "what are you talking about" or "I'm not sure why I was cced on this because it's not related to my work". Haha.

But then Friday night I was watching a PBS documentary about Buddha (my friend Jess was like "you are the only person I know who watches free public tv via a dvd you paid for from netflix"). I'd never really understood buddhism before but the documentary did a good job explaining it. The whole point, from what I could gather, is that you can't eliminate human suffering but you can decide how to respond to suffering (that's where meditation comes in). And I started to think about my boss and how maybe I need to have a better response instead of torturing him the way he tortures me. I'm going to try it starting Monday and see how it works out.

In the meantime, I was shoveling snow yesterday and my neighbor came out to talk to me and I told her about the Buddha documentary and she said "you should go to the buddha center because I think you'd make a great buddhist". So, maybe I will go and check it out. Should result in an adventure or two I think.

sharks and scenes at the yard house

On Thursday night I met up with my friend John. We used to work together in DC back in the 90s and got back in touch after a long time last year.

I decided to walk to the restaurant where we were meeting because it's only a little over a mile from my house. By the time I got there I was nearly frozen because it was 0 degrees outside. The restaurant was packed so I texted John:

me: where are you
J: I'm standing almost right in front of you
me: I can't see, my eyeballs are frozen

While we waited for our table we stood at the bar (seriously, my ass was so cold I couldn't bend at the hips to sit down) and talked family and work. When we were seated we got into the fun subjects. John read my book and is replicating many of the adventures I had (he recently jumped out of a plane and is going to go on a great white shark trip next year).

We had a tuna sashimi appetizer and it was so good I ordered the tuna sashimi salad for dinner which the waitress said was "weird". Then John and I started talking about recent great white shark research and shark week. He's been traveling so much in other countries that he still hasn't seen any of the shows he recorded. I told him about my favorites (I got a DVD with the 6 great white episodes at target of all places - I didn't actually watch shark week on a tv) and he kept saying "don't spoil them!" (as if I was revealing a huge plot twist on downton abbey instead of a research finding about great white predation).

The tables at the restaurant were very close to each other, and John and I were seated between two couples. At some point I realized that both of the couples were staring at John and I. We were both like "what?????" and one of the guys was like "what are you talking about?" and I was like "sharks" and then the waiter came up and we all had a brief but interesting conversation about great whites and the waiter got in trouble because he was late bringing another table their drinks.

Luckily John drove me home because by the time we left the restaurant the side walks (and roads) were really treacherous.

And I didn't want John to have the only bragging rights for adventures so I signed up for a surf camp in Costa Rica when I got home. It's staffed with professional surfers and you get 4 days of coaching. I was hoping to go over the holidays this year but their first opening was at the end of January so I'm going then. I've been doing some training on my balance board the past few weeks, Monday is kick off for pilates. Surf's up soon!

Forest in the forest

I'm a big believer in mending fences and trying to sort out differences I've had with people.

For nine years my next door neighbor hated me. I was watching his dog Forest, and Forest bit a kid and subsequently had to be put to sleep. I paid to have Forest cremated even though my neighbor was hardly speaking to me at the time.

But in the past few months we have become "friends" again, largely, I think, because he's in therapy. He'd been asking me to go with him on a hike to scatter Forest's ashes, and Saturday I finally had a free day to do that.

We left Denver at 9 am and planned to go to a trail that my neighbor really likes that's outside of Nederland. He thought he knew where he was going, but he didn't. The trip took 3 hours, with us going the wrong way on 73, 58, and other roads. At one point we were driving down a narrow dirt road that looked like it hadn't seen traffic for years. I was waiting for my neighbor to murder me or for us to crash into something and die, but all that happened was we ended up back in Nederland (do all dirt roads in Colorado lead to Nederland???).

When we finally arrived at the trail it was noon. The temperature was in the forties, it was overcast and gloomy, and there was snow covering the trail. I was like "shit!" because I was wearing running shoes. My neighbor was like "shit!" because he was wearing running shoes AND shorts.

He had a plan of which trail he wanted to take, and he said he would know where to scatter Forest's ashes because he would get a feeling that it was the right place. Forest's ashes weighed about 30 pounds and that became a challenge as we were going up and down icy terrain and I don't think my neighbor has that much experience carrying weight in a backpack.

Anyway, some weird things happened on the trail, specifically - we encountered the weirdest people, but we finally arrived at a meadow and both of us knew instantly it was the place to put Forest. We scattered him near a stand of trees. My neighbor had brought a friend's dog along and as soon as we spread the ashes on the snow the dog, Oz, ran through them. I spread some rose petals from my yard and then the sun suddenly came out and lit up the meadow and the temperature got noticeably warmer. It was such a hollywood thing. The only thing that could have made the moment even more unrealistic is if a rainbow had suddenly appeared. And my neighbor apologized to me for all the shit that went on after the biting incident and even admitted that he felt bad that Forest bit someone while I was watching him. I also found out he had been in touch with the family and that the kid Forest bit was fine, which was a huge relief to me because all these years I've worried about that.

So Forest is free in a good place now. He has the best views. And when we headed back down the trail the sun had melted the snow in all of the hard spots. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it's true.

It wasn't until we got back to the parking lot that we realized we had forgotten to take a picture. But maybe that's for the best.

We headed back to Denver after one last wrong turn at the Nederland traffic circle, but stopped at a cafe for some food and a drink. We toasted Forest as the sun set over the mountains. My neighbor has gotten very spiritual lately and he was ruminating on souls and reincarnation and karma.

My take - life is short, don't fuck it up, and when you fuck it up make it right. And don't give up on people or hold grudges, they can change and do the right thing.

finis

how to get those annoying political people to quit calling

Yesterday I went to my dentist to get a real filling put in place of the temporary filling I got after my root canal (found out they put in the temp filling in case the tooth has more problems - the temp filling is squishy and can easily be removed).

I don't guess that many people laugh at the dentist office, but my dentist told me a story that was so hilarious we had to take a five minute break during the filling replacement so we could stop laughing.

Those political telemarketers keep calling my dentist's house every few minutes and she said her husband loves to torture them. The other day someone called and her husband let the person talk for a few minutes and then he said "hey, I'm pooping right now, can you hang on a second while I wipe?" 

The telemarketer hung up on him.

On a side note, I personally think it's not a good idea to answer the phone, or emails, whilst pooping for real...

root canal

I've been having a problem with a lower back tooth for about two years caused initially by my jaw mis-alignment. The tooth was so sore that I haven't chewed on that side of my mouth for at least a year.

Now that my jaw is fixed my dentist finally told me to go see an endodontist. I went to see Dr. Parri Carnes. He was GREAT.

I have to say the appointment got off to a bad start because I had to get up at fucking 5:45 to drive out to his office for a 7:45 am appointment. I reassured myself that he probably didn't think I needed a root canal because no sane person would make such an early appointment for a root canal.

He took an x-ray of my tooth, which kind of hurt because I have a small mouth. Then he did a cold test, which involved freezing a q-tip with what ever that spray crap is that you can use to blow dust off your keyboard and touching it to the tooth in question. When he did that I seriously almost vomited from the pain. He was like "yep, you need a root canal" but his voice sounded really far away.

I must have looked crazy traumatized because he offered to let me come back on a different day for the root canal. And he offered to sedate me when I said I just wanted to get it over with. I was like "I'll be fine" but he said I should take a few minutes to relax and read my magazine (Harper's, story about chicken farming) before we started. Also, he gave me pink protective eye wear because he said it matched my pink hair.

He has this cool computer controlled needle that he used to numb me. It hardly hurt at all. And except for pressure I didn't feel a thing during the root canal. The only bad part was when the part of the dental equipment I had in my mouth got stuck on my nose.

For the root canal they put in what's called a dam, which is just a sheet of really thick stretchy plastic (like a theraband), to isolate the tooth and keep it away from the rest of your mouth and then they stretch the dam over a round plastic circle (imagine one of your teeth jumping on an trampoline and that's pretty much what it looks like). The plastic circle was a little too big for my face and during one of the breaks in the root canal I somehow jostled it and got it caught on and sort of up my nose. Embarrassing.

In any case, by 9 am the whole thing was over and he offered to give me pain meds and I was like "dude, I've had organs taken out and didn't take pain meds, is this going to be worse than that?" He said "probably, no". Anyway, I have no real pain yet, especially compared to how bad that tooth used to feel.

Fingers crossed it doesn't hurt tomorrow.

And more updates soon on some other stuff I've been up to, the past week has been super busy...

...and then there was the motorcycle "accident"

FH and I visited a new brewery, Former Future, on saturday and then decided to head to wit's end to try their new selection of beers. We only had one beer at Former Future (it was good, but not as good as wit's end), thankfully, because the event that transpired next could have ended badly.

We were on FH's motorcycle (not the Ural) and debated dropping the bike at home before going to wit's end but we decided to go straight to wit's end on the bike. A blue subaru wagon pulled into the parking lot in front of us. I should mention that FH was blaring the motorcycle stereo, and the motorcycle isn't exactly quiet. We were about 7 feet behind the subaru.

Wit's end is in an industrial park so the parking lot is small, a row of parking slots on each side. As FH was trying to decide where to put the bike (the motorcycle parking had been taken over by a food truck) the subaru suddenly started backing up. FH and I yelled at the guy and FH tried to steer us out of the way but before he could push the bike backwards the guy hit us. FH laid the bike down and I somehow managed to, uncharacteristically, jump off the bike gracefully (I only got a little scuff on my pants where I rolled out of the way as the bike was going down - it's a touring bike and NOT light - I didn't want it to land on me, or worse, end up under the subaru).

As we went down the fucking fuck wit asshole kid who was driving the subaru finally stopped. He got out of the car and was like "um, what happened?" I was waiting for FH to lose his mind (he does have an Italian temper, on steroids) but FH was focused on the motorcycle and getting it up so he could see the damage. The kid (guess he was in his early 20s) appeared stoned and he launched into an explanation: "I'm sorry I hit you dude, I'm lost, and in a huge hurry". As soon as he said that I turned into bitch central and yelled "Oh, you're in a hurry, so it's okay that you almost fucking ran us over?" He said something else trying to defend himself and I started REALLY yelling at him, saying, among other things "you realize you could have killed us?!? and "we were yelling and screaming at you as you were backing up (his window was rolled all the way down so I don't know how he couldn't have heard us) and you didn't even stop until you hit us!". What made me so mad is that he didn't apologize (he didn't even seem to understand that he HIT us) and his general stoned as shit demeanor. Meanwhile, FH's thumb was bleeding all over the place because he hit a piece of glass as the bike went down and sliced a huge chunk out of his thumb.

FH and Stoned Fucking Asshole exchanged information and SFA gave FH $300 in cash (which is good, there are a lot of uninsured drivers in Colorado as I found out when I was rear ended by that cunt Kandy Schertz who never paid for the damage she did to my car and gave me fake insurance information). After everything was settled SFA gave FH a hug and shook his hand. He also offered to shake my hand but I gave him a hug too because his hands were shaking and I think I might have scared him with all my yelling. Though, I wanted him to absorb the gravity of the situation. If FH didn't have so many years riding who knows what could have happened. And I don't want SFA to kill someone else with his careless asshole-ness.

We went into wit's end to discover that the patrons had been watching the drama. Pat got FH a band aid (he refused it and instead put super glue on the gash in his thumb instead) and got me a drink. I couldn't stop shaking and I realized it was because I had been so primed to punch SFA that it was hard to get my adrenaline under control. In the end I'm glad I didn't punch him because 1. that's not an adult thing to do and 2. I might not have been able to stop punching him.

I will also admit that one of the reasons I was so pissed is because last saturday I spent 2 hours at the mall (I HATE shopping) trying to find a pair of pants that were not jeans that fit me (though the pants are an inch short they're tapered and they look okay, anyway, what designer makes small pants with a 33 inch inseam) and I happened to be wearing those pants when the accident happened. They were undamaged. As was FH and I (except for the thumb). The bike is another matter but FH thinks he can fix it, which turned out to be a fucking great deal for SFA.

Anyway, check your rearview and check your mirrors before backing up. And share the road with cyclists. It only takes a few seconds to kill someone, or damage the only pair of pants they own that fit them.

the week is killing me...almost literally

So last week was not too exciting. This week I had to fly to California on Monday and that's when things went back to the usual, weird, "does this only happen to me?", shit.

One thing I don't like about Southwest is that you can book a flight that is more than one leg, but it's posted in departures as going to the final city, not the city you are going to from DIA (e.g. a flight going denver to oakland to burbank will be listed in the departures as burbank, NOT oakland). They also tend to have flights going to the same destination at the same time. I know this about SW. I ALWAYS check the flight number as soon as I get to the gate.

But this time I was two hours early and failed to check the flight number. I was standing at a gate that had a noon departure to Oakland, which is what my ticket said. Unfortunately, it was not MY flight because my flight was going to Burbank after Oakland and the flight I was in line for was going to Burbank and then Oakland. I realized this as the plane was boarding, and had to run literally 1/2 mile, with a 25 pound backpack, to the other end of the terminal to get to my flight, which I was afraid I was going to miss (after arriving at the airport 2 hours early, which I never manage to do).

They are doing construction to extend the terminal so it was kind of a shit show mess, but I managed to arrive in time to board my flight. However, as I was standing on the jet way I started coughing and couldn't stop. Then my eyes started watering and I couldn't see. I managed somehow to stagger to the back of the plane, where a flight attendant saw me. He threw my back pack on the last remaining aisle seat and handed me some water (I couldn't talk because I could hardly breathe). He then suggested I wait in the bathroom until boarding finished. Even after 10 minutes I couldn't stop coughing. Another flight attendant said if I couldn't get my breathing / coughing under control they would remove me from the flight.

I finally managed to sort of stop coughing and sat in my seat. My seat mate, a woman, immediately protested and accused me (seriously, not making this up) of having ebola (coughing is not a major symptom of ebola). The flight attendants assured everyone around me it was an asthma attack and they finally stopped arguing about me sitting near them.

The flight was the worst kind of torture because I had to suppress my coughing and my lungs were killing me and it was so hard to breathe that I had to hold a wet paper towel over my mouth to get in a breath of air. But, as soon as I landed in Oakland, though, and got out into the open air I was fine.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and I don't have asthma. I realized on Tuesday, when I flew back to denver, the likely cause...

They were doing a lot of dry wall sanding and painting in the new terminal. In addition it reeked of carpet glue. As soon as I deplaned into the new terminal tuesday night I started coughing again, and I wasn't the only one. I think that as I was running to the terminal I was inhaling a bunch of some shit (dry wall dust? paint fumes? glue fumes?) that I was allergic to. Again, once I got into the open air, I was fine.

Fucking construction.

I will end this on a positive note. Once my cough had sort of settled down I got the names and employee numbers of the flight attendants that helped me (and, more importantly, didn't throw me off the plane). I sent an email to southwest explaining everything that had happened. They said they would pass my thanks on to the flight attendants, and then upgraded me for the trip home and sent me drink tickets.

So, if someone helps you, it's always good to make a big deal of thanking them.

pedaling and surviving the plains

FH and I successfully completed the pedal the plains ride yesterday.

The trip started out great in Ft. Morgan, where we had a free hookup for the RV. We also found a great chinese restaurant and met an RV neighbor, Jim, who we ran into for the next 3 days in the oddest places (wal mart, the beer garden at Ft. Morgan, and finally at his mom's house in Brush).

Friday we got a late start because FH had forgotten his shorts and had to run into wal mart to get something to wear while riding. Then we were talking in the truck and missed the exit for Wiggins by 16 miles and had to double back to it. When we got to the registration FH's name was on the list but mine was not so I had to manually register.

We finally got on the road around 1130. There was a strong headwind as well as soaring temperatures (it was 102 degrees F). Although it was supposed to be the "easy" day it didn't feel easy at all. Luckily we arrived at Ft. Morgan and the RV in one piece. We went to the beer garden and had the first of many Especiale beers made by the O'dell brewing company for the pedal the plains ride.

Saturday we got started at 8 am due to some logistical issues (the signage for ptp wasn't great so it was hard to find, for example, where to drop off our luggage, which was being transported for us to Sterling). The head wind again was unrelenting. About 20 miles into the ride we stopped at an aid station and the cleat for my left shoe fell off. Luckily FH was able to fix it so that I could ride to the next aid station, at around 39 miles, to get a replacement screw. Unfortunately, at that station, I picked up a goathead and after eating some cantaloupe came back to where we had dropped our bikes and my front tire was totally flat. FH changed it and we continued riding. All was great until my front tire went flat again on the only downhill stretch. I'm not sure how I didn't wreck. FH fixed the front tire again.

At the above mentioned aid station at mile 39 I was starting to bonk because I had only eaten animal crackers, pretzels, and cantaloupe. There were burritos at the 20 mile aid station but I hadn't gotten one because I wasn't hungry and I figured they would have food at the other aid stations. Wrong. Anyway, I decided to try a drink mix called Skratch at the 39 mile aid station, which did make me feel better, until my stomach decided it wanted nothing to do with Skratch. So there I was, riding along a desolate field, feeling like I had to poop. It sucked. The heat and the wind didn't help.

I started to feel a slight ray of hope at mile 65, thinking in less than 10 miles we would arrive at Sterling. But it turned out Sterling was 77, not 74 miles away. And we had to go up two big hills to get there. And of course, only 3 miles away from Sterling, my back tire went flat. We didn't have a new tube to fix it so we patched an old tube and that got me to Sterling. It took every ounce of will power for me to ride the last 5 miles to Sterling. I wanted to quit but luckily FH was there to kick my ass and make me ride.

I would like to take a moment here to apologize to the female riders of ptp. It was I who went into that small, 3 bathroom and 3 shower locker room and pooped the place up. I know it smelled horrible, and believe me, I felt bad, especially after FH saw some of you leaving the locker room because of the smell.

My back tire went flat again while we were at dinner. The bike repair people were gone for the night so we decided to patch another inner tube FH had and hoped it would hold air.

I will spare you the comments about sleeping in a tent on a football field with no shade and with 300 people we didn't know. Next year we are going to a hotel and not camping. Also, they forgot to turn off the sprinkler system for the football field so the bottom of our tent was drenched in water.

At 430 Sunday morning I woke up with a horrible pain in my stomach. I ended up pooping for about 3 hours straight. Given that the ride was 65 miles, after we had ridden 110 miles the previous day, I was worried that I wouldn't finish. FH was also bonking as we left Sterling because they didn't have real breakfast food available to the riders.

By mile 16 FH and I were looking like the walking dead. But when we stopped at the aid station they were selling burritos. I ate one even though I was worried about my stomach. But my stomach was fine (drank a shit ton of water to wash the Skratch out of my system).

My back tire went flat again 2 miles from the next aid station. I was counseled to ride in the middle of the road and to stop getting fucking flat tires. And I admit that I was so tired when another rider passed me and said something like "keep going, almost done!" or "whew, this is so much fun!" I would give them the finger.

By the last aid station, mile 50, FH and I were like "fuck this shit, I want off this bike!" We bought two new tubes and hoped I would not get another flat. Then we took off riding toward the finish, all out. We were averaging about 17 MPH and passing people like crazy even though the ride was uphill. Around mile 53 the wind was FINALLY at our backs and we rode to mile 69, the finish, in an hour and 15 minutes. The speed was partly due to a misunderstanding on FH's part that the beer garden would close at 3 pm and that we would have to hustle to get a beer (there was NO WAY we were going to not have one last especiale beer after all we had been through). We got to the beer garden at 230.

After a few celebratory beers, and gathering our luggage, we headed back to Ft Morgan for a shower in the RV. Then we went to Cables and I ate a 1/2 lb hamburger and about 2 potatoes worth of french fries while trying to not watch too much of the broncos game since FH recorded it to watch tonight. We were so exhausted we fell asleep around 7 PM and didn't wake up until 630 this morning.

So, 7 dead rattlesnakes on the road, 6 flat tires, 2 lost screws, 710 ounces of water, later, we decided to do the ptp next year. But this time we aren't camping. And we'll start training more than 3 weeks before the event (I figured out I rode 300 miles to train for a 183 mile ride - kind of stupid).

at the start, friday at Wiggins - I put the sticker on my bike in the wrong place and it was getting caught in my back tire so FH had to move it

sunday, at the beer garden, exhausted but with a medal and a beer, happy ending!

getting ready to pedal the plains!

I just finished packing for the pedal the plains trip! I'm feeling pretty good considering I haven't had much time to ride my bike. Well, what ever happens happens, I need to work on having fun doing stuff instead of trying to make everything a physical torture fest (though, I find that fun...what's wrong with me).

Even if everything goes to shit and my knee blows up or my hip flexors kill me, the beer garden is open from 9 am to 9 pm.

In other news, today I finally went to a Rockies game. I've walked past stadium I can't even estimate how many times (a lot) but the thought of baseball never appealed to me. But my company gave me a free ticket so I decided what the the fuck. I went with a bunch of my colleagues and two colleagues that were in one of the work movies I made showed me around the stadium. It was so cool. I definitely want to go back there again and I feel bad that my dad suggested we go to a game when he was in town and I declined...

My colleague P, who was a great collaborator on my work movies, patiently answered all my baseball questions (he has kids, so he's used to annoying questions). He also insisted I try a pumpkin flavored micro brew (the bartender said "if you don't like it throw it on him and I'll get you what ever you want for free" - P said "did you give him a bigger tip than I did?").

I found the stadium (which was only a quarter full) totally relaxing. It was cool to watch the pitchers warm up only feet away from where we were standing (you can go to this one part of the stadium and look down into their dug out thing or what ever it's called). And it was a pretty fast moving game for, I guess, a baseball game. I understand now why people have told me that it's better to watch in person.

I had a chicago hot dog for the first time (I was assured that it was beef, no pork). A chicago hot dog has cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers, celery salt, relish, and brown mustard on it. The CTO of my company, who was sitting behind me, said "I have never seen someone eat a hot dog with a fork" (it was too big to fit in my mouth - insert joke here). My colleague D laughed, because he's chinese, and he said "great, I have no experience eating this kind of food and I get sat next to the one american who doesn't know how to eat a hot dog".

Eventually everyone sitting around me was jumping in with baseball facts to increase my knowledge (there's a row of purple seats in the stadium that mark exactly where a mile high is, there's numbers on the fence to show how many feet away from the batting mound a ball has been hit, each player gets to pick their own theme song which plays for a few seconds when they are up to bat, you get points if you hit the ball and someone gets a home run, that's called an RBI).

Right then. Off to put my knees through electroshock therapy. Stay tuned for updates on the ride...

dispensing the pot heads

On Saturday, FH's birthday, I met him and a group of his friends at the big wonderful. Some of the friends were from out of town and wanted to get some pot. They asked me where the closest dispensary was and I was like "I have no fucking idea". So they looked up a dispensary on the phone and I offered to escort them to it because 1. they are country club kids and not used to my kind of neighborhood and 2. I've never been to a dispensary before.

We walked to a dispensary on Lawrence. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. There was a row of chairs like those you find in a movie theater. About 8 people were hanging out in the chairs in various stages of intoxication. There was a glass window like something you'd see in a gas station that gets robbed a lot where pot wanters had to check in (not sure what that process required, showing an ID or something). When it was your turn they would call each person individually to go back into the pot area and pick what they wanted.

One of the guys I brought over there said "this is my idea of heaven - pot and golf" (they were showing a golf game on a flat screen TV). Another guy started asking me about some work I used to do with various law enforcement agencies. I was telling him about working with the calgary gov. Pretty soon all the pot heads had left, quietly shuffling out the door. Haha, paranoid much.

Anyway, at some point your name gets called and you go back into the pot room and pick what you want. The guys got gummi bears. They let two of them go back at the same time but normally they only let in one person at a time. I was outside by that point because the smell of the pot (just the smell of the product, no one was smoking it) made me want to puke.

The pot comes in a white bubble wrap envelope that has what looks like a zipper seal on it. That's how you can carry the pot in public (think you aren't supposed to carry it in public after the zipper seal is broken - I should have asked before the guys ate the gummi bears - one told me "look, I'm just trying to enjoy my high, quit asking me questions").

Oddly while I was in there I had flashbacks of going to the A&E store to buy wine in Abu Dhabi...but that place smelled good.

cherry creek snake street

Got more miles in on my bike last week. I'm even tightening my clipless pedals up. Everything training wise is going well EXCEPT...

why can I not ride ONE FUCKING TIME without seeing a snake?

Saturday was by far my worst snake experience. I was riding on the cherry creek trail, coming around a blind turn, when I saw, just a few feet away, a GIANT snake. I mean that fucker was so long and so thick that it was stretched across the trail and still had part of its body coiled in the grass. If that snake could stand up it would have an NBA contract. Well, it would also need prosthetic arms, but you get the idea.

I couldn't swerve to the left of it because I would have run over its body coil and probably wrecked. I couldn't swerve to the right of it because then I would have been close to its mouth. So I ran it over. It was like hopping a curb. The snake's head reared up at me even though I yelled "sorry about that!" as I ran it over.

Now, you are probably wondering the same thing I wondered. Why was this snake crossing the bike trail? His starting point was next to the creek, with plenty of sunny rocks, and nice trees, and other bushes and shit where he could hang out and not be seen by me. Instead he was crossing the trail to a gravel area that had dog shit  and trash in it and which then led to a parking lot. Not exactly snake nirvana. (note to denverites, this happened near the cherry creek mall, so many reasons to never go to the mall, and now I have another one)

So, unless that snake had a car and somewhere to go in it, or was hoping to hitch a ride to Wyoming or somewhere that's far away from me, he had no reason to cross that trail other than to torment me (I should mention the "trail" is a really wide sidewalk, so you can't claim the snake didn't realize it was a trail for humans and not snakes). He couldn't have been trying to get positive attention, like "oh look, there's a cute snake!" because he was too big to be cute (if you consider small snakes cute - probably no one does because they would be called something like "puppy" or "kitten" - I don't know, maybe they would be called "snakey" if they were cute when they were little).

A guy coming the other direction ran the snake over again but the snake persisted in crossing the trail. I actually had my phone with me and part of my brain was like "you REALLY need to take a picture and you can stand 20 feet away where you're safe" but the other part of my brain was like "DAMN IT! WHY did you ride on all those hills KNOWING THERE MIGHT BE A SNAKE ON THE TRAIL AND THAT YOU'D HAVE TO GET AWAY FROM IT???? PEDAL YOU FUCK BEFORE THE SNAKE GETS US! PEDDDDDDAAAAALLLLL!!!!!" That part of my brain won.

Given that the bike trail is wide enough for 3 bikes to ride comfortably abreast, and that at least 1/4 of the snake was still coiled up on the side of the trail, I would estimate the size of the snake to be REALLY FUCKING BIG. The snake was yellowish with a brown box like pattern on its back. I tried looking at a web site to see if I could identify the snake but after looking at a few pictures I decided to let my dad maybe figure out what snake it was as I can't take the trauma of looking at snake pictures anymore.