PK's room

Terri

2012-01-15T22:56:00.003-06:00

Some movies take their time. They're confident, in a blithe sort of way. I'd picked this one up one time in the video store, but ended up watching something else. Super-8 I think. Last week we were in the store again and this one was in the for sale bin for $5. It was going to cost that much to rent it, so I bought it. Yesterday we watched it.

If you're looking for a "misfits and weird teachers in school" sort of movie, you might pick this one up. Being of that ilk myself, I was intrigued. I haven't seen "Bad Teacher" yet, but I'm skittish about movies whose titles tell me what they're going to be about. "Terri" was cryptic enough, indie enough, unassuming enough. Which is pretty much the way the movie unfolded.

Terri (Wysocki) lives without parents, together with an aging uncle that he often acts as parent for himself. Set in a mildly-in-decline-middle-American town Terri walks through a small wood to get to his high school. Overweight in a not entirely unhealthy sort of way, he wears pajamas to school and like beans on toast. At school vice principal Fitzgerald (O'Reilly) looks out for his sort. He sounds and looks creepy in a way, but you should try to keep those feelings at bey. He takes an interest in Terri and, despite each of them confronting the obvious problems of the imbalance in this relationship, it goes well. Which is what the film is about - unexpected answers to obvious questions.

Though the story centres on Terri's navigation of high school, it turns on his good deed for classmate Heather Miles (Olivia Crocicchia). About to be expelled for allowing Dirty Zach (yes, yes indeed) do something nasty to her in Home Ec class (there were witnesses, Terri was the first), Terri tells Fitzgerald that she hadn't wanted it - that she'd been coerced into it. A few days later, when Terri and Heather and scalp-picking weirdo Chad (Bridger Zadina) are in Terri's back shed indulging in expensive whisky and some of his uncle's medication, Chad asks her why she let Dirty Zach do what he did, in Home Ec. Heather's answer becomes the movie's ballast: "It feels good to be wanted."

If you're looking for an air-tight sense of moral direction, steer yourself through your own rough times by offering this gift to others. Fitzgerald verges on being too familiar, immature, and rash, but he understands this mighty truth, and he lives by it. The film ends with Terri seeing this above all, and reciprocating. It's all good, as the kids say. Don't just tolerate people, accept them and go out of your way to want them. A reasonable suggestion.

The good thing about curling

2012-01-11T23:48:00.000-06:00

It isn't about winning so much as sitting with your opponents after the game, having drinks and trading stories. The world's just a better place after the Wednesday night game.

Ride report
I confess it, I heard the wind howling this morning, and it was really cold for the first time this winter, and I jammed. I drove the truck. I'll ride tomorrow, I promise. Pinky swear.

A long day

2012-01-10T23:12:00.000-06:00

Some days, even when you get a lot done, you have to look hard for the rewarding moments. Here's an attempt at a list:

- drama "show-don't-tell" exercise results in an "a-ha moment" for someone working on a script (downside? - there were a lot of empty stares and misdirection that resulted from said exercise) - sometimes you win a little, and lose a lot

- with two weeks remaining in the semester it appears that one student's interest in visual and 3D creation may be turned into an interesting response to a novel or two (downside? - there are only two weeks left in the semester! Why does it have to take this long to find things that work? Longer story: I've found this student wandering about in the art room (across the hall from mine) during my class numerous times. I've too often taken the "you should be in my room" approach, rather than asking whether he'd like to make something in order to show what he's thinking - Duh!)

- during rehearsal the kids try a few different voicings of their parts, enjoy themselves, and realize that even if this isn't how the thing ends up, it's good to try it in many different ways (downside? - there's not much time until we have to have a play ready)

- helped (I hope!) to assuage a parent's concern about a child with significant health issues (IBS plus) that will be travelling on the Europe trip I'm leading - it's worth taking the chance I say, after all I'm married to someone with these sorts of problems I say (downside? - it's hard convincing a parent with the words, "don't worry, it'll be okay" when you're talking about their kid)

Actually, it wasn't such a bad day. Downsides included.

Ride report
in: 0'C wind 15ks W
out: 4'C wind 25ks NW

Can a holiday be too long?

2012-01-09T23:21:00.000-06:00

Yes. Yes it can. Here's what it sounded like in the hallowed hallways of my workplace today:

Conversation 1

I'm in the staffroom preparing coffee.

Colleague 1: "Have a good holiday?"

Me: "Yes. It was very good, but maybe getting just a bit too long."

C1: "Really? It could have been longer for me. It felt like I was just getting going."

Me: "Not for me really. I was in the city on Tuesday and then played poker with the boys when we got home (I lost) and when I woke up in the morning I just felt bad. Lethargic. I couldn't figure out what to do."

C1: "Not me really, although I know what you mean."

Me: (with my coffee now poured and ready to go) "Well, I'll see ya later. Have a good one!"

Conversation 2

We're in the hallway outside the office.

Colleague 2: "Good time away?"

Me: "Yes. It was good. All the kids were around and it just felt right. By the end though, I knew something needed to change."

C2: "Really? Actually, that's true. You do sort of get in each other's hair after a while."

Me: "Yeah, but it wasn't that really. It was more that by the middle of last week I knew that I'd have to get back to work, and that nearly paralyzed me. I actually came here to get started on stuff, just to make today easier."

C2: "Yeah, that's probably a good idea, but I didn't mind staying away."

Me: (with my hands full and needing to get to first class) "Well, I gotta get to class. Have a good day!"

Conversation 3

In the hallway outside my classroom.

Colleague 3: "How were your holidays?"

Me: "You know, they were good. The kids were home, they're great, you know, and it's so different now that they're all away during their semester, and then they come back. It's like we can really appreciate one another. But once they were gone I kind of lost focus."

C3: "Aw. That's kinda sweet."

Me: "Yeah, I know, but it's ridiculous too. When they're around I can work on my own projects - you know, write, or tinker, or go for a bike ride ..."

C3: "Wasn't the weather great?!"

Me: "Amazing! I rode my bike more this break than I think I ever have before. It was fantastic. But I work better when there's a bit of a hum in the house. You know? Not loud, but there's activity."

C3: "Yeah, I can see that. It's like the work of others inspires you or something."

Me: "I think that's true. Like the vibe each of us creates gets better when we're in a good place with each other!"

C3: "Yeah, that is true. It works that way in my classes - the ones with a few good workers will slowly become the ones with more good workers. Good work is contagious."

Me: "And when you take that work hum away, it's hard to focus again ..."

C3: "And then you've got to think about going back."

Me: "Right. So either make the holidays a bit shorter, or way, way, longer - you know so I can really get into a good rhythm without thinking about having to go back."

The bell rings. Kids appear.

Me: "Well, have a good one eh?!"

C3: "Yeah, you too."

Ride report

in: 1'C wind 15ks W

out: 3'C wind 10ks W

IN (5)

2012-01-06T14:38:00.001-06:00

There were indeed moist-looking rust-coloured stains running along the junctions of the asymmetric arrays of ceiling tiles. Not that Carson wanted to pay attention to this. He'd had some experience with plumbing in his past. In fact he'd re-plumbed the kitchen and bath of a house he and Petra had bought as a fixer-upper. How long ago was that? But he had no intention of letting on that he might know something about it, or be able to make sense of whatever it was the lurked above the sullied facade of white. He'd never been employed in any capacity as a maintenance man, still it crossed his mind that he may blogged about solving a plumbing problem, or worse he could have answered a question posed by one of his family members on Facebook. Surely that wasn't what they'd called him out for. They must have prospects more skilled, more apt, than he was to do this kind of thing. He'd been a marginally successful teacher in a middle-school - Grade five. Of course he'd been only too willing to give it up in favour of lying on a divan, porting IN, and allowing the dictates of his own conscious desires to take control. Had he betrayed himself? There had been the odd moments when he'd imagined buying an old house or some other interesting building, in some still secluded corner, even a desolate wilderness outpost away from the continual streams of noise in which everyone else seemed to find comfort, fix it up and live as a romantic on his own Walden pond.

"You're thinking it, aren't you?" says m-Carmel.

"Pardon? Thinking? What?"

"You've slowed up, but I can still sense residuals of your INthink. You're thinking about those stains aren't you, and plumbing, and what's caused the problem, and maybe even a little bit about getting your hands on something that needs fixing."

"What?"

"We knew you would. Well I knew it. I called it. Most of the DIKCs didn't think so. They thought that we had to go with someone who had been one in unINlife, but I said that you didn't want someone who was jaded. Who had gone IN to get out of whatever they had been doing. You'd want someone who had been interested in it, but didn't do it for a living. For money. That would never work. They'd never do it without some demanding some kind of this or that for their troubles."

"Wait. What? What are you talking about?"

"Hey, don't worry about it! It's going to work out just fine. Once you see the options and the setup we've got to offer. You're going to like this I think. Maybe it was only twenty-eight days, but I was pretty confident of my call."

"I thought that I, that I was the one who wanted, you know, OUT."

M-Carmel turns to him now and touches him for the first time. She takes hold of him with both hands just above the elbows and, at arms length looks Carson in the eye. "You need to believe meon this. You did make the call for unIN, but when you come out your options are narrowed to what MCDIKC thinks is most expedient. They'll lay out the options. I'll be there of course to steady you, and offer clarifications, but you're going to have to make a decision that's kind of irrevocable."

"So I'm OUT, but I can't just leave and start again?"

"It's just a few steps to the unIN debriefing lounge. We'll sit there and relax. You'll have something to drink, something to eat, and I'll lay it all out for you. That'll help I think. It'll be all right, you'll see. Maybe I said too much too soon."

IN (4)

2012-01-05T00:44:00.000-06:00

"Follow me" says m-Carmel, who surprises Carson when she ushers him out of the room into what he expects to be blinding sunlight and heat coming off of the patio. In fact she leads him along a grid of hallways

making more lefts and rights than he can track.

"What's happening?" he says as he tires and stumbles, catching a foot on the carpet.

M-Carmel turns to help him up. "Sorry," she says. "You've been slipping between IN and OUT too often. The stats are against you now, and since you haven't been able to go completely IN we thought you'd be okay just walking out of the room."

"How long has it been?" he says.

"Twenty-eight days. Not long really. Your situation presents the classic anomalous pattern of an m-designate. That is, you want IN consciously, but you're unable to maintain it. We're still understanding this process. All we have to go on, really, are patterns."

"So you mean that's it for me?" says Carson.

"Well, it's pretty clear to us. We can usually tell after a month."

"That a person will go IN?"

"Yes. After a month the patterns are clear. It may vary from one to three months before one goes INpermanent, but your patterns have been clear. If we hadn't been quite so busy I'd have taken you out yesterday, but you weren't in real distress until today."

"So this is it then," he says. "It's not going to work for me."

"Doesn't look like it."

"And I'm not the only one, I suppose."

"I know, I know," says m-Carmel with some exasperation. "We all hope that going IN is going to, you know, save the world from conflict. That's what a lot of MCDIKC people say in public.They remind us that it will be like Facebook or Twitter in 2011 - cause a permanent springtime for humanity - absolutely change things. But ..." she gestures with both hands now, pointing off into the distance, "now we have this."

Carson follows her hands, but cannot get a grip on what she means. What her speech reminds him of, though are the ecstatic online messages of the various experts. One pre-eminent theologian turned cultural activist delivered the first online speech to reach over one billion views. She said things like "IN would answer the problems of ethnic and religious strife, she said, because it would move humans toward one another." Or, "Once we were all IN we'd recognize the commonness of each others consciousness and that would finally move us into spiritual oneness." She spoke of how social networking had only been a whiff of the in-touchness that IN offered. "We are heading toward the ultimate metaphysics of being and knowing one another," she concluded. "We will overcome the constraints of the body. We will detoxify the earthly environment by removing our bodies from it, and placing them into everlasting pods of holy-oneness. I will be IN you and you will be IN me!"

"What's this? says Carson, facing m-Carmel.

"This," she says with a smile, looking up at a stained ceiling tile, "is either a leaky roof or a plumbing problem. Nobody knows for sure, because nobody knows where to look."

IN (3)

2012-01-02T17:57:00.000-06:00

When someone OUTs and starts to cry the minders appear in a relative instant. In no less than thirty seconds (guaranteed) a minder appears in whatever form the OUTer has most often projected under sexual arousal. Carson's minder enters twenty-one point seven seconds after the aural sensors detect a second sob. This information, combined with the data triangulation of the visual sensor image of his posture, his stored-data-profile, and the length of Carson's current OUTmoment leads to this med-long length response time. The minder-centre (MC) data-inference-kinetics-control (DIKC) or MCDIKC must, of necessity, pro-rate its data - a sort of triage of urgency. Urgent-minder-action (UMA) is determined as necessary based on MCDIKC data triangulation, with priority based on an aggregate DIKC score. For those who are IN it is comforting to know that within thirty seconds of OUT-distress, a fantasy-generated-minder (f-gen) will appear, suited to take you back IN in whatever you'd like, or is most expedient.

Thus Carson cannot help but turn to m-Carmel when he sees the auburn-haired voluptuous female approximately his height and age enter. Through his tears he recognizes her, his f-gen, wearing a loose-fitting shift that one might have seen inmates or staff at a mid-twentieth century asylum for the troubled. Assessing Carson's situation as less than urgent, m-Carmel sashays around the perimeter of the room before reaching him, now seated on his INdivan. She runs her fingers along it and sits on it before turning her gaze up toward Carson who cannot take his eyes from her. By the time she seats herself he involuntarily steps toward her too and seats himself beside her. "I think I need something," he says. "Help, I think. You can help?"

IN (2)

2012-01-02T14:53:00.000-06:00

Carson remembers Christmas, but he can't determine whether it's a placed-mem, a group-mem, or a bona-fide self-mem. To be honest he's not sure if lately he's been coming OUT more or going IN. The hard thing about all this was discerning self-mem from group-mem, and just now when he looks out over the silken tan-red sand and verdant leaves of the palms outside the window he imagines the sand as snow and the trees decorated in lights, and the ring of carols, faint in the air as if sung by a troupe of church choir devotees out spreading good cheer a wave of nostalgia buckles his knees.

Anticipation. The word itself flits across his mind-screen. He doesn't know how else to say it. What was that sense that was both desire and withholding? Need? Not quite so malevolent, yet still a kind of necessity. Does he remember sitting in a chair, in a car, in a church pew, waiting for the call to run to a place where what - what would it be? What does he desire? What does he need that he cannot not have? At least not when he wants it. What was this twist in the gut called hope that he now, he realizes, feels?

IN (1)

2011-12-31T16:55:00.000-06:00

A desert expanse waits outside the room windows, but that only encourages Carson to return to his INdivan beside the others arrayed in a fantastic digital design. The room, unlike the dystopic images from many of your choice of twentieth century films and novels, was bright, coloured in waves of pixels and windows to the outdoors. It was not unpleasant at all, and there was choice. There were real options for those of us who had not as yet fully opted IN.

Carson had to admit at this point that he was likely more IN than not. He hadn't paid attention to this stats lately. He recalled Petra suggesting that this was the first sign that he would go all IN at some point. Whether or not you simply felt that it took too much energy to check, or whether it was the fatigue that comes from continually confronting the possibility of loss, not knowing how much time you were IN indicated something, she said. "It means that you've got a preference. That you're leaning toward IN. That you go OUT for a break, but you know you're going back IN. That you're always measuring the time that way." This memory was from a while back. Carson can't be specific about it. He's rummaging about in his mind for the last memory he's had of a conversation with Petra. Was that it? Smiling, he thinks that he might try google it. Of course it will be logged, to be found somewhere ing the v-base. Every room had one. He turns from the window to Petra lying on her IN-divan beside him. He wants to touch her, to awaken her. Only his respect for the freewill protocols stop him. From withIN he's can invite her OUT, but she retains full right to her bodyspace.

You'd think that since most were IN for most of the time that the scan would not take long. Still the range of vocabulary people use during an OUTmoment is quite narrow. What word could he search that would be unique to that one conversation? His memory reels. Resisting the siren call of his INdivan he stands at one of the upright datadocks and keys in 'Petra.' Ten thousand and twenty-two results, beginning with the most recent whose first frame includes Petra and the form of a woman named Naomi. Carson realizes his error immediately. Now he'll want to know more. How many OUTmoments has Petra taken since the last one they had? With whom? Was she forgetting? Why wasn't he? He refines his search prompts: 'Petra,' and 'INtime.'

As he waits he feels the room fill with the unison susurrant breathing of the INs. This was touted as one of the marvels of going IN, that to Carson had seemed so banal at the time. One brochure header he'd read went: "go IN, get INtune!" How long ago was that? His self-mem was in decline. Bits and pieces - pastiches - unassimilable bits. A headline or an image without context. How long had he had these questions? Didn't he have a recollection of the datadocks being busy? Of having to go IN if he wanted to get data-time? Why was he the only one standing now, in the bright light of the sun? Why did the white sun seem so near? And the sand outside - had it always so fully surrounded the room?

The desolation was expansive and gorgeous. Blue sky. Tan-red sand sifting in the wind around the trunks of trees that remained a miraculous green. He thought he remembered talk of subterranean irrigation. He thought he remembered talk of the appreciation of this new aesthetic: barren-lush.

2011: A good year

2011-12-23T16:19:00.003-06:00

Monkey Bread

2011-12-16T01:02:00.002-06:00

I baked cookies and Monkey Bread tonight. We don't know why it's called Monkey Bread. In the absence of a more apt name, we use the one everyone else uses. We hope no one is offended. I'm not sure that monkeys even eat bread - though this bread is pretty good, so I doubt they could resist!

Here's what it looks like (though I baked mine in two loaf tins).

Here's how you bake Monkey bread.

1. Mix the dough/add the goodies.

Monkey bread lends itself to freelancing; you don’t have to follow a recipe.
You can start with your favorite bread recipe. To fill a bundt pan, you will need a recipe that calls for about four cups of flour. Mix as you would another bread.
We usually add several tablespoons of sugar for a little sweeter bread. For an egg-rich bread, add an egg or two. You can also add cocoa, dry fruit, or nuts.

2. Cut the chunks.

The easiest way to cut the dough is to roll it out on the counter to a thickness of 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick and cut the dough into squares with a sharp knife or pizza roller. The chunks should be no larger than walnuts.

3. Coat the chunks.

There are two ways to coat the chunks: dip the chunks in butter and roll them in a sugar mixture or make a buttery slurry and dip the chunks in the slurry.
The chunks can be rolled in a mixture of sugar and spices and finely chopped nuts.
Jam, maple syrup, or fruit syrup can be used as the basis for a dipping slurry.
Nuts or fruit can be added between layers if desired. If you want to top your monkey bread with nuts, place nuts in the bottom of the pan since the monkey bread will be inverted onto a platter after baking.

4. Load the pan.

You don’t have to use a bundt pan; any pan will do though tube pans and springform pans may leak.

5. Bake the bread.

Bake the bread at 350 degrees or as directed by the recipe. Once baked, let the monkey bread cool in the pan for about five minutes before inverting on a platter. This gives the glaze a chance to set so that it does not run everywhere when inverted.
Serve the monkey bread warm and fresh.

Ride report

in: -7'C wind 45ks NW

out: -14'C wind 15ks WNW

It's what you want

2011-12-13T23:21:00.002-06:00

Holding it there on her lap perfectly wrapped in red foil with a gold bow, it’s weird how she goes on talking like she’s got nothing for you. Outside the snow falls like lace lifting in the wind. What if I just take it? you say. She smiles back. Do you dare? Well that’s the crux of it right there isn’t it, because these days everyone has the courage of their desires. Even without understanding this you'll do it. All you can do is watch.

Ride report:

in: (brought in the car for new struts)

out: -12'C wind 10 ks S

How To Train Your Dragon

2011-12-12T23:34:00.003-06:00

Colby finally came through! After several bait and switch suggestions that we would be watching How To Train Your Dragon, we watched it tonight. It was fun. The storyline was recognizable and simple (which is a good thing if you're watching a movie with Colby!), and the animation, as far as I could tell, was well done, even beautiful at times - I particularly liked the scenes with the vast moonlit ocean in the background (though those scenes were also the corniest).

I really don't know how to review an American-made animated feature, as compared to a live-action feature, or even compared to Japanese Anime. Are the standards different? It kind of feels that way. That is, the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (98%) and IMDB (8.2/10) are so over-the-top positive that I can't figure it out. I mean this isn't a bad movie, but it's not a great one. It's not innovative in anyway that I can see. It's pretty, and technically well-executed, but the story isn't worth much of a mention as being compelling or imaginative.

Here's a list of some of the hacked tropes it includes: misunderstood, underdog son/hero; bombastic, unfeeling, violent, jerkface father; huge, odd-duck, mishapen sidekick (the Hagrid factor); the cute girl who finally understands; the bullies who finally understand; the creatures of the natural world misunderstood as hateful and dangerous, but actually loving ... except for that spawn of evil which lurks deep in the belly of the Earth (oh the conflictedness of it - to love the Earth or fear it - which will it be?); the "it all comes together in the end" ending. There are more. I won't mention the visually stereotypes of comfort (the warm lights of home) and dazzle (the crazy firefights) that abound here.

There are also several missed opportunities of interesting revisions of the above tropes: a female hero? (why not?); a father and a mother that care, even if they're misguided (what the heck is going on with the lack of fully-formed two-parent families in animated films? - thank you Lion King and Coraline!); let's have all the children be less easily co-opted into the adult agenda (like Super 8).

Anyway, as far as I'm interested in animated feature films, I will continue to pay attention to anime pieces like Princess Mononoke & Tekkonkinkreet. These movies stand alone as mature pieces of art and need not be treated with the kid gloves like most American animated features. The closest a Hollywood animated feature has come to compelling is the first 30 minutes of Wall-E, and that section of the film does it without dialogue! By the way, aren't voices done by "stars" one of the more problematic aspects of animation? Here the Viking father speaks in a Scottish brogue (Gerard Butler), while his son speaks a kind of slacker middle-Americanese (Jay Baruchel). Why?

That's enough. We had a good time with Colby. The movie entertained us. That was certainly sufficient for tonight. I'll stop with my griping already.

Ride report

in: -10'C wind 20 ks N

out: -11'C wind 12 ks N

Under no moon

2011-12-11T21:20:00.001-06:00

George wakes up after a dream. It's 4:37. The night is cold and clear - stars but no moon. The temperature has fallen from above zero to minus 15. That's what they'd predicted, that's what happened. Under no moon. If I were brave now, he thinks, I'd get up and start writing. I'd write down this dream. I'd start with the large two-and-a-half-storey clapboard siding house with the veranda, and the family of five living in it. The trusting community wherein no one locks doors and the psychotic killer finds a place to wage his campaign of terror. The scene wherein the young girl, the middle daughter, cowers in the bathtub only to be found and without hesitation or soundtrack of warning sliced and hacked by the killer's strangely small sickle-shaped blade, her face and neck bearing the brunt of it, the blood minimalist in this scene as she kneels before him and then, still moaning despite the near complete removal of her face, falls forward on all fours at the killer's feet. Meanwhile the rest of the family, without George of course, has fled the house and stands in front of it, on the lawn, as though it were aflame, hugging one another, waiting. For what? The dream gives him this image as it closes, and he awakens: his wife and two daughters huddled in terror before his house while he, presumably from the front door, under cover of the veranda, exits. Who is the killer? he wonders.

If he gets up now to write he'll make good use of the day. The dream is a gift. The exit at the end an obvious entrance into story. Into writing. You'd be reading it right now if George had heeded his own best advice. Rather though, he sighs, gets up and goes to the toilet, relieves himself, and returns to bed, the sheets damp from his sweat. Chilled now he pulls the comforter closer. He was hot, now he's cold. Beside him Rebecca awakens and says, "Can't sleep?"

"Dream," he says. "Nightmare. Stupid. A slasher."

"Ouch," she says.

"You?" he says.

"No, just my neck. I slept funny I think."

"I should get up now," he says.

"Time?" she says, looking up. "Oh! It's almost five!"

"Yeah, I could get up."

"I can't," she says, "I should be sleeping on my back, flat. Not like this."

The radio wakes him at 8:13. He's had a second dream. This one's about being late for work. George doesn't want to think about it. He lies and waits for the ecstasies of the sports announcers, and then sits up, dresses, and heads to the kitchen to make coffee. It's Sunday, thank God.

Ride report

Rode to Altona, then to Morris (for Steak'n'eggs at Burkes) with JS. Steven started out with us but 13 ks in his derailleur hanger broke and he called for a ride (and generously encouraged us to ride on). It was a good ride, though we'd misunderestimated the wind direction and speed - it was from the NW and so we had to ride into it for a good bit. Otherwise the temperatures were right, as was the breakfast and the company.

I'm trying not to eat after 8 pm

2011-12-08T22:47:00.001-06:00

Today I failed. I had some tortilla chips just before 9. I couldn't help myself. They were so salty. So crisp. So unassuming in their nearly unseasoned state. They are, simply, my "I don't wanna eat much, but I wanna eat something" go to snack.

I solved the yen for something on my palette with a whisky tonight. That worked. Earlier I'd tried some pear flavoured green tea. That wasn't bad, but it didn't work, obviously. Read the confession above.

Eating after 8, or worse after 10, has contributed to a long string of bad nights. I get to bed late because my gut feels leaden. So I read. Not a bad thing, but still, not sleeping. As the clock approaches 1:00 am I tell myself to stop reading. I turn off the light. I lie on my back. I wait.

Sleep hovers somewhere up above the moon. Somewhere up and to the left of heaven. I lie on my back for maybe 3 minutes and then I turn and lie on my side - my left side, facing away from M. Another few minutes pass. Sleep begins to descend the ladder.

I might as well be using a stone pillow. I turn a full 180' rotation to face M. Maybe spoon. It depends which way she's facing. This serves little purpose really. I know from long experience that I will not fall asleep while spooning. You can guess why.

I sigh. I turn back onto my back. When I was recuperating from my broken kneecap I had to sleep on my back. At first this was hell, but like all things you are forced to do, you figure out how it can work and you make do. Soon you're used to it. Then you have a taste for it.

Lying on my back is the most comfortable position for the wait, but by 1:30 I've lost faith in it too. So I'm back to my left side, facing south. My head to the east, in case you're wondering whether the energy's moving in the right direction. I think it is. Still, I've had to wait a long time for sleep to descend.

Occasionally I roll onto my stomach. This is just a time waster. A position changer. It's interim at best. I will not sleep this way. I will sigh. I will face south. Then I will face M. I will consider spooning again. I will think maybe ...

Of course that makes me sleepy, but not M. And she's already asleep. So this is not a fair way to solve my problem. Of course there is the issue of desire, and the work involved in cultivating it. One can't just charge in without some softening of the defenses. But I digress.

I'm convinced that my sleep troubles are gut related. Appetite-related. I don't often remember dreams, so I can't say that I dream more when I eat before I sleep. I can say that when I eat before I sleep, I sleep less.

By 2:45 it's near crisis mode. I get up. Go to the toilet. Use it. Wander back. Think about trying another bed. Ask myself why I haven't just stayed up reading. Ask myself why I can't write late at night. Ask myself whether I'm asking too many questions. Answer? Yes.

At 6:45 the radio starts in. Wow. I'm not ready for this. By 7:30 I'm up. By 7:40 I'm on my bike. By 8:05 (depending on the wind) I'm at work. I'm okay and all, but it's not ideal. I'm too fixated on the leisure of Saturday and Sunday mornings.

So I'm working on giving up eating after 8. I'm pretty sure this is going to solve the problem. I hate getting old. You have to start (more?) good habits.

Ride report

in: -15'C wind 25ks NW

out: -13'C wind 15ks WNW

Discretion?

2011-12-07T23:10:00.001-06:00

In two recent situations, I believe I exercised it.

1st - Between Movember and Nomomo two of us (sitting in a bar of course, still fully moustachioed and under a little bit of influence) dared each other to go to work looking like this, for one day:

I didn't do it. The better part of valour and all that.

2nd - A week ago our good Winnipeg (and France and just all 'round good) friends offered to barter/sell us the first piece of handmade antique furniture (they're prolific and discerning collectors) they ever purchased - an 1860s pine cupboard and hutch from Quebec. We said yes, and here it is, taking its place in our kitchen (which saves me the trouble of building something half-assed and less than half as good!)!

Two wise decisions in a week! I'm on a roll!

Ride report

in: -9'C wind 15ks SW

out: -10'C wind 20ks W

Waiting for the Barbarians

2011-12-06T21:38:00.001-06:00

South African writer J.M. Coetzee (pronounced kuut - see) wrote Waiting for the Barbarians in 1980 at the height of Apartheid. In 1983 he would write The Life and Times of Michael K which would win the Man Booker prize, and in 1999 he'd win that prize again for Disgrace. In 2003 Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

Waiting tells the story of the aging Magistrate of an outpost on the edge of an unnamed civilization. Besides description of the landscape (it is an arid, inhospitable land) there is little offered to locate the reader. If you know, as I did, that Coetzee is South African, you assume that the action takes place on that continent. There's nothing wrong with making that assumption, except that it narrows the range of a novel that seems deliberately sparse on names, perhaps in order to widen its scope into a near allegory.

Those in power at the centre of this Empire are convinced that a barbarian threat is imminent. They send an emissary, Colonel Joll, with some troops, to the Magistrate's outpost to scour the land for barbarians or those sympathetic to them, and interrogate them by any means. A logical and sympathetic man, the Magistrate doesn't see evidence of a barbarian threat. Early on he tells Joll this, which puts him under suspicion.

When the troops return from an excursion with barbarian prisoners, Joll subjects them to brutal interrogation and torture. To help manage his own complicity in this the Magistrate takes in an adolescent barbarian girl whose feet have been broken during questioning. Though they share a bed and he bathes her intimately while she lives with him, he is reluctant, even unable, to consummate the relationship. Not until he goes on an excursion into barbarian lands to return her to her family is he able and willing to love her completely. Then, he lets her go back to her own people.

This has to mean something. An aging man of the Empire sympathizes with a young barbarian girl but cannot "enter into" her experience until outside of Empire and in her land. This all seems a bit rich. In fact, if it weren't for his horror at the politics of the Empire, we'd have to declare our hero, the Magistrate, a dirty old man who takes advantage of a situation.

Even though his conscience seems to trouble him, he never regrets the primal, sexual nature of his relationship with this young girl, and to me this muddies the focus of the novel. When he returns to the outpost to resume his duties he finds that Joll has put an ambitious and vicious young officer in charge and the Magistrate is jailed for traitorous activities.

The scandal of the Magistrate arises from his sympathy for the barbarians, especially his fraternization with the young girl. Although the Magistrates actions work symbolically, on a "real world" level they are problematic. Why use a cliche-ridden, and abhorrent to many, sexualized relationship as the central illustration of how civilization and barbarity must reconcile - or how what is civilized and what is barbarous are only constructs defined by Empire. Sure it all works, but it's just so unseemly and hard to defend.

Coetzee however, explores this sort of relationship in Disgrace too. Here again the relationship causes the aging male's fall from grace. My question is simply this: though he sounds the right notes in portraying the moral ethical boundaries of sexuality, does the sexual conquest of a young female by an aging male really warrant this much attention? It may be the stuff of the aging male fantasy, but it's hard-going to suggest that this fantasy has merit on its own, much less as the focus for a parable on how relations between human groups fail.

Further, this male-oriented point of view is already pervasive and problematic. For at least half of the readers out there, it's solidly "eyes roll back in the head and sigh" material. These readers (and you know who you are) will likely struggle with the sexual nature of the story simply because it's been told and told and told and, it's beside the point. Writers should explore large themes like the clash between civilizations, but perhaps not in a novel about an aging man who finds comfort and understanding in the body of a young female member of the underclass.

Finally, didactic art is, at best, difficult to pull off. At worst it's a sermon disguised as a story. At best it's art with a message. There's craft in it, to be sure, but one always wonders why the writer didn't just publish an essay instead.

Ride report

in: -15'C wind 25 ks SW

out: -10'C wind 25 ks WSW

Super 8

2011-12-05T21:21:00.001-06:00

I hadn't heard about Spielberg's latest until a student started insisting that I had to see this movie. Based on this recommendation alone, I found it, and settled down to watch it with a few loved ones. Well it had me from the first strains of ELO, and then when The Knack started up, and then The Cars, and then they were driving that 2-door Buick Skylark - which reminded me of my friend's Chevy Malibu - I was completely transported back to my adolescence, and the friends and innocence of that time just before you're not innocent anymore - those moments when you're just becoming aware of one another as having motives beyond fun and building stuff and then tearing it down again. My friends and I didn't make movies (like the kids in the movie), but we tore banana-seat bikes apart and made them into proto-bmx things to ride around town on, late into the nights. We made model cars and trains and raced things, and watched Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Jaws and loved to shoot things and light them on fire. And we were just starting to think that girls might be interesting as friends of a different kind.

So when the train wrecks gloriously, stupendously, right in front of them when they're doing what they most want to do, and there's a girl there too, it's just rapturous! It's that small apocalypse that you escape to tell about - and it gets better in the telling. Except, in Super 8, it gets better and then worse too in the telling. Unaccountably, ominously, foreshadowingly, Cloverfieldishly worse. J.J. Abrams produces this movie, as he did Star Trek, and Cloverfield. The monster here might as well have hopped frames from Cloverfield to the train car from which it escapes here.

Which bring me to this thing that successful directors do - they re-iterate (some call it homage) the work of other auteurs, and their own work as well. Auteurs do this sort of thing - you can see an Atwood or a McCarthy novel coming from a mile away - and it's mostly okay. I appreciate it that I can buy a Dylan album, and settle into the comfortable "re-runishness" of it. Shakespeare constantly pirated his own best lines. I find comfort in knowing what Ian McEwan will supply in a novel. The good ones however, like Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds, do more than just revisit the old riffs, they make something new, something fresh, something magnificently unexpected.

I liked ET and I as soon as the kids in this movie start riding their bikes across open fields, the camera staying low to expand the horizon that overlooks a sleepy midwestern town, I started to expect that this was what Spielberg was re-serving. Which was fine. I love the "sharp fresh kids versus the blunt jaded adults" trope. It's a reminder to stay young and to act less (hopefully a lot less) like the narrow-scoped dopes that run the air force, the police force, or the school (at least they're dopes in the movies). There is a modicum of freshness here. The young male hero's dad isn't quite the dope we might expect. Neither is the biology teacher that seems responsible for initiating the whole shebang. Otherwise though, the adults deliver their stupid, unaware, uninteresting lines, and the kids wisely dodge them.

No, Spielberg's got nothing new to offer here: not in the relationships between the kids, nor between the kids and the adults, nor between the civilians and army guys. Further, he's got nothing new to offer to the alien-intelligence meets human-xenophia situation either. Not since District 9 (well okay, Cloverfield wasn't bad either) has anyone really tried hard to re-fresh this plot. Spielberg and Abrams, for all the money, technology, and ingenuity (got writers anyone?) at their disposal could do nothing more imaginative than an upscale, more spectacular, ET phone home.

Where are the good sci-fi writers when this kind of film gets proposed? What could LeGuin do with these resources? I know I know, Spielberg and Hollywood don't really want to make us fundamentally uncomfortable at the end of a show that features adorably innocent, truth-seeking teens. Good point. So I'll just have to accept that after all that cash, and all those technical resources were thrown at the screen, what stuck were the first twenty minutes or so with its shazamic late 70s rock, its youthful imagination, its blossoming love, and its orgasmic train wreck. After that this train gets back on that pretty narrow successful train-track feel-good formula. It mails it in. It's a nice to get a care-package now and then, but these cookies are stale.

Ride report(s)

It's worth noting that I rode from Altona to St. Joseph and then home yesterday (about 29 ks). It was about -10'C and the wind was from the North. I rode gravel and dirt roads, and this reminds me of my absolute love for my cross bike. There are so many more options for rides.

Today

in: -25'C wind 10ks N

out: -14'C wind 10ks N

It was an ABES night ...

2011-12-02T00:57:00.001-06:00

... for a change. For the evidence head on over to here. Hahahaha! Funny, eh? No, seriously, head on over to here (but wait until this evening, when it's been updated).

There is no mo mo.
There is only now.

Ride report
in: -9'C wind 16 ks S
out: -6'C wind 20 ks S

No mo mo

2011-11-30T23:25:00.001-06:00

On November 15th it looked like this:

Today it looked like this:

Well that's something, I guess. Truth be told, I want to be rid of the schnirr. It always feels a bit moist underneath it, and it just itches and scratches and aggravates. I don't think the skin on my face and the hair it produces are out of the closet compatible. My skin tolerates it, but after a couple of days it just screams "get this ingrown stiff-necked heretic out of here" and I oblige.

I still haven't taken the knife to it. If not tonight, then tomorrow night, but soon there must be no mo mo.

Ride report

in: -8'C wind 20 ks S

out: -4'C wind 15 ks NNE

Doing good

2011-11-28T23:07:00.001-06:00

This can only be a beginning. I'm going to continue it sometime. Honest. I've been impatient. I confess it. Who wants to wait? I've been waiting long enough. Putting it off really. Putting it off so long that all I've managed are small spurts of it, which is more dabbling than engaging. I have a long way to go, and I've really just started down the path.

I'm mixing my metaphors. Spurts. Paths. Enough of that. I am so slow to believe. I know, if you know me, you know that I have a gullible side - a "want to believe it" side - that keeps me going. But in truth I don't really believe in myself, or in the goodness I apparently hope for.

I say apparently because when I rave on about how things could be or should be better, I recognize a kind of fundamentalism of hope. It's in my genes I think. One philosopher (I recall who - John Gray?) says that "hope" is pernicious and the root of religion and foolishness because it distracts us from the toil and crap of today; it averts our eyes upward to some vista that may as well be a mirage.

Rather, one must examine the crap, pay attention to the labour at hand. This is such an obvious maxim. Live in the now. Do what you do now, well, and confront it when it's bad. Stop then, and proceed to the next good thing to do. Seek only to know enough to tell good from bad, and then to do it (the good that is).

And what is good? What does one draw on to determine that? I had a dream last night. I'd fallen behind again. We'd been called in to work. It was an email message that I had seen but not opened. When I finally did open it, I was already late. So I rush out the door. Better late than never I think. Even though it's on my Christmas holidays that's the sort of power my boss has over me. It's a whole staff affair, and it's some kind of a trust-building activity day. I get there just in time to help a group of them try to lift and roll (or were we trying to bounce it?) a large tractor tire the size of the ones that are used on four-wheel-drives. The goal is to move it from one line to another one, but the tire starts out in a kind of a ditch, so we have to roll it up the ditch hill first. It's heavy. It's hard. The tire wants to roll back down.

Sisyphus. This is the first sign of bad. Engaging a contrived task that threatens to become repetitive, alone or with others, that has no inherent meaning or purpose. We roll the tire not because it needs to be moved, but because the authority has asked us to, and because we trust that authority and each other to be looking out for our best interests. But we suspect they're not. We suspect they're looking out for their own best interests. We suspect that we are putting off our own best interests in an attempt to garner their favour, and the favour of those around us. This is bad.

I know this means I'm defining good in the negative. That is, if I can figure out what is bad, then I'm halfway to determining what is good. Well, halfway certain is better than not certain at all. I'll take that much for now. It's taken me a while to see that just persevering in doing bad stuff, isn't good. Just because perseverance is virtuous doesn't mean that practicing it is always taking you down the path to goodness. I've spent a lot of time and energy being mad at others for working hard at foolish tasks, and even hating my own foolishness in engaging such tasks. So now I must engage in the task of undoing this habit of mind, this way of being, that is founded in any hope that someone else will see the merit of my effort as worthy, rather than the merit of the task. Which is to say that I have to stop worrying about my effort being measured, and worry more about doing good things, right now, for myself.

Oh that sounds selfish. See? My religion bears down on me again.

Ride report

in: -1'C wind 8 ks S

out: -4'C wind 2 ks W

Three things from the weekend

2011-11-27T23:26:00.001-06:00

Sunday: 10 Myths About Introverts describes me. Pretty much exactly.

Saturday: Watched Everything Must Go.

I love watching Will Ferrell being serious. He's still funny, it's just a different kind of funny. He's not trying to be funny, he's just funny to watch. And he can act. Although I don't think he's as engaging in this performance as he is in Stranger Than Fiction, he's working harder here. The cast isn't powerful and overwhelming in this film, as compared to STF (where he was working with Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal) so he's got to carry things on his own. He does. I liked the movie, but since it's based (loosely) on a Raymond Carver story - Why Don't You Dance? - I had that thing in my head too, and I ended up thinking too much about the opportunities the movie missed.

I'd have hoped that since this production was about as close to an independent release as you can get in Hollywood it might also allow itself to get closer to edgy. That's what Carver's stories do - play on the edge: the guy drinks a lot of whisky, not a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon; the guy himself sets up his furniture on the front lawn in the same way that it was set up in his house, he's not been kicked out with all of it by his wife (that's been done in a few movies before); the young couple shows up and he plays them records and they dance together and he with them, he doesn't meet an underprivileged kid with whom he plays catch, and who he grooms into a salesman, nor does he meet a tender-hearted young mom-to-be who nurtures him back to health. These re-visions are not better than the source material.

In fact maybe they only noted the source material to avert a possible complaint, and then went about there merry business disregarding the story (except for the furniture on the lawn bit). Maybe the screenplay based on Carver's story should have been written by Tom Waits (or at least by Charlie Kaufman). Maybe then it would've hung onto the grit and the rough. Then we'd have to do a little good work ourselves to see what good has come of it for the fired, down-on-his-luck lost American-dreamer. Do we always need to be told that there's a "diamond" in there?

Friday: Won $70 at poker (2 games, subtract $20 for the fee to play). Won the first game, came in second in the second.

Curling season win #2

2011-11-23T23:48:00.001-06:00

Tonight was a good night! A win against win of the best teams in the draw, and two free beers to fortify the ride home! I'm gonna sleep well tonight!

Ride report

in: -1'C wind 15ks S

out: 2'C wind 15 ks S

Make it strange

2011-11-22T23:18:00.001-06:00

The Errol Morris Op-Ed doc explaining the apparently sinister and inexplicable "umbrella man" of the Kennedy assassination makes the point, again, that truth may well be stranger than fiction.

Well that's a cheap shot at fiction. The nub of the matter is that if we scrutinize any moment in which numerous people are going about their routines, or breaking out of them, we will find oddities that, if we are looking for devils, will look devilish.

That's a fair and reasonable. When we observe things, we change them - some psychology study said so. And so what about fiction, and truth, and strangeness?

There isn't enough time to get into it right now. No matter what I do, I always end up here at about 11:35 pm scrambling something together for this consumptive blog-monster. That's true. It's not strange. It's completely predictable. Almost reliable, except that I'm not.

And I'd use this situation in a piece of fiction because it might be interesting, and because it's easy to believe that it's true, and because fiction isn't supposed be strange, it's supposed to be plausible and, wait for it, insightful. The point of most fiction, from Stephen King's horror to Ursula K. Le Guin's speculations, is to say something about the "human condition." (I put that phrase in quotation marks because I need to tell you that while it should be ubiquitous, and in many ways is rather than cliched, you can't be sure of much these days. But in some circles you can't say "It's about the human condition." without a significant incidence of eye-rolling.)

What is "strange" anyway? Purely a matter of point of view isn't it? We don't need too many examples to recognize that the major factor in anyone's declaring an event or a person as "strange" is their perspective on the subject.

What is "true?" A matter of point of view too? Likely. That and consensus I imagine. If a large group of us agree on an account or an explanation, we come to allow ourselves the luxury of certainty and we declare the thing as true. Ahhh. Now we don't have to think about that thing anymore. We've got it filed. If anyone asks, we can refer them to our neatly stored reality.

What is "fiction?" When someone has the audacity, or imagination, to go back to one of those files, open it, reread it, and suggest another interpretation of the person or the event, he's created a fiction, another version of the truth. Sometimes these story-bound suggestions go further afield than others - read Philip K. Dick sometime - and sometimes they read like, well, like it's not been imaginative enough, that the interpretation is more like a paraphrase than anything - think about the trouble James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) got into when he (or his editor) walked this line.

So what is fiction? It's that truth we've all already agreed upon being made strange again so we can re-see it, re-imagine it, re-consider it, even re-tell it. Truth is not stranger than fiction. Fiction is truth made strange again.

Ride report
in: -3'C wind 20 ks S
out: -5'C wind 15 ks S

Layout and decline

2011-11-21T23:30:00.001-06:00

Clever title eh? I learned today, from a trusted friend, that a person in the city was asking $2500 to complete a task I've done 15 times (and am now doing my 16th and final time) as a volunteer over the past few years. Well I guess I'm either a tool, or a really generous guy.

I don't feel generous these days. Behind maybe. A bit bitter to be sure. Not generous though. It says a lot (and not very good things) about me that I'm still doing this, despite my misgivings. My generous spirit is in sharp decline. I've given more than I should have, and now I'm in a tailspin.

It's going to be positive though. I'm going to come out of this having to figure out how to use the time I'm going to take back, to develop something more lasting - myself. If this all sounds kind of hokey and 21st century whine-o-rama so be it. I'm due. It's in the design.

Ride report

in: -11'C wind 12 ks S

out: -10'C wind 15 ks S

Pictures of children (fiction)

2011-11-20T23:25:00.001-06:00

He buys the scooter and has it delivered. It's perfect. Italian and cream and tan and parked outside on the front walk. Leaning there, nonchalant on its stand, it makes even Winnipeg under the elms look like residential Paris.

Still, the shine is off. Neither of them wants to admit it, least of all he. There is always a way to avoid it, though in her eyes the signal flickers. If however, you don't keep your eyes open wide when you greet her with a kiss, you'll never notice.

The question is whether he understands his need to continue, or how this, his most recent effort, might only be an attempt, yet again, not to lose. Does he understand the question? We do, but Vincent's awareness has become, in some way, our question too.

For instance, he's just read the latest New Yorker, to which he subscribes on his ipad, and on it he's chuckled at the cartoons (which he reads first, always), in particular at the one with the caption: "We realize it's a win-win, Jenkins - we're trying to figure out a way to make it a win-lose."

The men around the boardroom table get it. So does Vincent, but not in the way that will be helpful for him, and for us. Meredith might get it too, but she would never read The New Yorker on her ipad. She'd want to know what Babble or dooce would say.

Wistful, she'd enter the blogger's world hoping for pictures of children. The one of the two girls standing at the front door, backpacked and bundled for the trip to school. Herein lies our first clue. It's obvious really. Embarrassingly so.

Like riding through a culvert

2011-11-17T23:47:00.001-06:00

Riding home at 10 pm, into an East wind of about 30 ks, with a heavy snowfall happening as well, is a bit like riding in through a large culvert with a flashlight. You're working hard to keep your eyes focussed five to ten feet in front of your front wheel. You don't notice what your legs are doing, unless you drift off of the hardpack and onto the soft gravel that gets humped up on the sides and middle of the road. Then you notice that you have to pump harder, and keep from oversteering. You just ease your way back to the good path.

In a heavy snowfall, with a bit of wind, it's like riding through a storm of christmas mini-lights. You know that there's a lot of possibility for light, but not a lot of focus. You want to look up a bit to see the whole road and get a little perspective, but that doesn't always help. You know you're going to ride where you look, so you've got to look at the right place.

I walked out of the school today geared up for the first bona fide winter ride of the season. The wind would be in my face for three miles. The snow was coming down good and steady. It was about -15'. Perfect. In a few weeks this will be no big deal. For today it's worthy of a smile and moment to tell myself to take it easy and concentrate. I blow out and I start riding.

On rides like this I can only guess what gear I'm actually in. I can't look down to check. I'm grateful that the bike's working well. I'm grateful that I'm moving pretty easily into the wind. I'm grateful when the ride takes less than 25 minutes on a day like this. Later in the winter, when it's twice as cold (is that how to say it?), it could take another 10 minutes. Maybe more.

For today the only place that I wish I was better prepared would have been my ears. The wind got in a bit. Tomorrow I'll wear a headband over my skullcap, just to make sure.

Ride report

in: -8'C wind 10ks NW

out: -15'C wind 30ks E (snow)

There's too much at stake

2011-11-16T23:47:00.001-06:00

So I'll get right to it. I'm done for the day.

Ride report

in: -8'C wind 15ks W (first substantial snowfall too)

out: -11'C wind 20ks NW

By that time (fiction)

2011-11-15T23:03:00.001-06:00

The rocking of the boat is significant enough to alert Mr. Sawatzky, but it's too late. This trope weighs heavy on the-boy-in-the-striped-shirt, named Paul, who, at this time in his quest to do what Jesus would do, has waited. Rather than being a harbinger in action, he has chosen to wait, to watch, to know what will happen, to be implicated in it, to suffer within it. The frantic pulling of the starter cord, the futile mechanical noises and the clenching of a jaw. These things comfort him. He hides them in his heart. Surely he hopes to reach the shore once more, but the simple satisfaction of knowing his fate has calmed him.

In the news later in the week no one will know that the boy understood what would happen before it did, well before it did in fact, or that he chose the paradox of silence in the face of destruction, even the possibility of his own. If we all could know of his silence and inaction we might see tragedy. Catharsis. We might see reason and cause. More than sympathy, we could realize that had the right person acted at the right time, disaster could have been, would have been, averted. The scientific view of things could have won the day, though there would be no fanfare or self-congratulation. Only the young hero thanked by the heedless, now grateful, father.

But what would this do for you really? Assuage your fears of a numb and nameless universe? Certainly Paul, the-boy-in-the-striped-shirt, finds no gain in once again being right and helping others avoid destiny. Where's the betterment for anyone in these scenarios? Shouldn't we let the chips fall? Shouldn't we nod and wince at the train-wreck, the highway mishap, the slipped disk and subsequent back spasm. It happens. It should happen. It must happen. The universe wills it.

It only takes a few hours for the searchers to rumble down to the bridge where the truck is parked, note it, launch their boats and head up and down stream at once. At the downstream rapid would-be rescuer James Friesen, familiar with the river, lands his boat and walks the shoreline. Fifty yards later he picks a child's sneaker, blue with two gold stripes, still wet. Ten yards farther he picks up a fishing rod. Sure now, but heartsick, he approaches a monstrous cottonwood sweeper looming over the fan of the current on the outside of a bend that turns the river back East. Its overreaching inert forking limbs have caught something larger. James wills it to move, to sound out as he approaches and calls out, to return his call with a plea for help, but the life in that small down-turned body bears its witness in silence.

Ride report

in: -3 wind 10ks W

out: -1 wind 25ks WNW

Post haste

2011-11-09T23:47:00.002-06:00

After a day at the mill, the meat grinder, the salt mine, the chocolate factory, the farm, I headed over to the curling rink for the second game of the season. What could be better, really, than sliding rocks on ice so that they hit one another, and after two hours of that, heading up to the club for drinks and laughs.

When I got home I ducked in on my facebook page only to read a status update from a former student: "Screw studying, let's go on facebook:D" Well I had to click my way out of there as fast as I could. This my friends, may be what it's all coming to. You might hope for better. You might say that we are the "god species" and we can't help but get it right eventually. You might even think that facebook can help.

But I don't think so. I'll give myself the luxury of hoping that I may work harder to unleash myself from this electronic tether to spend more time riding my bike and sliding rocks on the ice, but as a group humans are too much like water - they follow the paths of least resistance. In the spirit of more resistance I say, "Screw the internet, I'm going to read a book in bed :D"

Ride report

in: -3'C wind 20ks W

out: -1'C wind 25ks NW

Email woes

2011-11-09T00:07:00.002-06:00

Apparently there's software out there that can determine the tone of an email you've written;-) Oh Lordy Lord Lord!! :D What I wouldn't have given to have that handy bit of ones and zeroes to flag my negative tone this morning>:-( Dag-nabit !-o

If I really was the dirty scoundrel that I made myself out to be with the first two sentences of my response to a missive suggesting some misbehaviour on my part, I might have avoided the subsequent conversation, and the avoidance in the hallway tactic, and the general malaise that overcomes some of us when we've been rankled, and we've replied unkindly in kind |-( Oh if only I had a tighter grip on my intonations ;() What's a dude to do? %-)

Alas I do repent me of my misemailthropic nature. Perhaps there's a niche opening for a technology that encourages a return to cursive and HP inspired owls, or carrier pigeons, or the tristero =) Or the vacuum/air tubes of 1984, lest we be relegated by a rogue fly and a Brazil-level typographical error |D

Buttle!!!

Ride report

in: -4'C wind 5ks SSE

out: -2'C wind Calm (facing W)

A few firsts

2011-11-07T23:56:00.002-06:00

Cross season

This Sunday, at St. Malo, I rode in final race of my first complete (well nearly, I missed one race) cyclocross season. It will not be the last, as I cannot think of a Fall activity that could give me more hope and anticipation for the future. A big thanks to my bike for being there, to JS and ABES for a series generally well-placed jabs that finally shamed me into this marvelous thing, to Albert for being over 50 and still being great, to M and the big Gd for graciously giving me those Sundays, to M (again), G&J, & S&R for showing up at a bunch of the races to make it a family thing (now if you guys would just get some bikes and join me in the pain and pleasure!), to the MCA and all of the clubs (esp FGBC) that organized the races, and to Dr. John Wiens for fixing my kneecap a few years back when there was some question about my riding future. Here's the final picture of the season (thanks again to JS).

Snow

There was a "dusting" of snow on the ground this morning, and the roads were lightly layered in a crisp icy pebble that didn't hold up once the sun came out. The winter commuting season begins.

Floor hockey

As a wind-up to our successful soccer season, the team engaged in an intense game (the first of the year for me) that was about as much fun in a gym as I've ever had! (When "last goal wins" was declared we played like maniacs for more than 10 crazy minutes before we won! Oh the glory!)

After 399 posts, I'm unlinked

I've unlinked this blog from my workplace website. I don't know about this first. It's kind of like heading out on my own. And it's getting free of something. The fact is that though it's good to write with limits that are imposed from outside oneself (in this case it was the wideness of the audience), but a recent complaint from a work-related audience member about my word choice has me thinking that the limit may be more strict than I'm prepared to accept. Anyway, don't expect a sudden unhinging and flapping in the wind. It'll take me some time to decide what this change will mean.

400th post

This is it.

Ride report

in: -3'C wind 25ks W

out: A ride at 10:30 from Adam!

WWYD

2011-11-03T23:17:00.002-05:00

Having nothing to say can be freeing.

Ride report

in: 2'C wind 10 ks SSE

out: 6'C wind 8 ks S

First curling game of the season

2011-11-02T23:32:00.001-05:00

Well another fine (I have more faith that it will be great then I do that the Euro will survive until this time next year.) curling season has begun. Though we lost today, at least we lost on the last rock of the eighth end. The short version play by play would run like this. We pulled ahead early, leading 3 to 1 by the fourth end. Then gave up four, and then one, to fall back 6 to 3 by the sixth. Then we took four back to head into the final end up 7 to 6 (and telling ourselves that we'd either have to win, or make sure they took two - not that an extra end is that bad, but the beers upstairs were calling!). We gave up two, by about half an inch, on the last rock of the game. A respectable loss against a worthy opponent.

The upstairs talk ranged from geotherm heat systems (good but no panacea), to the new Altona brand (not good, not even approaching a panacea, and pretty expensive to boot (Thanks TKennerd! Seems there's no media niche safe from the retired sports wankers of any league!)), to the benefits of a heated garage (good, and a panacea) even if you were not asked about the height of your garage ceiling and ordered a door to fit the opening, for which you've just been told that the hardware will not work, because you do not have enough interior clearance. Sigh.

Yes, if you're looking for a 7 x 9 r16 steel garage door, I have one available for a reasonable price. Now excuse me while I order another door and reduce the opening to 6'6" x 9 so that the hardware will work. By Christmas the door will be on and the garage will be warm. I hope.

Ride report

in: 4'C wind NW 15ks

out: 8'C wind W 15 ks

I had an idea

2011-11-02T00:03:00.001-05:00

But then I was reading an article in the paper on an issue that means a lot to me. So I read the article and then, vexed, sat down at this machine, typed in the reporter's email into the address line and proceeded to tell the reporter my story. Having finished it (although I did not give all the details) I hovered over the send button, and then moved right and clicked save now.

What's the point I say to myself? Even though I addressed it to the reporter, and asked that it not be considered for print, what might come of speaking your mind on an issue on which you do in fact have hard experience and evidence? I don't know anymore about standing up and speaking even if your voice shakes. I don't know anymore about trying to make a difference in some systemic way. I don't know about occupying this or that place or institution. I don't have the energy to stand in the fray and fight for what I think is right.

Have I ever had that energy? I don't know. But I'm going to sleep on it before I press send. I used to care a bit about things to do with the institutional church. I'd attend conferences and occasionally approach the mic during discussions on one issue or another. I'd say something about it. I'd feel that I had contributed. I might even have a further discussion about it in the lobby over coffee later. Now I look back with a little smile and wonder what change I thought I might actually effect.

I don't know about crusades and preaching and letting yourself be heard anymore. Sure I'll still hold forth and say regrettable things in the staff-room or the bar or at the dinner table where my ambition and damage is, of necessity, more limited in scope. I still end up wincing, or apologizing, or regretting things I've said about as many times as I feel vindicated. It's all a vestige of that evangelical zeal and certainty that seems to have been a part of the natural and nurturing gift of my parents. I say "have been" in the hopes that I have passed less of it along to my own children. Less or none at all of this sort of legacy would be a fine result. To that end I believe I'll let the saved email molder in my drafts folder.

Ride report

in: 5'C wind 10 ks NW

out: 9'C wind 18 ks NW

Halloween at the barn

2011-10-31T23:41:00.000-05:00

Tonight eleven people came by for treats: nine kids and two adults. The kids came before eight, and the adults came after nine. These two pals were intrepidly cruising the southern MB villages and towns seeking out the ideal Halloween situation. They found it. Gretna! There, according to the account, the kids were out on the streets unaccompanied, walking from house to house seeking comfort food. There the whole place "just felt right" as the lights in the houses were on, and people were welcoming little and large people alike into there vestibules and bestowing sweets upon them with care and well-wishes.

While this all sounds wonderful, my experience of Halloween as a youngster was always one of dread. You see I was never allowed to go "begging." The closest I got to the experience was when mom and dad finally decided not to turn off the lights and go to church to escape the greedy begging trickers and treaters, but to at least give away some chocolate - is my first memory of this handing out a Mojo per person, or was it a stick of Juicy Fruit? Whatever the case, I know that we were not a generous sort of place those first few nights that I was allowed to hand out the treats to the heathen rabble. I do recall that in the last year or two my mom must have been somewhat embarrassed about the meagerness of our offerings, or that I put up a bit of a fuss about it, that we finally stepped-up to the mini-Oh Henry's. Again, my memory is foggy, and my brother may correct me - which I would welcome.

You see, having broken them down, my younger brother was allowed to, or simply went at it without asking, beg. At least that's my self-pitying memory of it. Whatever the case, to this day my gut reaction to Halloween is one of dread, though I know it to be a great time of community and catharsis and comedy and candy! That's the way my kids experienced it, and that's the way it should be. We should let that inner rabble out to rouse once a year at least. Probably we ought to do this three or four times a year. We'd be better off for it, though we wouldn't always have to give out free candy when we do it. On the other hand why not?

Ride report

in: 3'C wind 10ks SE

out: 9'C wind 10ks SSW

Halloween at the Camp

2011-10-30T23:20:00.000-05:00

The last "regular" race of the season was at Camp Assiniboia today. The pictures (courtesy of Cheryl and Johnny and Albert) will say more than I can, or should. Except that I hearkened back to my Boys Brigade years, and dressed up appropriately. (Don't ask where I got the shirt and pants - very authentic! I even fastened a green military beret to my helmet!). (singing) "On Stockaders, marching forward, on to victory ..."

WWJD

2011-10-27T22:59:00.002-05:00

The problem with being like Jesus, or just channeling his spirit here on earth is that there's so much pressure to be right. Not that you have to be correct about everything, but your intentions, those have to be right. By definition as soon as they're off, you can no longer be Jesus incarnate. That's just the way this kind of thing works. So Paul's sitting in the prow of that aluminum fishing vessel, if indeed it makes sense to call that stubby-nosed bow a prow, and he's watching things unfold as he thought they might. They're drifting. The other three are entirely engrossed in fishing. Indeed, they are fishing out of the water a slimy two-foot jackfish that the older brother has hooked. They are completely into this endeavour. To the three of them the world is conflated to this fish, that hook, their net, and the gunwale over which they work.

As he watches the riverbank he notes that they likely have drifted farther downstream than the last time the father started the engine, turned the boat around and nosed it back upstream to the spot where they'd put in. He notes that, relative to the shore, the boat and the water appear to be moving faster. He turns around to look for an explanation as to what he imagines to be an increase in the sound of the river, and notes a disturbance in the water. At least he thinks it's a disturbance. He knows that if he was Jesus he would know for certain whether it was a disturbance or not, and whether or not the disturbance in the water was enough to be alarmed about. It's a reminder to him that he is not, in fact, Jesus, but just trying to see the world that way.

Given this realization his confidence wavers, which serves to exaggerate his fear of what he now fully believes awaits them downstream. What would Jesus do? Should he fall asleep in the front of the boat and wait to be awakened? Should he step overboard and walk to shore (believing that the rippling water will firmly support him as his running shoe touches it - a kind of water to wood miracle)? Should he suggest that they throw their lines over the other side of the boat? Being like Jesus gave him understanding and invincibility, but doubting being like Jesus gives him nothing but questions.

Ride report
in: 2'C wind 10ks S
out: 7'C wind 15 ks SSW

I get nervous

2011-10-25T23:54:00.001-05:00

This is an observation. I've noticed it most lately when I'm racing cyclocross. I tell myself that I just need to stay calm and not worry about how well I do, but once we've started and I'm out there riding, especially during the first half of the race, I feel the nerves and worry. I worry about whether I'll run out of gas and not be able to finish. I worry that if I pass the riders in front of me, when I know that I can if I want to, that I won't be able to stay in front of them, or that I'll make a mistake. I worry about flatting. I worry about ramming my balls when I remount and doing serious damage (Seriously, who wants that?). But I know that all of this stuff distracts me from the race itself, and from riding as well as I can.

Dave U says to me, at Cross-Tastic on Sunday, that he told a friend who rides in the A race that since he's finishing at about the same place in every race, he needs to do something different. "You know, just go as hard as you can out there and if you bonk you bonk. At least then you know that you went as hard as you could."

Well I can see the sense in that. It's also intimidating to me, because then I'm going to worry that I'll bonk early, and end up DNFing or getting lapped/finishing way back. I know that I'm over-thinking it. I'm pretty sure that if I went hard, I'd still finish, and I'd probably finish better than I have so far this season. Then again, I've been pretty wasted by the end of most races, so I'm not sure how much better I can finish. Anyway, the question I have is, how much physical energy does being nervous and worrying about how well you'll do actually take out of me when I'm racing? Does it actually make my body less efficient? My hunch is that it does - if not physically, it must mentally.

The other way I see this, for myself, is that I've never really liked participating in organized competitive sport. Sure I am a competitive individual and always want to go hard, but that's different than having a "killer instinct" and being able to "play to win." Most times I feel myself playing to "not lose," or to "not suck." Actually I'm often a "when the going get's tough just try to keep going" kind of player. I don't really set the bar high enough or, I'm okay with setting the bar a little lower. At least that's what I hear myself saying when I'm out there racing: "just finish well" or "don't do anything stupid."

I think I could push harder if I could stop worrying about all this fear of failure stuff. I'm hoping that more racing will help to fix that. The more I race, the more normal it'll feel and the less I'll think about it. If I can just enjoy the exhilaration of being pushed by competition I'll compete better too. Having coached for the last few years I much better understand the value of competition and the necessity of an opponent to help you play better. The better the competition, the better you play. This seems to be a general rule. So I'm loving the race, and learning to embrace the effort needed to compete hard right to the end.

Ride report

in: 2'C wind calm

out: 8'C wind calm

Another Cross-asm

2011-10-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

This Sunday the race was at Whittier Park, and was named Cross-Tastic. Not an overstatement. Not an overstatement at all. The course demanded much, a sweet much-ness. There were four barriers that required a dismount: First a muck pit down by the red, then a few logs and a series of steps up the bank, then two standard cx barriers, and finally a fiendish series of step up a hill, skitter down the same hill, and then step up the same hillside (pictured below).

Once again the pictures (thanks to Cheryl K) will speak as well.

In addition, you can get a bike's eye view of what it was like to ride the course, via this video courtesy of Karlee Gendron and her bike. Pretty great!

I was so hot and bothered when I got home that I took my shoes into the shower with me, to reward them for their good work, and to get them good and clean.

Ride report

in: 6'C wind 10ks SW

out: 9'C wind 10ks SW

South winds

2011-10-21T00:17:00.001-05:00

After days, no weeks, of North winds, today it shifted and came in from the South. I hear it first on the weather news, and then when I step out to ride to work I'm immediately aware of the change. It's moist and trending warm. That is, even though it's still below freezing outside, you can feel that the warmth is coming. Do you know what I mean? I'm not sure how to quantify this because all of these conditions could be the same - below freezing, Fall, 15 k wind - and if the wind is from the North, the air would bite shrewdly. But if the wind comes from the South, the same conditions usually feel hopeful. At least at this time of the year.

Some weather guy from central Canada (of course) predicted, two weeks ago, that winter would come hard and fast and that it would be colder than average, with a smidge less snow. What does he know? El Nino? La Nina? Okay maybe these have some influence on things, but if my memory serves me close to correct, it was about 20 years ago that these weather guys started suggesting that these Latin-named currents were altering our weather, and that once we knew which current was in play, we'd know whether the weather would be more extreme in some way, or more moderate. Whatever. I'd like to have the hard data presented in the cold (or warming) light of day, without managing the numbers by scaling graphs to make the differences more pronounced.

Winter's going to be winter, whenever it wants to be. Some winters hold the snow back until around Christmas, or even later. Most winters wait for Halloween. The last few have waited until after Remembrance Day. I like those the best. But there's really no use in predicting these long term trends. I prefer the more obvious short term observations. If the wind comes out of the South, things will get warmer, and often wetter too. If the wind is from the Northeast things will get colder, and likely wetter. If the wind comes out of the North, brrrr. If the wind comes out of the West, hold on because it'll likely blow hard.

I love the wind. I hate it too. But I like it more than not. It lets you know what's coming.

Ride report

in: -3'C wind 15k S

out: 10'C wind 20k S

It's late

2011-10-20T00:33:00.001-05:00

They smile at one another. It's awkward, but not the kind of awkward they'll regret later, the kind of awkward that they'll look back on remembering that conversation. The weight of it. The momentum. In a few years they'll look back on it from separate places. This moment will become that common bond that will, in fact, become their undoing.

For now though they've just had drinks and they both want to go to bed. For now the only inkling of distress is in this man's far-flung reverie of another life. For now she shrugs, brushes her teeth, splashes water on her face and scans the mirror for blackheads, and uncertainty. It will be all right, she'll think. We'll go to bed and we'll make love and fix it, he'll say as he sits on the toilet. We'll wake up. We'll continue.

This is what they both will think. And in the end they'll be right, which will surprise them.

Ride report

in: -3'C wind 15ks NW

out: 6'C wind calm

More crossness

2011-10-19T00:26:00.001-05:00

I got back on the steed this past Sunday to race Southern Cross. I'll let these pics do the talking. They are courtesy of Woodcock Cycle Works, except for the spectacular sand splat (which is not me, though I did have a similar incident during a warm-up lap - fortunately no cameras were prepared for it), which was masterfully shot by Sierra Blake.

Cross racing is a good time. A good time indeed. I placed 12th in the B-race, just 11 seconds behind Johnny S. One day I'll catch him. One day.

Ride report

in: -2'C wind 15ks NW

out: 3'C wind 20ks NW

A prophet in his own town

2011-10-17T23:09:00.001-05:00

Paul thinks he may be Jesus. At least for this day, and at this time, with these things happening on this river, in this boat. He thinks of those stories of Jesus in boats on the water. When he calmed the storm, when he walked on the water, when he told them to fish on the other side of the boat. He rehearses what he might have to do if things go wrong, which he' s sure they will.

It's happened before when he's had this feeling. He and his friends are walking down the Main Street in the small Canadian town they live in after school. They notice the friend of an older brother of a boy whose Dad owns a car dealership in town driving a racing style Japanese motorcycle with nearly one thousand cubic centimetres of piston displacement. The boy whose Dad owns the car dealership says to the others how powerful the motorcycle is, that it's just as fast as the ones they actually race with in Europe. Paul watches the teenager on the bike scream by, engine whining, gears shifting, so that the front wheel lifts and the biker rides the back wheel. After watching the it pass Paul says, "That guy's going to crash," and thus it comes to pass, with all of the boys watching, that the bike's front wheel indeed dips, rises again, then dips and falls to touch the pavement. The rider has turned the wheel off of straight such that it grabs the pavement and wrenches the whole bike over to the left. The back wheel whips out to the right and slides along blacktop until the rubber catches and grips and by force of momentum the bike lifts up again into the air, tumbles once with the rider still on it, before the forces of nature rip him free of it and he rolls, then slides along the grit and fine gravel that accumulates along curbs on the edges of streets. The bike bounces along and at last scrapes to a stop too.

"Whoa!" says the boy whose father owns a car dealership, "did you really just say that that was going to happen?" The other boys generally smile and laugh and congratulate Paul, who squints at the scene unfolding up the street.

"It's going to be okay," he says and smiles. "It's just a lesson the guy needed to learn about how not to ride." With that Paul becomes a celebrity of prediction - a prophet in his own town. The boys spread his story around town and tell of other close calls like it that he's predicted. They tell the stories with such conviction that Paul starts to think before he speaks.

Ride report

in: 4'C wind 25ks NW

out: 6'C wind 35ks WNW

Not even if he was hungry

2011-10-13T22:26:00.002-05:00

Out on the river the boy with the striped shirt begins to consider another facet of his Christliness. The boat drifts downstream, the motor idles and occasionally engages, at the behest of the vigilant father in order to steer around corners or avoid sandbars. The boy in the striped shirt is grudging in this observation. It won't be carelessness that causes this disaster. There will be little room for schadenfreude or "I-told-you-sos" here. So he waits and watches and he does not fish.

"C'mon Paul," says his friend, the older brother. "It's not hard. It's fun!" Paul only imagines that time that he watched his older brother catch a fish and he had to try to hold it for him, while he prised the the hook out of its mouth. The slime of the scales and the sharp edges of the gills stay in his memory. He can feel them on his fingers just thinking about it. He can't imagine anything, even hunger, that would cause him to want to put himself in a position where he was the one catching the fish and asking for help to pry the hook out of that gasping maw. For an eleven year old he dwells more on discomfort and trouble than courage and adventure.

As if on cue the rod the younger brother holds dips and he yells and the father smiles and leans forward, picking up the net in one hand and touching the bending rod with the other. "Take the line in slow," he says. They all watch as the boy listens and slowly reels in the taut line until the jackfish appears at the side of the boat to be netted and lifted into it. Together father and son unhook the fish and set it free again. Paul watches. Though his anxiousness recedes, he cannot see the point in this, much less the fun. What would Jesus do, Paul thinks, if he was a fish?

Ride report

in: 5'C wind 20ks NW

out: 10'C wind 15ks NNW

Occupy the Krahn Barn!

2011-10-12T23:11:00.003-05:00

From the Red!

Please join us on October 21 as we revel in, and listen to, a Mennonite return to music-loving socialist roots, under the guise of a nearby geographical feature. One more time, and with feeling, to keep the show front and centre, here's the poster.

Let us not refrain from repeating the refrain!

You can follow The Krahn Barn on Facebook (I know I know ... but whatcha gonna do?)

Ride report

in: 9'C wind 10ks SE (rain)

out: 13'C wind 10ks NW (rain)

Winning

2011-10-12T00:06:00.001-05:00

It isn't everything. It isn't the only thing. But it sure makes a difference. Today, after beating Minnedosa 4-1 and winning a wildcard berth at the provincial championships, it felt like a gift. A well-earned gift. The thing is, that you don't always earn a win, and a competitor who understands healthy competition knows this. Hard work, even hard work and superior play, does not always carry the day. (Ah, those juicy cliches - I'm talking sport and they just dribble down my chin! Just wait for more. Get the nappies!)

When you're on your game you know the fickleness of it. You know that you can't blame the equipment, or the field, or the ref. You know that if you do you're weaker because of it and your win, or your loss, is lessened. So it's a gift to win. Well earned or served up with a surprise, you just take it and nod and feel good about your prayers to the sporting gods, and your attitude to life in general. If you can keep it that way, win or lose, you're onto something.

The reality is that winning just relieves the pressure, for the moment. Until you lose again, or until they score one, or two, or more on you, before you muster a reply. The quality of the competition and the competitive spirit depends on your ability to understand when you've earned your gift, and when you've been graced (mercied?) with it. Today we earned it, so it feels best. To get better we'll have to see what we learned from it too - that after going down by one within the first three minutes we staved off a collapse and found a way to ignore each other's faults and mistakes, and moved forward. 30 minutes later we scored, and then 10 minutes later we scored again, and the rest, as they say ...

The victory was an earned gift today. We'll take it. We'll take it when we don't earn it too, and we'll smile and nod and say our prayers for the grace we have received.

Ride report

in: 6'C wind 10ks SE

out: 12'C wind 15ks SE

Someone else's business

2011-10-06T22:53:00.001-05:00

Two things about the brothers' father: He is borrowing the boat; he does not know the river. Knowing that the boat is borrowed, the boy in the striped shirt infers that the father knows less than enough about how to use it, or drive it, or whatever it is you call the operation of a small aluminum fishing boat. Already he'd watched and been asked to help, and tried to do so but only uselessly hung on to the gunwales of the overturned boat as the father heaved it by the stern backboard off of the back of the pickup, righted it, and then dragged it across the gravel and down slick clay bank, the three boys hanging off of it as it slumps down to the water. Then the boy in the striped shirt scrambled back up the bank for safety's sake, turning around expecting to see his friends beside him only to watch them whooping and heaving themselves into it. The father is already back at the truck hoisting the outboard motor up from the truck box, and then lugs it down the bank.

The boy in the striped shirt simply doesn't believe that this exuberance will end well. The Spring run-off has swelled the Pembina such that it is obvious even to this inexperienced skeptic that it is running fast. Too fast for all this nonchalance. But the father and his sons complete their preparations, load their rods and the picnic lunch into the boat and call out, finally, to him to "C'mon, let's go!"

He inches and slips down the bank, gingerly grabbing at and following the gunwales as he gets to it. Once he climbs in, the father pushes them into the water and hops in himself as the current catches the boat and moves them offshore to the centre of the river. The boy watches with concern as the father climbs past him and over benches to reach the stern. He lowers the propeller into the water and pulls the starter cord three, four, five times before it sputters to life. Drifting with the current now the boy says, above the put-put of the motor, "Is this the direction we want to go?"

"Yup," he says, smiling. "We'll drift down with the current, then tool back upstream and drift down again." The boy tries to return the smile. "It'll be fun right boys!" the father says. "We'll follow the river and catch some fish." The boy in the striped shirt wants to be this romantic. That would not be the word he'd use, not at this age, but he'd understand the sentiment that living in the moment would be a less troublesome way of managing this day, or any day, but he'd have no facility to get there. At least not at this time. In fact, not for another 20 years would he have this facility. In fact, the gravity of this unlikely knowledge weighs on him. It's like a mission. It's like he must be about someone else's business.

Ride report

in: 16'C wind 25ks SE

out: 27'C wind 50ks SE

A tough day

2011-10-05T23:36:00.002-05:00

You win some, you lose some. It's true. The soccer team had a bad day today, and so our league season ended after the semi-finals. Still our record for the season was 10-3-3. We hope for a wildcard berth in the provincials.

They say that breaking up is hard to do. In this case watching a break up is hard to do. This, also, is true, even watching it from a distance. It's hard to watch people hurt, even when you know it's necessary. I think I'd modify the bard's words to "I say, we will have no more 'going steady'." Let's just practice loose affiliations that allow for quick entrances and exits. Only when you find that you're inhabiting the same physical space, and you're really not minding it at all, in fact you can't really see things any other way should you consider declaring some sort of committed association.

PS. Telephone conversations are terrible, but I can't imagine having the conversation I just had with my daughter via texts. So I say that telephones are terrible, but they're better than the alternatives.

Ride report
in: 14'C wind 20ks SE
out: 24'C wind 25ks SE

Meanwhile he keeps smiling

2011-10-04T23:03:00.000-05:00

Two brothers, the tall one and the short one, stand in front of the 1975 Chevrolet Silverado. The short one, younger by 5 years, hitches up his short pants and grins lopsided at the camera his father aims back at him, while the tall one watches and mugs too, for a snapshot that includes a friend wearing a vertical striped shirt - blue, light blue, yellow, green, red, white, and so on. The friend's strewn hair, terse smile, and shoulders hunched forward into the wind mark his reluctance.

There's a river to the left of them that you don't see in the picture, and that he watches out of the corner of his eye. It weighs on this boy's mind. He's seen the boat he's supposed to sit in and he's known all along that there will be fishing going on, and that in itself gives him a low in the gut feeling - not unlike a millstone, or a carp, catfish, or northern pike that turns and reels in the river.

Of course some of these thoughts I'm articulating for him. I doubt, at the age of 11, that he knows the name of the fish that swim in the Pembina. It's the namelessness of things that daunt him - the murky water, the myriad rivets lacing the hull together above it, the unlikely sputter of the 6 horse Mercury. How long does it take to fill a boat to sinking if a rivet fails? If 2, or 10?

The 2 brothers, already scrambling down the bank, heave themselves over the gunwales. They yell, Dad hurry! Let's go! They sit on the benches and rock the boat. They look up at him and tell him to get in. He hates them for it.

The cats stay out

2011-10-03T23:16:00.001-05:00

Any chance I could keep it light in here? The car's in the shop. A 21 year old biker dies at an uncontrolled intersection. The soccer team wins. Ring around the currency the stock market falls down. It all just drones on. The biological clock ticks. The haze of stubble-burning days are with us. Mice scrabble in the walls. September's still a really expensive month. And the excitement of a provincial election bubbles forth. Everything's possible but there's no guarantee it'll make sense.

I just bought a "new" (different, not as old, or as heavy as the old John Deere) chainsaw. A Husqvarna. 61 cc. 18 inch bar. Now I'm looking forward to the cutting I've got to do. It was about 25'C today, but still you can feel Winter rumbling down the road in the distance. There's wood to split and stow inside.

If I was a chipmunk or a squirrel would I worry? The cats seem to. They're more urgent, more hungry. They look at us through the windows wondering about their chances of getting inside and staying. For them it could be life and death. For us it's allergies. The cats stay out. Such a fine line. Poor cats. I guess.

Ride report

in: 9'C wind 5 ks SW

out: 19'C wind 15ks NW

I'm always waiting too long

2011-09-29T23:53:00.001-05:00

This should get done sooner. That's the story of my life. How well can you do what you know you need to do if you're always doing it just before it's too late? Like you've just remembered that you have to make lunch for tomorrow when you realize that there's no bread. Or rather, the bread is in the freezer. So you stand up to go to the freezer. You find the loaf - rye - already opened at some point, so there's a lot of frost in the bag. Now you're wondering how to thaw the bread without it sitting and soaking in all that frost when it melts. Just then you realize that it might be nice to eat something. A little something, as they say. Your little something tonight will be graham crackers and peanut butter, which tastes pretty good, but there's something about the combination of graham crackers and peanut butter that facilitates the peanut butter to stick, tenaciously, to the roof of your mouth, and to that space between your cheek and your teeth. You're always having to stick your finger in there to remove the wads of peanut butter and ground up graham cracker - brownish blobs that you really shouldn't look at before you put them back into your mouth - that your tongue just can't get at.

You're wondering what sort of lunch to make that will be look-forward-to-able enough for a Friday. Yesterday, on the way to the staffroom for lunch a colleague says that lunch is always the best meal of the day, because you're ravenous. You've been working, and you've been waiting for that break, and then when it comes, and you get to eat during it too, it's just too good. So there's a lot of pressure on the quality of your lunch-making. Do you see what I mean? I've been trying to up the ante a bit. Really, though peanut butter and honey might be all right for an evening snack, or a Saturday afternoon pick-me-up, your ravenous lunchtime appetite deserves more gustatory pleasure. Lately it's been garden tomatoes and toast and cheese and mayonnaise. That's pretty fine, I'd say. That'll probably what I'll get ready in just a few minutes.

There's a toaster in the staffroom, so I just pack three slices of rye bread, plain, in a plastic sandwich container. Then I fill another, smaller, plastic container with mayonnaise, and cut about six slices of old cheddar cheese. Together with a fist sized tomato, an orange, and an apple (also from the tree on the yard), this all gets arranged in a plastic bag (usually a white plastic grocery bag) and tied up tight to keep it all together, so as not to crush the tomato. In the morning this will sit in my pannier, on top of the pants I've packed. Then I'll load the panniers on the bike and head off to work.

I'm waiting too long, because I'm always making this lunch at or around 12 pm. I don't really know why I can't just accept that this is my routine. There's no real reason to fight it, because though it's always a bit of struggle to get up in the morning, once I'm up and at school, I'm awake. I never feel sleepy in the way that makes me think that I need more sleep. Still, it feels like I wait too long. You know? It's 11:51 pm and I haven't made my lunch, or brushed my teeth, or shaved. Really all I want to do is go to bed, but I have all these things to do because I've waited too long.

Ride report

in: 6'C wind 30ks NW

out: 12'C wind 30ks NNW

Composition

2011-09-28T23:57:00.001-05:00

First he eats a tomato. He washes it and then eats it like a fruit, without salt and pepper or mayonnaise. Then he takes two bunches of small purple grapes that have grown on the yard. Now he stands at the counter and looks around. You watch him stand in front of his computer and log in to one social networking site, and then another. There's only one new friend request today, and no one has added him to their circles today. You imagine, as you sit comfortably in the next room and watch him through a doorway, that he's envisioning something. But what?

The keys begin to click. In uneven spurts and, dare we say, outbursts, he appears to be typing something. You can hear when he makes a mistake, or backtracks, as the tempo of the keying, the rhythm of it really, is punctuated by a fast and steady tatatatatat and then the more regular (uneven that is, really) business of composing while typing resumes.

The radio drones on. Slavic names. Dog day afternoon at the puppy mill. A woman who takes great pride in making the lives of 500 dogs better. She talks like she's right - like there'd never be a question that her definition of a good life, for a dog, would be standardizable and accepted in legal form by anyone who might ask. Would she imagine making the same effort for the poor and miserable people just across the river? Would she imagine pronouncing about the propriety of the living conditions of those young ones whose ages range from infancy to 18? You suspect that she finds it easy to say these things about dogs and other domesticated animals, but may not be so certain about what makes the life of a young human acceptable.

And then there's the story of the gunman that you imagine walking out of the bush near where you're working, and taking you away at gunpoint. A gunman. You wonder why your imagining that. And what does a "gun"man" look like, actually? What part of him is the barrel? the sight? the stock? the trigger? You could use a visual cue, to be sure. But maybe that's for another day. Not likely. Sorry for taking your time.

Ride report

in: 12'C wind 10 ks SW

out: 20'C wind 15 ks WSW

Well sometimes you get bit

2011-09-28T00:13:00.000-05:00

You know how it is don't you. You're doing your thing. You're pretty confident about it, comfortable doing whatever it is you do. So comfortable perhaps, that you don't see the possible speedbump ahead. When you hit it at speed, you're jolted out of your comfort and into a kind of shocked blinking hazy wha ... that makes you wonder whether you'd ever had any control of anything. So quickly and easily your confidence takes a hit. Really, you know, I've just got to "man up," as the boys say. Or perhaps the Joker's taunt works best: "Why so sensitive?"

I've gotten used to being chased by dogs. It's been a long time since I've gotten bitten because I can see them coming, so I'm ready for them. No surprises is key. Today, it was all about the surprise. I didn't see the dog coming. I got bit. Maybe I could have seen it, maybe not. It's not that big a deal really. Just a reminder that it doesn't take much to mess you up some days.

Ride report

in: 7'C wind "facing" SW

out: 23'C wind 5ks W

Later, and weenier, than usual

2011-09-27T01:01:00.002-05:00

Still, there's something to say: I'm just not a winner. This weekend I raced in my third cyclocross race of the season and I'm once again forced, by dint of steady and overwhelming information, to realize (and accept?) that I do not know how to win. I'm pretty good at losing, actually. Doing things that will ensure that I will not win.

What kind of winning are you talking about PK, you might ask. Well, that's a good question. In my case it's the kind of result that makes me feel like I competed to my potential, and didn't make the sorts of mistakes that I shouldn't make. Yesterday I made one of those mistakes, again. And the thing is, the mistake I made was to think too much about the very mistake I was about to make, that is, that I was going to think too much about how the race was going, and by thinking too much about making a mistake, I was going to make one. Which I did.

It (or I) went down like this: It's the third lap. I've ridden well so far. I'm ahead of my starting position (20th) and riding alone. I'm working on bridging the gap between the middle pack of 10 or so riders and the front pack of 10 or so. I'm feeling pretty good. I've just ridden out of the river pathway (the race was at La Barrier Park) and I'm heading up to an open grassy hill that I'll have to cycle up and down and around in various twists and turns. As I head toward a turn that will take me down, and then around and back up again, I do it. I look up the hill at the rest of the course, looking for the lead riders. Looking for one of those lead riders (who shall remain nameless) in fact, and I see him. Or I think I do. Then, it happens. I turn back to what I should have been looking at - the course - and realize I'm a yard or two away from crashing into the fence. So I turn hard, the back tire slides, the front wheel jams, and I'm scudding along the grass (a little raspberry action on my left elbow and shin). By the time I've picked up the bike, adjusted the front wheel so that it spins, three riders have passed me, and the lead group is another 30 seconds ahead - which is an awfully long lead in cyclocross.

I ride the rest of the race well. I'm totally exhausted by the end of it. I haven't seen the results yet, but I think I placed around 15th, which is well into the top half of the field, and which is to say that I held my position after my dump. Still, I'd feel more like I winner if I wasn't so likely to beat myself mentally.

I'm a mental weenie out there on the track. I'm distracted by stuff that will only hurt me. I want to get better, I really do, but I'm starting to think that this is just the state of things for me - mental weenieness. Ah well. They say it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game that counts. Too true. And I don't play the game that well most of the time. Crap.

Ride report

in: 7'C wind 10ks SE

out: 16'C wind 10 ks SSE

Redemption?

2011-09-22T23:34:00.000-05:00

I'm going to ride to work tomorrow. No big deal. Happens all the time. But this time it'll be an 80 k ride to Vita. I'll leave around 6:15 am and ride into the sunrise. We're working in Vita because it's an inservice day. That is, a day to learn more about how to teach, to develop as a professional. This is what we hope for.

The teacher's pray, the night before a PD Day:

Lord make the day a day in which

I sit with friends

share a few laughs

and so, somehow,

redeem the time.

As insurance I'm riding 2.5 hours to get there. Once I get there the day will already have been well spent!

Ride report

in: 2'C wind 13ks SE

out: 12'C wind 10ks SE

I bought an ebook

2011-09-21T23:26:00.002-05:00

After finishing another fine short story in The New Yorker, this one by David Means, it came upon me to feed my yen for more by this writer. I'd heard testimonials as to how easy it was to acquire book electronically. This seemed a time to see what all the fuss is about. I don't have an ereader, but I've heard that you can download an app that will do the same thing on your pc (laptop in this case), so I found the Kindle app and downloaded it. This took about 2 minutes, tops. Then I rummaged about for the book. Means has had four collections of short stories published. I perused the reviews and the most recent one, The Spot, was well-reviewed, and I found that it was available electronically, for $12.95. I followed the instructions at the site, opened the Kindle app and clicked on the one click buying option at Amazon. It might have been 10 seconds after I clicked, and my new ebook was open in front of me, at the first story.

I clicked back to look at the cover, and the disappointment began. Whereas the cover on the print volume looked like this:

The ebook cover looks like this:

Why so European? So ugly? And the font? I hate it. If it was on the printed page I wouldn't even begin to take issue with this, but since it's digital I assume that if I don't like the font, I'll be able to change it to something I do like. Nope. I can only make it bigger or smaller, or space the letters further apart, or tighter. Whoohoo! Further, the file is in an Amazon format, rather than a pdf, so I cannot share it, and I have to have a Kindle, or a Kindle app to read it.

I'm disappointed. Mightily. I'll hold off on further judgement when I buy a Kindle, or some other reader, and try to read the book on it. But right now the aesthetic experience of purchasing and reading an ebook lacks much, and what it lacks seems to be endemic to what it is - a nearly non-tactile, slick, quick, controlled experience. Dammit. This sucks, because I have a sense that I'm going to have to do a lot of reading of ebooks in the future.

Yup. "I have seen the future brother, and it is murder."

Ride report
in: 8'C wind 30ks N
out: 10'C wind 20ks NNE

Several issues

2011-09-20T19:07:00.004-05:00

It's just hard to write something worthwhile sometimes. Not for you, you know. You really are a second rate player on the "is it worth putting down" question. For me. I'm trying, but lately there's a lot of crap that I could write, but that I probably have (definitely have) already written, and the bar's pretty low sometimes you know, so even I have reached a limit, of a kind. This can't just be a diary of the crap that goes on from day to day. Robert Kroetsch said, in class one day, that what made a journal interesting was the gaps. The days that were missed. Why were they missed? What about the days that follow a long silence? They better be good right? Don't you think? I'm sure that they're nothing special either though.

Anyway, don't expect consistency these days. I'm about to head out to pick up M after about 6 days of absence. And yes, that makes me happy. I had a steak and a strong beer to celebrate the incoming company. It's time. I get it already. I like being alone, but I like being alone knowing that I won't be alone for a long time. I'm fickle. I'm not satisfied. I'm easily distracted. I'm looking forward to M's return but I'm still not sure that once we're back together I won't still be unsettled. I don't like this, but it is what it is. Right now the idea of being back together makes me happy. I'm looking forward to it. I hope I don't screw that up when we meet again. At the airport. I'll have flowers. Could it be more cliched? I hope not. Cliches have a point you know. It's a kind of weight of evidence. There has to be a helluva-alot of right going on for something to end up as a cliche. So I'm hedging my bets with the rightness of it. Flowers. That's right! Three daisies. She loves me ...

It's late

2011-09-16T01:00:00.002-05:00

And I'm alone.

Not to whine or anything,

but it's so much easier

to stay up (even) later than

usual.

Still I don't mind it all

that much

She's coming back in a few

days and that seems to be

enough for now.

Thank the Lord

(if you will)

for friends and

occupation to get

your mind off it.

Ride report

in: 3'C wind SW 10 ks

out: 8'C wind S 15 ks

Not the best policy

2011-09-14T23:58:00.000-05:00

At least if you measure it by how well things go for you immediately. At least if you've 'fessed up to a high school sporting body that decides to be unsporting about it.

Our confession and appeal for clemency was denied. We were thanked for our forthrightness, and then assessed a 0-1 loss, to replace our 8-0 victory. It seems that our "sporting" side which under the duress of playing the game will accept the foibles of human judgement, when able to otherwise apply the letter of the law, there is no room for error - intentional or inadvertent. But methinks I protest too much. At least tonight the boys overcame that disappointment to defeat a team that over the past few years has "had our number" 3-1. I believe this victory will be safe.

A sympathetic colleague offered comfort by assuring me we'd done the right thing, that this would stand us in good stead for the future. In fact he said that the next time a neighbouring community's coach asked for one form of leniency (which he is, in our experience, wont to do) or another we could occupy the high ground and remind him of this situation and deny him his hopes. Well okay, I say, but this does not seem to match the spirit of the dictum about honesty.

In fact this too is mean-spirited and small-minded. We end up not with a grace-filled golden rule moment, but rather a reverse golden rule: Do unto others what they have done unto you. It's an eye for an eye to be sure. Which is, ultimately, the spirit of sport. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't tried to compete with people bent on winning.

The only place I've experienced good-natured, all for one and one for all, and let's head out for a beer afterward (and before if possible) is in cyclocross. Long live bikes and their riders who, by riding hard unto exhaustion are too tired to be jerks, and thus better able to realize their potential to make the world a good place!

Ride report
in: 4'C wind NW 30ks
out: 12'C wind NNW 20ks

Ah, the weather

2011-09-13T23:39:00.001-05:00

It's September 13th and Environment Canada sees fit to warn us in its important red box of the possibility of frost tonight. What does this mean? What should I do about it? A thunderstorm, tornado, or blizzard warning I understand. But a frost warning? In a month or two this sort of thinking will be beyond stupid.

The weather's important I guess. I am, as always, more interested in windspeed and direction. Right now it's 22 k/h gusting to 31, from the NNW. In the morning it'll be about the same, so the ride in will be great. I guess I'll wear gloves. To protect myself against the frost. Pshaw.

Ride report

in: 5'C wind NW 20 ks

out: 9'C wind NNW 40 ks

Soccer pitch lines, School prep, Bike cleaning, Blogging

2011-09-12T23:08:00.002-05:00

In that particular order these are the things of my day after 3:30. I hauled out the rope, measuring tape, stakes, and the lawn-mower, measured and staked and roped and mowed the lines. By 7 pm that was done. Reasonably well.

I got home and ate a great supper prepared by M (pork tenderloin, french fries (homegrown and made), garden tomatoes and cucumbers, and honeydew (also from the garden) (thanks, I'm not worthy)). Then it's time to envision the day to come, which involves recalling what's been done, and what needs to follow - for four courses.

By 10:30 it's time to clean the bike of the caked-on Red River mud from yesterday's MudFest, at which time it becomes apparent that the rear wheel needs a bit of TLC (aka truing). All goes well, the pannier rack is re-installed, and I'm ready for the ride tomorrow (today I drove the truck, to bring the mower, rope, stakes, etc to do the lines).

Now I'm blogging. I still have to make lunch for tomorrow. This is all so ... exciting.

Where to start?

2011-09-11T23:25:00.002-05:00

Today was the first cross race of the season, Mudfest, in St. Adolphe. A great time, as always. But what kind of a great time is it when, about halfway through your last lap you're asking yourself why you've paid money and signed up for a whole series of these things. Then you hammer down to the finish, cross the line, gasp for air, find some water, put your feet up and laugh with a friend about it, and it's all clear to you. Of course you'll do it again. For that moment right there you'll do almost anything again.

Then you get home and head out to soccer scrimmage with the boys. You're still hurting from that endo you suffered (because for one second you let your mind wander) just a few minutes before you had that existential moment on the track, but you go anyway. And the boys are there, all energy and happiness to be kickin' the ball around with friends. You start the game. You play terribly, though they play well. You're feeling pretty good about the team and their prospects for the season. From your vantage point as a goalie you, in this small-town in southern Manitoba, watch as a group of five Muslim women fully covered in hijabs walk along the paved path just south of the pitch. You here them laughing and stopping to talk or gathering around one who is showing the others something. You can hardly imagine that this is happening. You think about how they might be feeling. Why they are out walking across a schoolyard on a rather warm Fall night. Are they relaxed and elated that the only danger might be the snickering of some young Canadians? Has life become much better since they've arrived here?

It is quite simply astonishing that they are here at all. Whatever Merkel or Cameron say about the failure of multiculturalism in their countries, the wonder of it is that when you put diverse people together, the lives of those people are enriched. Will there be tension? Yes. But if they surmount it, because they choose to see the similarities rather than the differences, what could be better? Meanwhile Abdalhadi made his 5th (or was it his 6th) run up field with the ball, only to launch it way over the net.

'fessing up

2011-09-09T22:57:00.001-05:00

Ah the age-old question: Is honesty the best policy?

Yesterday the soccer team I coach played its first game of the season, and won quite handily: 8 - 0. Today a colleague brings to my attention that one of my players may well be ineligible to play because he's in his 5th year at school. Having taught T in grade 11 English last year it hadn't crossed my mind that he was in his 5th year, but when the phys.ed. department looked into it, it was indeed the case.

If you play a game with an ineligible player on the roster, and you play that player, the rules state that the game may be forfeited. T played 45 of the 90 minutes and scored 2 goals - the 3rd and the 8th - so his play didn't change the essential direction of the game. But he did play. So I've written a letter to the MHSAA and the Zone commissioner bringing the problem to their attention, asking for clemency based on my oversight and the decisiveness of our victory.

When I heard that he was ineligible however, I first thought to just shut up about it, quietly remove him from the roster for the remaining games, and hope for the best. That could well have been a successful strategy. However, were it not to be successful, it could become rather ugly. To be caught would be to be embarrassed and most surely to be sanctioned with a loss.

But I'm still not convinced that honesty always brings about the best results. If we are allowed to keep the win, I'll be encouraged, but if we're levied with a loss, despite our honesty, I'll be more likely to be deceitful on issues like this in the future. So honesty is really only the best policy if things turn out in such a way that you feel it was best for you to be honest. Really what I've done is played my honesty, like a poker player might play the cards he's dealt. I've placed a wager (determined that the odds are better if I'm honest than if I'm not) on it, expecting it's my best chance to win the hand. If I lose, I'll consider playing differently next time.

Honesty is the best policy ... if things turn out well for you.

Ride report

in: 14'C wind 10 ks SW

out: 28'C wind 10 ks W

What's possible

2011-09-07T23:26:00.002-05:00

I'm riding home just West of Gnadenfeld when a vehicle passes, then slows, pulls over ahead of me, and stops - signals flashing and driver's arm out waving. I pull up. It's R, a former student. One I'd remember and recognize anywhere. Not just because she's named after a great Fleetwood Mac song. She's so much herself that she can't be anything but recognizable. We talk for a while. She's got kids (boys) and one of them is wailing in the back seat. As she says, "He's in a car seat so he doesn't know why the car isn't moving." Fair enough.

We have a good conversation. A good start. She's moved back to A-town with her family, though the car's still sporting BC plates. After Nash has made it clear that he's not going to settle down, I say good bye and pedal off. She passes me again too. As I finish the ride home I understand again what a gift it is to be in an occupation where you can get to know people in a way that you might otherwise have never had the chance. She's almost 30 now and at about the same place we were at that age. When she was in school though, all bets were off. Some of her teachers back in the day might be surprised about how she's managing now. To be fair, it was/is school.

As I've said before, school doesn't always work. What can always work though, are people and their drive to get along. To relate and to interact and to help and to care and to love. Believe it or not school is absolutely rich with opportunities to be human. The system can be a drag, but it's the tension and pressure that it applies to people that can make for really interesting interactions. When people are working at being good people within this inadequate system, wonderful people and relationships can result. It's not a sure thing, but it's possible.

Ride report
in: 12'C wind SW 10 ks
out: 27'C wind S 15 ks

It's about time

2011-09-06T22:50:00.002-05:00

Some of us had to go back to work. I've also taken a break from this, what shall we call it, endeavour(?). As is my way I feel a little apologetic, but there's also beauty in pauses, absences. There has been much to write about, but I'd fallen out of the energy for it. Now there's nothing like the coercion of employment to return one to other rhythms. So I'll be back on a (more) regular basis.

Here are a few bits of the days gone by:

Bit 1
I've got a few movies to recommend, that I woulda, shoulda, coulda reviewed:
An Education
Source Code
Tokyo Sonata

Bit 2
... and a few books:
The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon)
July, July (O'Brien)
Interrogation (Clezio)

Bit 3
I still haven't seen the last Harry Potter movie, but I thought this piece by Sady Doyle was a pretty good comment on the whole series, both as a text and as a movie.

Bit 4
As of yesterday we are empty-nesters. (At least while the younger two are at school for the year.)

Bit 5
I found a Mavic Aksium hub to replace the one that broke about a year ago. What are the chances that someone is going to be selling a single rear hub made in the same year as the one that I broke, and sell it for $20? I don't know either, but thank you internets for your performance wonders!

Bit 6
Even if you want to play your best - even if you work hard at it - you may not.

Bit 7
I'm not a fan of beginnings, but what are you going to do?

Bit 8
I don't want to be 90 and lonely. This is as good a motivation to make young friends as any I can come up with ... even with the preposition at the end of that sentence.

Ride report
in: 12'C wind 15 ks S
out: 26'C wind 5 ks S

4 days of riding in Otter Tail County, MN

2011-08-21T01:22:00.001-05:00

M & I headed south for a bit of r'n'r - riding and relaxation. On Tuesday (Aug 16) M found a b&b called Xanadu Island run by Bubba and Margie! (I kept waiting for Olivia to show up and starting singing!) Their resort also had 3 cabins for rent, so we booked cabin #3 for 4 nights, packed up some food and the bikes and headed for the colonies.

M's brother, MH, had recommended Otter Tail County as a great place to ride, and that Fergus Falls, MN was a kind of central hub. The web-searching we did revealed mostly trails - paved and off-road - which seems to be the preferred way of using a bicycle in these parts of Minnesota. Once we got there we picked up what maps we could, and decided to explore a bit.

Day 1 (Aug 17)

Although we road a good part of the Central Lakes Trail (a well-paved trail on an old rail bed) on this day, and it was in fact our longest day of riding, it was the least interesting and rewarding. This is not to say that it wasn't a good day, but the other three days were significantly better.

You ride past a few nice towns.

We stopped in Ashby at Ruby's for lunch ...

... where I had this fine mushroom and swiss burger. Americans know something about burgers!

So, I rode from Battle Lake (where the b&b is) to Fergus Falls, and then we rode the Central Lakes Trail from there to Melby and back - 110 ks total for me, 83 ks for M.

Day 2 (Aug 18)

We decided to see what the real roads would bring us, and Bubba and Margie suggested we head over to Phelps, to see the Phelps Mill, an old flour mill that's been preserved and is open to the public. So we mapped out a route that included it. We drove to Glendalough State Park and road from there.

The roads went up and around and down, like this one.

While riding around Otter Tail Lake there was the obligatory flat to be fixed.

Phelps Mill (in Phelps, MN - where else?).

More Phelps Mill

By the end of the day we'd ridden a 73 k loop, which was a bit longer than expected, but the roads were excellent.

Day 3 (Aug 19)

We thought this might be a bit of down day - a bit cool - so we decided to drive the car around and check out Inspiration Peak, a place we hoped to ride to the next day. Well we got there, and this is what it looked like:

The hike up the trail was not so much a hike as a steep walk.

Since we had our bikes along, we decided to ride a short loop the guy at the bike shop in Fergus Falls recommended. Another great ride (37 ks). One of the roads looked like this:

Day 4 (Aug 20)

Having taken a bit of a break, and explored the territory with the car we, with confidence, drove to the small town of Vining (pop. 211 - Today was their Watermelon Day - free watermelon, a parade, and LOTS of really large Minnesotans lumbering about.) and set out to ride, and then enjoy the free watermelon (sorry, no pics of this extravaganza). This 65 k ride began and "middled" very well, but ended superbly as we met Sue from Minneapolis along the way - the first road rider we'd met actually riding on these fantastic roads - and she (being the 50ish in great shape mother of three that she was) recommended a lovely little 20 k in and out between two lakes. It was a great way to end our time out there, along with the free watermelon!

A good climb.

A fine descent.

One of the many Lutheran churches you get to ride past out here.

So it was a fantastic 4 days of riding quiet, hilly, winding roads, past lakes and resorts and fields and through woods and small towns. I highly recommend it, if you like to ride road, and you're tired of flat and windy.

A big day

2011-08-14T21:43:00.001-05:00

What happened:

Sitting in the great outdoors.

Up the aisle into the west!

Making it real.

Great cupcakes!

Eating together!

Playing together!

Dancing together!

What M said:

When you name a child, it is amazing how often a child takes on (reflects) the meaning of that name. Genevieve means “white wave”, and dad and I have from time to time reflected over the past 21 years how you are our “white wave”.

As a family that has many memorable moments canoeing, it is fitting to use the analogy of canoeing and our “white wave”.

When you were just over a year and on your second canoe trip, you experienced your first thrill. As parents we were perhaps fool hearty as we crossed the lake in high waves too eager eager to get to our favourite camp spot. You were not only trusting, but laughing and leaning over the canoe trying to catch the white capped waves.

Some years later you joined Sara and I and a few other women on a canoe trip. It was a tactical error , not understanding weight distribution and the wind and waves that send you and another person flying into the water startled and shaken.

A few years ago, and with more experience behind you, you paddles hard as our two canoes made an attempt to cross open water with strong winds and high waves that threatened to capsie our boats or crash them into the rocks. You had no choice but to listen to the voice of experience sitting in the stern, and in listening, you and dad and Lauren brought your boat safely to the nearest island.

You also know the thrill of riding with the waves and letting them carry you across the lake. Or to swim beside the canoe as your canoeing partner keeps pace with you.

You have also experienced calm waters, and there are two kinds of calm. In the middle of the day a lake without a breeze or a ripple on the water is a dead calm. As your paddle dips into the water, it is heavy like pudding, and you feel like you are going nowhere.

Then there is the calm that sets on the lake in the evening. After a hard day of paddling and portaging, it is a wonderful feeling to go back in the canoe for a short evening paddle around an island or in a bay.

Genevieve, your “white wave” experiences in life have profoundly shaped you into a woman who now desires compassion, sensitivity, forgiveness, and above all love. You are still a “white wave”, and will be and should be. Justin, you are the calm waters, and just as waves need calm, so calm needs waves.

May God, who is the author of love and all that is good, bless your marriage, and may your life husband and wife enrich others around you in the way you listen, talk, work, play, and grow together.

What PauPs said:

I cannot resist giving some advice. Sorry. When Margruite and I met, got engaged and then married, we were significantly different people than we are today. Some people that you haven’t seen for years may come up to you and say “Hey, you haven’t changed a bit.” but they’ll be wrong because they don’t know you anymore, and you have changed a bit. Probably quite a bit. This is not a bad thing. Who wants to be stagnant as a person? Who really wants to hear that “you haven’t changed a bit” thing, unless of course you really loved high school and still want to call that time the best time of your life.

I am not the same person today, that I was the day I got married. Of course many of my personal and physical traits are very recognizable, but the way I think about and interpret my world has changed because of my experiences. If I could do a “freaky Friday” experiment with myself take the mind of the me that is me today, and put it into my 22 year old just-about-to-get-married body, and have that hybrid me meet the Margruite of that time, I’m not sure that our relationship would happen, and last. Outwardly these two would still recognize and be attracted to one another, but the “hybrid future me” might not have the same vibe for Margruite as “young boy in the past” me.

Though I’m stating the obvious, I’ll still say it, time and experience changes you, but those changes are not immediately obvious. The more visible things that we tend to pay a lot of attention to – hairstyle, height, weight, eye colour, skin colour, even economic class – Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.” When you fall in love, these visible things play a major role in determining your interest in the other person. We amplify the significance of the unimportant features, while overlooking deep differences. You cannot worship yourself, as Narcissus did, and stay in a marriage for long. Even if your partner worships you too, your little “church of you” will eventually lose its appeal and you’ll be left with disputes over toothpaste, toilet lids, cleaning the kitchen, credit card spending, and bad driving habits.

Genevieve, we have, together with you, experienced things that have changed us in ways that most people cannot see. We are not the same people today that we were when you were reaching over the gunwale for the waves on Lake Manomin. We have had to confront ourselves and each other through some pretty intense stuff, which has helped us understand our small differences and rely on our deep similarities.

Lately we’ve started riding bike together (Justin too) and through cycling I can see how you’ve changed in deep ways. Last week we rode from here to Emerson and, though you hadn’t ridden much this season, you wanted to take a regular turn at the front on the way out (That’s the determination of the “same-old” Genevieve. By the way, it’s an amazing thing to have your daughter set the pace for you, and to ride in her draft!). On the way back home though, you realized that you hadn’t ridden enough to keep the same pace, so you gratefully accepted my lead – all of this without frustration or anger.

Biking alone can be hard hard work. There’s always a wind to fight. Biking together makes the work so much less hard, at least if you work together on it. There are days when you’re strong and you pull your partner along, and days when you’re weaker and you let him face the wind and you follow his draft. But you have to work together to realize that advantage. A bicycle built for two, which you have invoked on your invitation, makes that working together “trust” thing really obvious.

…

Recipes will follow.

CanAm 2011

2011-08-07T23:20:00.000-05:00

It's become a wandering tradition that the MIT folks from Steinbach head over to YantSeid for a ride into North Dakota. Last Friday 11 of us rode from the Gretna water station to Walhalla and back, via Leroy and Leydon - 95 kms. We stopped for lunch at the Sanctuary Guest House and Eatery in Walhalla. There's a lot of draft available in a group this size. We averaged over 30 k/h for the ride with an age range of riders from 15 to 67 years! Good times!

Today I rode the long way to faspa at Elizabeth's gazebo(to the 75, then to Letellier, through St. Joseph, and then Rosenfeld) - 48 ks. Averaged 34.8 k/h with a little help from a 10 k SSE wind.

After that we went home to wedding plan with P & D, and that wasn't too bad at all. We may get through all of this relatively unscathed!

International soccer night in Altona

2011-08-04T23:19:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago would this have happened in this peaceful Mennonite community?
At 7 pm some guys got together to play some soccer in this peaceful Mennonite community. Three of those guys were born in Russia, but came from Germany, one of them was from Palestine, but came via Iraq, one of them was from Burundi, one of them was Rwanda, one was from New Brunswick, one was from Altona, and one was from Neubergthal. They played for an hour and fifteen minutes and through trickery and deceit the old guys won.

The day of the place

2011-08-02T22:56:00.003-05:00

At 8:30 am I call Redi-Mix (not the dance club). "Concrete," the guy says. I say,

"I need 3 yards of 5 inch slump for this afternoon." He says,

"What strength do you want?" I say,

"It's for a garage pad." He says,

"So 3500 (something or other I didn't catch) and 5 yards?" I say,

"3 yards." He says,

"Right. What time?" I say,

"2 o'clock?" He says,

"It'll be there." That was the most fun conversation of the day.

After that I got in my truck and headed for Rite-Way in Stinkler to pick up the bull-float and the power trowel. While there I was propositioned to sell my truck. It would be easier to sell myself, I tell the guy. Probably more moral too. I love my truck. There's no two ways about it.

Coming back through Altona I pick up the angle iron I ordered from Allen Penner (I phoned him at 9:30 pm last night to ask for it, and he had it ready for me by 9 am this morning! Can you beat small town service?!) at Sunland Steelworks, which I've devised to use as helpmeet for skreeding. That might have been the best purchase of the day, because I don't know how we'd have skreeded the pad flat without it as a guide. Allen's a great guy who lives in the village and works in town and goes to the Holdeman church. He's a good welder too. If a guy can weld, he can go to any church he likes, if you ask me.

Back at home we do the final preparations for the placement: level up and fasten the angle iron; prepare the 2x4s to use as skreeds; generally get psyched. Then we have lunch.

At 2 pm the truck arrives, and we're off. I'm not going to say it was easy, but I am going to say it went better than I expected. GeeVs, M, and I worked well together. We didn't get pissed off at each other (much). We worked steady for about 2 hours, and then the concrete was placed, skreeded, and floated, and looked like this:

GeeVs, wary of the stalking wheelbarrow.

Then we waited. But not really long enough, because when we thought we could get on it with the power trowel, it was a bit wet, like this:

Notice all the footy prints. Too deep. Too wet.

So we cut our losses, took care of the footprints, and went in for supper. At about 7:20 I got back out there, fired up the power trowel and power trowelled away till about 9:30 (had to add a spritz of water now and then to make things work) . Then fiddled a bit with hand trowel, and we ended up with a garage pad that looks like this:

Not bad. Not perfect, but given that I place about 1 pad of concrete every 7 years, I think I've improved. I'd say that pretty thorough planning, thanks to little-big bro T for all the oral help (heehee), and more tenacity with the power trowel made all the difference.

People, we have a garage pad!

Tomorrow, we place

2011-08-01T23:11:00.000-05:00

Some people say that you pour concrete, but I have it on decent authority that since concrete is a solid, even if there's water in it at the beginning, you place it. So tomorrow, if all goes according to my will, we will place concrete here, in what will be a warm garage this winter:

Who knew there was so much to think about in order to get a floor in right. There's making it level (at least around the edges). There's the slope to the drain - if you're going to have a heated garage you're going to need to collect and get rid of the snow that melts off of the car, and a drain is the ideal place ... as long as the concrete is evenly sloped to it. There's the beast known as the power-trowel that, operated correctly, will make your floors smooth and shiny.

Anyway, I have aspirations here to achieve a level, flat, evenly sloped placement of concrete. I do not necessarily have faith in myself to be able to do it. It's not like I place concrete everyday, and GeeVs, who will be my assistant, hasn't worked with concrete before either.

Let the placement begin.

Who's paying attention?

2011-07-26T23:48:00.004-05:00

Nevermind turns 20 this September. In 1991 I started my second year of my first teaching job at a private Christian high school. My classroom was in the basement and my first class of the day, all year long, was grade 11 English Lit starting at 8 am. At some point during that year I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit in that basement hallway - dank, gray tile floor, cinder-block walls painted a faint green. I have this memory. I want to believe that one of my kids, Nick maybe, was playing it on the ghetto blaster on my desk. Oh I wanted to turn that thing as loud as I could. I wanted to be one of the kids. I wanted to celebrate hating all the crap that was school, especially when all that was loaded together like a bad seven layer salad in a religious school.

To this day, at least once a semester I play Nevermind in my classes and every time the kids (most of them) recognize it and nod their heads, track after track. It may not be their style, but they understand and appreciate what's being said and done.

Whether you liked Nirvana then, or now, is not so much the point as that at that point in time a lot of us, young and not as young as we wish we were, felt like somebody got it, and we sang along (even if Kurt was daring us not to). The album was an observation, a complaint, a confession, and a dare. Does this sort of naked, open, and powerful art (yes, I'm calling it art) happen today? I know this kind of question is asked often, but I do wonder whether the media landscape is fertile to grow a singular piece of critical, artistic communication with nearly worldwide impact. When Nevermind was released they initially shipped 46,251 copies to American record stores, and 35,000 to the UK. Within a week they sold out and it took a while for the industry to create more copies for people to buy. This would not (could not?) happen today. In the face of that sort of delay, we'd all lose attention and click off to find something else.

Yes, in many ways the artistic soil is so fertile now that many (any) things can and do grow. If you've tried to garden you know that fertile soil for your vegetables is also fertile soil for the weeds. Is anyone out there taking the time to weed the garden? What would it be like if albums like Nevermind, or The Joshua Tree, or Dark Side of the Moon, or Pet Sounds, or Revolver were released today? Who would notice? For how long? Radiohead seems like a reasonable contender, but even their albums don't create the sort of sustaining reverberations that big albums, albums we now think of as "important," used to, and continue to, make.

So can you name one album in the last ten years that has had the sort of widespread impact, for listeners and for fellow artists - that albums like these have had? PB can you make one? Please? In the meantime, help me understand what we're losing. Or maybe ... well ... nevermind.

It cooled off today

2011-07-22T22:44:00.000-05:00

So I took the day off from my labours, had breakfast with friends, wrote a portion of what may turn out to be a fine short story, and then set out on a 60 km bicycle ride.

Yesterday Andy Schleck rode 60 kms of the 18th leg of the Tour de France alone and out front to claw away at Voeckler's lead, and today he completed that task by placing fourth (in time at least) in the 19th stage, well ahead of Voeckler, to take the yellow jersey.

I, on the other hand, rode out onto the 421 heading east and expecting to ride toward the 75 and then to Emerson and onward, since Environment Canada (that all knowing better than stepping out the door and checking for yourself website) said the wind was NNE. Well I'm about to Sommerfeld, supposedly heading into the wind a bit, but I'm cruising at 35 k/h and the ditch grasses are waving with me. This wind's from the NW I say to myself, and since I prefer to ride into the wind first, and with it last, I turn around to head west and ride out toward Altona and then to Rosetown and onward.

Of course by the time I'm through Altona and nearly at the 306 (and I've been keeping a 34 k/h pace) I realize that I overplayed my hand again. Either the wind has shifted, or I've misread it, but I now know that I will have a 8 k run with the wind down the 306, and then I'll head into the wind (more or less) for the last 26 ks. Great.

I tell myself that I'm building strength and stamina. I tell myself that this is my HC climb at the end of the stage (Climbs in the Tour de France are designated on a scale of 4 with 4 being the least onerous, and 1 being the most difficult, and the HC climbs (Hors Categorie - that is "out-of-range difficult"), because of length, or grade, or both, or placement in the race (ie. a category 1 climb at the beginning of the race would be and HC climb if it was placed at the end of the race)). Still, the rewards for fighting a wind are so small: 1) being done; 2) beer (hopefully); 3) fitness (but that's almost mockery).

In this riding into the wind and shoveling dirt or gravel are not unlike one another. Need I say more? What reward is there in digging a sump hole to help manage the water that seems to want to collect around my garage? What reward is there in digging out limestone (that three years ago I intentionally put there) to replace it with clay so that the water drains away from the footing rather than collecting around it like it's a sink?

I've been keeping track of the Tour and watching as they wind through areas of France that I visited, or very near those parts. I want to go back and struggle up those hills and mountains to be rewarded by a great view and an exhilarating descent. But that will not be. I will be doing more riding into the wind this summer. I will also be doing more shoveling.

Yes. It cooled off today, and tomorrow it's supposed to rain.

Bustin' concrete

2011-07-14T22:39:00.001-05:00

Usually we've photo-documented some of the more momentous renos or changes we undertake. Today when F and I pounded and pried out the concrete from the garage and back work area, we dropped that ball. I do however, have a few pics of what it looks like afterward (which isn't really that interesting), and the tools we used to do it.

First off, we're breaking out these two 50 plus year old pads because they're terrible condition - cracked and heaved and uneven. Also, this winter the frost heaves were particularly pronounced, which effected the doors. It's become obvious that these pads need to be removed and one, in the garage, will be replaced. The other pad will be replaced by an independently floating wooden platform.

Both pads came out more easily then I'd anticipated. We used sledge hammers and a heavy, chisel-ended steel bar.

This steel bar is the best $41.50 I've ever spent! Once we'd cracked the concrete by pounding it with the sledge (we found that, consistently, if you pounded a slab in the centre of it 10 times, the cracks would spider out from that centre spot and then the whole pad would break apart) we were able to pound the chisel end of the bar into the cracks and pry the slab apart.

Then we'd load the chunks into the bucket of the tractor and cart it away to a pile where it will be picked up by a local backhoe operator. (Apparently there's high demand for broken up concrete to be used as fill.) We started at 9 and finished the garage by 12.

After a lunch of smokies and beer, we attacked the second pad in the back of the barn. Again, in 3 hours we had finished it, even though by the end we were quite spent. We toasted the day with a couple more beers and a pipe of tobacco.

By the way, I'm also moving and rebuilding my workshop from this mess ...

... to this modular masterpiece (yet to be completed)!

No ride today, but I did work on my bike (It had developed an annoying creak during the ride to the WFF last Wednesday, and then the chain broke, which caused the rear derailleur to deflect into the wheel and break a spoke, which the fine folks of Olympia (through the support of the WFF) fixed at no cost while I was at the fest. It seems though that just about everything on the bike loosened up after the ride (I suspect she was a bit tired from the year of commuting) and the creaking just didn't stop (turns out I'd broken one cup in my bottom bracket too).). I rode 23 ks of gravel and dirt roads yesterday on my crossbike, and the day before that I rode 58 ks on the road (the Rosetown loop).

I'll try to be more regular ... I'll try to do my best, but I may not.

Sacred and profane

2011-07-02T22:22:00.000-05:00

It's 11:51 as I begin to write this, sitting beside Margaret, who lies and breathes and through her struggle illustrates our entanglement. We stay sometimes because we cannot leave. The world is, in fact, too much with us, and we, well, we are also too much with the world and though we might hope to let go without pain and discomfort, it may well be otherwise.

When my Mom died, I wasn't there. The night before, I had listened to her rattling rasping breaths, skin drawn back over her bones, and found perhaps that there was just too much to see and hear then. So I left. I had to work the next day. Since I could leave, I did, and took the call during the work day, that she'd passed.

That was 20 years ago and I don't trust my memory. My impressions are unclear, but for the vision of her gaunt face, mouth agape to draw in the air it could not refuse. We'd known by then, for a few months in fact, that she was no longer making conscious choices about living. Without her permission her body marched onward, obedient to some other force over which she no longer has control.

Now Margaret reprises that moment, and again this gives me pause. I am both in awe and in great fear of just this sort time in which, stripped of conscious volition, you may find yourself enslaved to a dance, a seeming propulsive whim, that demands you continue - that marionettes you. I'm showing my bias here, but I wonder what is sacred about this moment. To me, just now, it feels hopelessly profane.

The distinction is, of course, ours. We've parsed it out this way for some reason. Heaven and hell. Paradise and expulsion. Holy and earthly. We want, it seems, to declare our moments as one or the other, and in doing so we simultaneously create and avoid the gap, the ironic middle ground in which we actually live most of our days.

At risk of discomfort, it could not be more clear to me tonight that Margaret wishes for an end to her journey. She breathes because she must. Just as fitfully as I was two nights ago when, unable to sleep, I grumbled and threw back the covers, only to wrap myself in them again, sigh, and wait once again, restless in the face of my own haplessness. There was nothing to do but wait. Four hours. I recall the clock reading 3:48 and then it read 7:10. The hard evidence of a small reward.

Is it mean to think it? What will be the evidence? What the reward for the wait?

---

By 5 am Saturday Margaret could wait no longer. She headed off alone, though following a path that we all, single file (with or without looking back?) will follow. After we'd called the morticians, we sat with her body and cried and talked. I sang some songs with Dad. We talked some more. We had coffee and cinnamon buns. We made plans for the next few days.

Though thinking back on it, the spectre of her silent form in the room seems macabre, at the time it was not that strange. It became regular, in its own way. Initially Dad tried to get her mouth to close fully. He wept and caressed her face and told her that she finally had her wish - to go home - and then he gently pinched her lips together, as they were about half an inch apart, but to no avail.

We left her face uncovered as we waited. It never occurred to me, nor to anyone else, that we should do the "TV" thing and veil her. Over the course of the 6 hour wait it seemed to me that her lips did slowly move back together. Perhaps it was just the mechanics of rigor mortis. Perhaps it just took time for her spirit to fully exit.

The last one's out the door ... soon

2011-06-30T00:50:00.001-05:00

Today, at the ripe age of 46 and a month and a half, my youngest child graduated from high school. Alas. I feel too young to be this old.

Today, at the tender age of 46, my step-mother, nearly twice my age, seems again to be on the verge of a final exit. Alas. I feel too busy to care.

Today, at my age, I look forward to time off, my love and I working on the house and yard and finding ourselves together again without immediate the necessaries of children (not that we still won't have those pleasures (I mean it!)) driving us in to lean on one another - now we'll re-invent what we found first in each other more than 20 years ago. We'll find it or lose it. I won't sugar over the risk. But I believe that what we found in the first place, in the fall of 1986, we still have. We may have to shine it up now and again - rub the sleep from our eyes as we've been lulled by relentlessness of living - and thus realize, rediscover, what is more powerful than infatuation: attachment.

Ride report
in: 14'C wind 25 ks SSE
out: 28'C wind 35 ks SE

An ABE and his bike

2011-06-28T23:03:00.000-05:00

So here's the evidence ...

... in case you doubted it.

Ride report

in: 10'C wind calm

out: 23'C wind 25 S

Fixing bikes

2011-06-27T23:54:00.000-05:00

I just performed a minor repairs (tightened the bearings on the back axle) on this Deelite,

the first bike that each of our kids rode, which we bought at the Regent Ave Value Village in the early 1990s. I'm going to ride it in the grad parade tomorrow for the last time, as B is graduating, and she's the last of our three. It's going to be a moment.

And it's a pretty sweet bike.

It was originally a metallic green with a banana seat, but G wanted a pink bike, so we painted it pink, and she didn't like the banana seat, so we made it a mini-cruiser. S was just fine with this, but B wanted it to be green, so we painted it back again. The paint-job's not that great, but the bike still works pretty well.

Today I noticed though that the back axle had a lot of play, so I thought I'd give it a bit of lovin' and tighten it up. The a little more involved than I had remembered, to remove the back wheel of a coaster bike.

After you loosen the axle nuts you realize that you have to take them right off in order to remove the fender stays, and then you have to remove the clamp that hold the coaster brake lever in place. Very intense. Anyway, I succeeded in removing the wheel and tightening the bearing on the axle, so she's tight and turning smooth. Let the knees around my ears riding begin.

Working on a bike this small with a 9/16 wrench, then an 11/16 and a crescent, brought back all sorts of good feelings about messing with bikes - changing them from banana-seaters with ape-hangers, to proto-BMX jobs with rims and pedals that simply could not stand the pounding of landings off of home-made ramps. Every time something busted I don't recall frustration so much as a sense of opportunity. Fixing and modifying was (and is) as much fun as riding.

That's probably some sort of metaphor for life - mine at least. I'm always tinkering. Always thinking there's something better. Sometimes this is just plain counter-productive - if you're worried about being productive - but I'll tell you, that doesn't stop me from wanting to take it apart to try to make it better.

Ride report
in: 13'C wind 20 ks NE
out: 18'C wind 25 ks NW

At sundown

2011-06-22T09:22:00.000-05:00

Nearly every sundown a certain person, you perhaps, comes running down the hall shouting “Endings endings! It’s almost over!” and I, well, I am left standing stock still hoping it’ll all miss me. But I understand now, as before, that you will not, cannot avoid me. This corridor is too wide, its waxed stone floor too bright. I might as well be incandescent, shining in it – an interrogation room crammed with honesty. So we will sit down at this glinting table, each of us pulling back a matched brushed steel chair waiting for just this moment, and we will do what we have in fact been doing countless hours and days before, recounting moments in memoriam, playing out farewells, our laughter cued to mourning by this inevitable script, its ink indelible. Still, standing here I hold my place, hoping we miss each other this one moment, hoping we disregard this illusory quartzite oscillation. That you and I will meet in silence, smiling believers who pass one another in the faith. Surely we will meet again.

Ride report

in: 14'C wind 20 SE

out: 18'C wind 25 ESE (rain)

A request

2011-06-20T23:28:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while a former student (sometimes they've even become friends) will contact me and ask for a list of books to read, because they've found themselves in a rut, and they're hoping for a push.

Here's a part of a recent request:

"Anyway, I have been less than inspired lately. Well, not just lately, the last few years, I suppose. I could use some inspiration! Do you have any book suggestions for me? Classic literature, poetry, or anything really? Anything to get me thinking."

And here's my response:

All is well, even though all is busy ... blah blah marks and year-end blah. Still, it's good. No guarantees with this list, but these have all been written within the last century. No poetry here, although a few of them are very poetic.

I'm honoured you'd ask!

Here you go:
Holy The Firm - Annie Dillard (nonfiction)
Pilgrim At Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard (nonfiction)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
The Cement Garden - Ian MacEwan
Atonement - Ian MacEwan
July, July - Tim O'Brien
Small Wonders - Barbara Kingsolver (nonfiction)
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis - Lydia Davis (great short pieces! - but it's a thick book)
Reading by Lightning - Joan Thomas (she has a new one too)

Hope your leg's all right. I heard from your mom that the fall set you back quite a bit. Really sorry to hear that!

Will you be my Facebook friend too?

For all of the crap that it presents, and for all of my suspicion of it, for this Facebook is worth something.

Ride report
in: 15'C wind 20 ks SE
out: 17'C wind 25 ks ESE

How could we?

2011-06-15T00:51:00.001-05:00

(for fenrixIX)

It’s in the word

he thinks

I know it

mired down there

under the muck

of lines and dots

these punctuations of weight

It’s too much sometimes

the atmosphere and its blue

the earth and its ochre

the red of the sun

its too much to get done

Still, in the murmuring

susurrant

rasping strident

then mute

dumb and stopped

before the monument of memory

we all fall in

the vagaries of testimony

Yet will I witness to it

my people I will preach

prophesy at once and in

all ways that there is no other

way for me but in the word

Where-from spans the bridge

across the chasm?

that will save us? that will

damn us, damn me

yet, from this side will

I holler to you standing

in the wind on that

other cliff teetering above

your heavy stone

You’ll turn to your friend and say

what? what

did he say? yes!

Until I am hoarse

with crying I will say “I thirst”

and still, despite the weight of it

gravity relentless over us

every action equal and opposite

I shall believe that we might

unearth it, together

click here to update

2011-06-12T23:36:00.001-05:00

On Thursday:
Attended opening of "Engaging Connections" exhibition of three artists, one of which is my dear M. A fine time of wine and conversation.

On Friday:
Prepared and hosted the launch of "Ellipsis," the first art and literary magazine (72 pages) published by W.C. Miller Collegiate's ELT30S Journalism class (which I teach). Another fine event of reading and music and cake and conversation. Here's the launch poster, which features the cover of the mag:

Watched The Trotsky ~ meh.

On Saturday:
Work around the house day. Finally filled the solar collecting tubes on the roof, to rejuvenate the ground loop, helped with some landscaping, watched as Cornelio and his Bobcat levelled the drive and spread 12 yards of 3/4 down on it. Went for a 34 k bike ride with G & J.

On Sunday:
Practiced for playing at the Decoration Day service at the Cenotaph. Attended S's baptism service. Was moved, reminded, and proud of her thoughtful decision to take the leap, rather than grope around and gripe. Had lunch with family and friends to celebrate the baptism. Headed off with B to play at the Decoration Day service. Relaxed. Had supper with family. Marked some stuff.

An eventful, but satisfying, few days.

Are cycle commuters moral just because?

2011-06-08T23:11:00.002-05:00

Some of us think so. Some people who just hear a regular bicycle commuter talk about their experiences, or how they do what they do day in and day out, seem to find it easy to arrive at the conclusion that this cyclist believes he's committing a morally superior act. As if someone who takes the extra time out of his day to ride a few miles to work, and then clean up and change into work clothes is somehow engaging in an act akin to lending the neighbour his truck to help him move, or helping a little old lady across the street.

Tonight, after reading a set of web comments debating the merits and dangers of bike riding to work (mostly in cities), M noted that she could check, for my portion of the long form census that we're filling out (is this now a moral act too, since we don't really have to do it by law), that my mode of transport to and from work is by bicycle. Well not it's official. Finally someone of consequence knows that I ride my bike to work.

Why do people, when they find out that I commute by bike for the five miles too and from work, rain or shine, fall, winter, and spring, often admire me, then congratulate me, then tell me I'm crazy, then ask me why, as if there must be some larger, more "meaningful" reason for it? Am I trying to save the environment? (What? How would one begin to do that?) Do I hate cars? (Only their drivers!) Don't I have a vehicle? (by this they mean one that uses gasoline - I own three by last count) Is someone else using my car?

Each of these questions presumes that riding a bicycle to and from work is somehow on the edge of sanity. It's weird, and why would I want to be weird? It's difficult, and why would I want to do anything difficult? (or Why wouldn't I do the easier thing, since I could?) And so on. With these sorts of questions and concerns, it seems that it doesn't take too long for people to "go" to the moral question.

Moral actions are often marginal acts, things people do that are out of the ordinary, acts that stand out. You will be easily able to tell, from this logic, when someone does something moral. It'll be obvious. This sort of thinking, which seems to abound in an affluent society worried about its right to (and the rightness of) its wealth and comfort, and therefore a bit neurotic about what might be moral, or not, wants to label any marginal, or unorthodox, act as moral, or immoral.

Few people seem content with answers like, because I want to, or because I like it, or because I feel better mentally and physically from it, or because it's my gym. They want something more. Something moral. Something that they can debate. But really, I'm just riding my bike to work. That's my choice. You can make of it what you want.

Ride report
in: 7'C wind 30 ks NNW
out: 15'C wind 25 ks NNW

He has things to do

2011-06-07T23:18:00.000-05:00

He chooses not to do them. Often. It has becoming a thing. A routine. He'll sit down. Draw up a list of the things to be done: on a scrap of paper later to be folded and slipped into a pocket, on a Notebook file to be saved to the desktop and lost among the icons, in a pocket day-timer to be stowed in the pocket of a carrying bag. All these lists, at their creation, bring a great deal of pleasure. He sits back each time and inspects the list. Admires it. Then secrets it away into a place that he knows, that he believes, will make it quite immediately available to remind him of his obligations.

What does he know though? Of his own heart and its wanderings? Does he really have the faith required to do those things he will, in casual and profound conversation, claim as worthy endeavours? Do his intentions stand a chance when confronted with lost time? What trade does faith have with the passage of days? Can belief withstand the onslaught of appetite? The vices? The sweets?

He pushes back the chair from the table. Walks with purpose to the small cabinet in the sitting room. Reaches in it to find glass and bottle. Decants. Replaces. Sniffs. Sips. Smiles. Reaches for a magazine and sits down. Sips again. Opens the magazine from the back and begins to read.

Ride report
in: 9'C wind 25 ks SE
out: 15'C wind 40 ks NE

Slo-pitch

2011-06-06T22:58:00.001-05:00

Some days that's what you need. A high slow one. A lob that you can stare down and then knall with the biggest bat you've got. It feels pretty good when that works. The rest of the day the pitches are coming in high and hard and then there's a change-up and you swing way too early. You're off balance. On edge. You get a little testy at times.

So think about slo-pitch the next time you're asking someone you work with to pick up something for you, or just move things along a little quicker. Think about how you'd prefer that nice easy lob, so you've got the time to eye it down, size it up, take its measure, and then swing away the best you know how.

Otherwise there's a good chance someone's going to miss, or it'll go foul.

(Yes, that's right, we played our first mixed slo-pitch game of the season tonight and the analogies between it and life flooded over my like the odours wafting from my hand after it'd been in my glove for an inning or two. There's a lot of generosity in this game. You ump your own batter. There's a wide range of talent out there. And when things don't go well, it's best to laugh and take it easy. Tonight we split the double header, which is about right for slo-pitch. Nobody loses, everybody wins.)

Ride report
in: 16'C wind 15ks SSW
out: 23'C wind 15 ks NNE

Being sick

2011-06-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

So after a quick toast to the end of the week (at a disreputable local establishment of course) I headed home for an evening of R'n'R. What could be better? The ride was fine, with a good strong tailwind, and supper was a nice egg frittata. The first sign that something was up was my lack of appetite for a tasty beverage to accompany my evening repast. You see, that's a wonderful way to usher in a relaxed evening, yet I had no yen for it. Strange.

After said supper, a low ache developed around my lower back, almost like I'd had too much coffee and too few bathroom breaks and my kidneys were crying for mercy. But all of this, other than the ache, was not the case. Still I sallied forth to complete a small task (to right the wrongs done by winter and frost heaves to the back patio table which, through its attachment to the ground via the post that holds up the canopy pieces for the hops plant to vine itself around ... you probably don't get the picture ..., had become lifted and tilted). Throughout this job my patience shortened, and the aches lengthened. And by the time I had the table too far apart to just stop the job, I knew that a flu of some sort had taken hold of me, and that I was going to be laid up in a short time.

I told myself to focus, though my head was starting to spin and my knees to wobble, and I finished the job. I think. Then (and this is about one and a half hours after supper) I decide to slip into town to pick up a movie to help me in sickly stupor. That morbid ache is, at this point in time, travelling throughout my body. My mouth is gumming up. I have to tell myself to do things. Keep the truck on the road. Look at the road. Turn the signal lever up. Turn right. Slow down for town. And so on. I make it to the movie store and begin perusing the shelves. Of course I meet former and current students. I chat. I warn them that I'm sick, or I think I am. They laugh. They've known it all along. They humour me. We exchange movie recommendations. I can't begin to make a choice. I finally pick up Crazy Heart, not thinking that watching Jeff Bridges play a drunk who is mostly sick and puking throughout the movie, may not help me (though in fact it was strangely cathartic!). I apologize a few times to young Carson (I'm sure he was shaking his head as I left) and head back to the truck.

More deep breathing and slow incantations of instructions to hands and arms and legs and brain and I make it home. Park the truck. Walk inside with the movie. Find my laptop and the power supply. Walk with it into the bedroom. Undress (I'll spare you the salacious details) and, already shivering, set up the movie, get it playing, and then lie down beside it, cocooning like a fetus.

I was able to get through the movie. I'm glad Bad got sober, and I'm pretty sure that if my real name was Otis and I started using it again, I'd sober up too - if, indeed, I needed sobering up, but it wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, nor was it Jeff Bridges best performance. I still like him though, and I'm always surprized by Colin Farrell, and Maggie Gyllenhaal can do no wrong, if you ask me. All this did not alter the fact that I was now completely, utterly sick, in a way that no capsule could reasonably help me. (I was offered a T3 by M, but I knew I didn't need to be more deluded.)

I stayed in bed for the whole night. Then I stayed in bed until about 2:30 PM on Saturday. I was still feeling very bad, but in a "maybe if I change places I'll feel different" sort of way, I got up and lurched to the couch to watch some TV. I also had my first drink of water since supper the night before. I slept on the couch, with the TV on, till about 4:30 PM and then, awaking in a sweat and even more pain because my neck was cricked in the corner by the armrest, I stumbled back to bed to sweat out the last (hopefully) mighty spasms of fever. Between 5 and 9 PM the fever waved in and out like a Lake Manitoba deluge and I sweated and shivered and moaned and muttered (you don't want to know). About half way through the third period, when the Canucks tied the game, I was able to focus on the screen (I'd had the energy to stream the game on my laptop of course) and not wince and turn away because of the headache pain.

Then I made an odd decision (even for me! I know!). When I was convinced the fever had broken, I got up, found the Tylenol, got a glass of water, and took two capsules. My logic? To make sure I could sleep. It worked. I had a good night. When I woke up I still had a bit of that gummy mouth feeling but I had enough appetite for toast and coffee. I was through the worst.

None of this, of course, can make up for the day I've lost. I might try to mark it as a full rest day, but I think it'll simply remain as a 24 hour hole in the timeline of my existence. Except, of course, for the record that this blog will provide for time immemorial, or as long as the internet gods allow.

Amen?!

Vision collision

2011-06-03T00:28:00.001-05:00

You realize that each of these musings deserves more time and thought and references. So I apologize for throwing some of this stuff out there based almost solely on my own limited experience and observation, and largely without documentation. Whatever the case, in my line of work it is not uncommon (as I get older) to encounter a misunderstanding, or a full-on talking past one another situation, across the generations. Kids these days, eh. Sometimes it's hard to gap'em.

Anywhoo. Like I said, here goes, without enough documentation or enough experience ... today I was engaging some bright young folks on the finer points of game animation. (I am no gamer. I think games are a big deal. I don't have the time to play them. Though I think some day soon I'm going to give it a shot. (Not a FPS shot. By "shot" I mean "try".) I learned that there's significant difference between the animation quality of the opening sequences and the trailers new games, and the actual gameplay experience. Which, if you're a hardcore gamer (which I now take to mean that you pay attention to every detail of the game and may just play it because it looks good, even though the story's lame - that is, if you're hardcore you consider the whole game and will allow for a few weaknesses if at least one element of it is stellar) can be a bit off-putting. Well, this difference explains for me why games looks so damn much like movies in the ads, and then whenever I see someone playing one, I wonder what happened (and assume that something about the hardware is not quite measuring up).

I was, during my conversation with said gamers today, being a little narrowminded in my assessment of their choices (to play beautiful looking games despite poor story-writing), until I thought about it when I got home. I now have come to understand that perhaps the hardcore gamer, who will set aside a problematic element of a game simply because some other element makes it all worth it, is not so unlike me, who will read a novel that's thin on plot, simply because the prose style is so (to my taste) beautiful.

An example of such a novel would be J.M.G. Le Clezio's "the interrogation" which is, in fact, thin on plot, but big on style. As I consider why the novel works despite this seeming soft spot, I recognize immediately that there is no requirement for a novel, or any art form for that matter, to fully meet all of the so-called conventional characteristics of said genre. In fact the great pieces - the memorable ones - always "fall-short" significantly in one area, while they are simply overwhelmingly strong in another.

Isn't this because art reflects the artist, and his idiosyncracies, which are, in fact, her strengths? Of course. It's so obvious now. What more is there to say about this? Except perhaps to say that any critic worth paying attention to will absolutely not reduce a work of art to its weakest element, and will, absolutely, point out what's the strongest.

So here's come strong sentences from the above novel:

The sun went on blazing in the naked sky, and the countryside shrank back into itself, little by little, under the heat; the soil cracked in places, the grass turned a dirty yellow, sand heaped up in holes in the walls, and the trees were weighed down by dust.. It seemed as though the summer would never end. Now the fields and terraced hillsides were occupied by cruel hordes of grasshoppers and wasps. The rutted lanes ran through the tumult of their wings, cut like razor-blades through these excrescences of the air, these hot bubbles full of spicy scents, which jostled one another at stubble height. The atmosphere made unremitting efforts.
Men cycled across the fields, emerged on to the main road and mingled with the flood of cars (55).

Not too bad, I'd say. But the whole passage does nothing to advance the plot, which isn't really the point. The plot I mean. It isn't the point. Adam (the main character) doesn't do much of anything, except watch, and tell us why things aren't working for him. But his shabby, haphazard life is so beautifully rendered, so artfully detailed for me by the narrator, that I can't look away. I just have to keep reading. If the plot was good too, I might miss this point I think - that beauty comes at us in great variety and diversity.

Ride report
in: 10'C wind 25ks SE
out: 18'C wind 40-50ks SE

Putting out the lights

2011-06-01T23:28:00.002-05:00

When I'm the only one home and I'm busy at my end of the table working on things - you know, absorbed in one thing or another, occasionally getting up to grab something to eat or drink, but otherwise thinking about what I'm doing - I notice the evening light. Which I love. It's summer, or just about anyway. The sun hangs in the west - a most warm orange glow. With all of the windows in our place the sun fills it up and there's no need for electric lights. As the evening moves along and I work there are distinct moments in the movement of time. The light near dusk goes purple-blue to the south and blue-grey to the east, but I only notice it when I look up from the work, that the house is dimming. Now, the mood shifting into night, the question - the dilemma - is, which electric lights will serve, and not ruin the slow stall of nature. To be sure I could ignore the question and keep working until I can no longer see, and then the question would be moot. But I like transitions. I like the shifts. I want to participate in them. Watching the day turning to night, the earth and its firmament exhaling the last breath of it, I want to meet it with that new light. That human prayer that the light live on for a few moments more. That flipping of the switch - current crackling through wire veins - glass lungs incandescent. How should we be mindful of these moments? When we do more than participate. When we take over. When we add to what has been given. When we, our appetite for waking life (and fear of sleeping death) ruling us, ignore dusk, by extending it (and then also, often, absent ourselves from the gift of dawn as well). So it is that what we have made with our hands, will in some way also make and unmake our minds. So it is that we make the earth our own. A settled place where we ignore the gentle insistence of sunset and sunrise and in their place, turn on our lights.

Ride report
in: 8'C wind 25 ks NW
out: 15'C wind 20 ks NE

Without fanfare or mourning

2011-06-01T00:04:00.001-05:00

It's okay. I'd rather meet milestones without much fanfare or mourning. Tonight was one of those small moments. My youngest sang and played in her last school concert. We didn't take pictures. I watched from backstage because someone needed to sign up to supervise and no one else was doing it, so I did. (That's another personal issue I have to manage, in itself, to be sure.) I watched from the side. Watched her breathe in and out and play and sway and move and sing. It was, in its own way, a perfectly calm and joyful celebration, but it was another ending for her, and for us.

We're less than a month away from graduation and then it will be more or less final. That doesn't mean that the "parenting" is done, but it means that it gets different. It's been shifting that way anyway, so when the youngest one gets up and goes it doesn't feel quite as unsettling. But it will feel empty. We took some time to settle in to suppers for three, rather than four, much less five. Now we're down to two for the long haul - as they say.

You know, you spend time and money building a house and providing for these things called children, and then when they go you've got this stuff, and these ideas and expectations, still hanging around insisting on something. I don't know what. But you have to re-invent yourself. Before kids you're thinking about when and how many. When you have kids you're thinking about getting through the day, the week, the month, the year, the school, whatever. When you're kids leave you're wondering what to think about.

I know it won't be that abrupt, since they're still going to need money and help moving and money and a place to get stuff, or store stuff, and money, for a few years. Still you're confronted with a new quest for purpose. I, for one, look forward to sorting this out. Not that I want the kids out now, but I know it'll be a good thing for all of us when they head out to spend time away - without fanfare or mourning.

Ride report
in: 10'C wind 20 ks NW
out: 10'C wind 50 ks WNW

Bike rides & rock shows

2011-05-30T22:33:00.002-05:00

On a bike ride a rock show

Photo surreptitiously (and gleefully) provided by CH - Thanks!

could happen. (Yes, that is me, on my own ass, with my bike above me - let's move along folks! Nothing to see here!).

At a rock show, without falling on your ass, these guys

could show up, and this guy

might play for you, and this dude

could sing a few songs, and this machine

could transform itself from ugly to this,

and this,

and then these guys could do their thing some more,

and this dude

too.

Such as they are, bike rides and rock shows have few things in common. But I like them both! A lot! Other than that I have no idea what it all means!

Ride report
in: 10'C wind 15 ks NNW
out: 10'C wind 15 ks NNW (A quick turnaround and a short day!)

Into the night

2011-05-26T22:32:00.001-05:00

- a sonnet for M -

Just after sunrise, just before night
I would be one with you out in this light
and we would be lovers in a garden of life
I'd be your husband, you'd be my wife
I'd send you flowers, I'd ride my bike
across town to meet you, to hope you would like
me, despite what you know about how things could go
wrong and go right, these risks that we know
So here in this home, on our piece of land
as rich and as old as the seeds in your hand
consider my weakness, my offer newborn
consider my body, just a bit worn
and just after sunset, at the end of the light
I would be one with you into the night

Ride report
in: 6'C wind 15 ks NW
out: 13'C wind 25 ks SE

Spring Ride preparations

2011-05-25T23:31:00.000-05:00

At least once a year I ride my mountain bike on appropriately mountain-bikey terrain out at Ingolf with the FGBC guys, and a few ABES too. It's a great weekend full of great weekend stuff. Including drinks and chips and foods of various varieties. And the weather doesn't matter because it's a hardy bunch that isn't afraid to get wet and dirty, or to decide not to get wet and dirty. It will all be good.

But the bike. Oh my bike. I'm still riding a Giant hard-tail, purchased second-hand by way of DS. It's been modified and made better, somewhat, but there's so much about it I would like to change. Alas, I so seldom ride trails that I, well, can't muster the argument to free up the cash to do it right. (Which would probably be to buy a different bike; isn't that always the better answer? I've never actually owned a new trail bike. Will that ever happen? You know, before the rapture?) So tonight I changed the tires (from IRC Mythos to Ritchie ExcaVaders - both old, but the Ritchies are less old, and more aggressive), lubed the chain, adjusted the rear derailleur (a stiff old Deore DX) and the brakes (still no discs for me), and tried to make the old Gripshift shift smoother (a lost cause I do believe).

By the end of the hour it's all working. That is working well enough for a ride on the dirt and gravel around here. How it will serve me out on the rocks and hills and water of the Whiteshell remains to be experienced. We've managed before, we shall manage again. But oh how, even for that one great ride a year, a good new bike seems like it really might be the only answer (mutters about lottery tickets and luck).

Ride report
in: 7'C wind 20 ks NNE
out: 11'C wind 25 ks NNW

What is good

2011-05-24T22:45:00.000-05:00

When I'm 70 who will I be and what will I be doing? Bob Dylan turned 70 today and is still playing and still writing - still creating. Well that sounds pretty good.

A life focussed on creating, for Dylan there are clearly no options, and no doubt. This is, itself, an achievement. We would all be better for it if each of us were thus devoted to living and creating, whatever we do.

Flee distraction, oh man. He has shown you what is good and what the Lord requires of you, to do right, to love good, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

Ride report
in: 4'C wind 20 ks NE
out: 12'C wind 15 ks NNE

Moving

2011-05-23T23:38:00.000-05:00

I'd forgotten how tiring it can be to help someone move from one place to another. The only thing that's more tiring, is moving yourself. Today we moved G & J into a great place on Wolseley, and tomorrow we all go back to work or school. We can be thankful for the holiday time to do it, but it doesn't change the demands of "occupation" and the "clock." Those things don't move.

Regrets

2011-05-19T23:54:00.000-05:00

There's a song about these, but I'll spare you Frank's wise words. I have rarely heard my Dad express regret, and as I write that I wonder whether my kids will say something similar, should I reach 90. Today he told me he regretted something that, a few days ago I was hopping mad about. Which, of course, made me feel both vindicated and guilty at once. Parents eh? If you think mothers are good at guilt inducements it might only be because when they're around the fathers just let them have at 'er. But when mom's not there, dad can get 'er going too. But I digress.

Today Dad had no intention of inducing guilt. He was genuinely chagrined at a choice he'd made a few years ago that, at the time seemed like a reasonable one, though even then I was wishing he'd choose otherwise. But he didn't. And today he said that he questioned his own "silly loyalties" (his words) that caused him to opt for the less practical, on some sort of moral ground. I don't think I've ever had as honest a moment with my father as I did today, because I agreed with him, and told him that I too wish he'd chosen the other option. That it would have made the transition we were in the midst of right then (seeing to having his wife (his third, who is slowing wasting away) committed to the full care wing of the seniors home they live in, in Winnipeg) quite a lot easier.

Then we discussed his generosity, and how he'd have to take a step back from it, in order to keep up with the bills. Then we talked about how hard it was to commit someone you love, who might not fully understand, or might misunderstand, into the care of others. He worries about being seen to be shirking his duty. This from a man who has worked hard and long and watched two loved ones die prematurely already. He's worried that he hasn't done his fair share. We cried and hugged, which was likely also a first (unless he actually did cry when he spanked me, like he said he did, but I never saw it).

In weakness there is so much new to see. It was so much easier telling him I loved him tonight, and really feeling it. I mean I do love my Dad - what are the options after all - but too often it's been the kind of love that one musters: the love of loyalty and moral pragmatism, rather than the love of common ground and admiration. Today though I could see in my Dad something I could admire. Something I could recognize, and emulate. So here's to regrets. Let there be a few.

Ride report
in: 10'C wind 10 ks SE
out: drove to Wpg on family business

I see what you did there ...

2011-05-18T23:49:00.000-05:00

... with the weekends? How you've arranged for the good weather during the week, and the not-so-good (rain, or whatever) on the weekend? Indeed! It's been like this all year already, and I think we could use a two or three-day calendar adjustment to get it right. You know? Let it rain from Tuesday to Thursday, and leave the weekends for the sun? How about that? Too much to ask? Yeah, I thought as much.

Ride report
in: 10'C wind SE 15 ks
out: 23'C wind SE 25 ks

On visiting a cemetery with young people

2011-05-17T23:07:00.003-05:00

Four stones say:
Kinder von JB & Lizzie Falk
Lena Falk - Aug 4, 1916 to Apr 16, 1918
David Falk - Geb. (born) & Gest. (died) Aug 28, 1924

Corny Frederick Falk - Oct 19, 1936 to Aug 12, 1943 "Safe in the arms of Jesus"

Vater - John B Falk - 1888 to 1974 "Selig in Jesu Armen"

Mutter - Elizabeth Falk (Geb (born) Sawatzky) - 1894 to 1948 "Selig in Jesu Armen"

There's laughter and pokes and jabs and shrieks in the SouthEast wind on the second really warm day in May this year. Have they just lost context, or is it Spring and really what else could one do but be young and silly? Is it perhaps too much to ask to settle down into the weight of the stones. The stories. It's a small sunlit place during the day - grass long with dandelions making appearances.

We who live so well don't really want the news of death. Why pay attention to it when there's living and breathing to do? When we've put all our stock in this one fact: that we will wake up in the morning and be well. We count on the rather ridiculous notion that breathing in and out will just always work. That your body will always remember, even when you're not paying attention. If our bodies were as carefree as our brains, we'd be dead. The heart, off on a daydream, takes a minute or two to wander, and what do you get? Death. We count on those biological elements that we cannot consciously propel in one way or another. Can I? Can I will my heart to stop? Can I hurry it up without running hard? Worry it without being anxious? My heart is me - my body - and so I am, so will it be. Lungs and liver too.

So here I sit writing, not thinking about breathing or bloodflow or bloodcleansing. I do not know what I've got left. Or how long what I do will work.

Maybe it's best to forget and live blithe. Live in oblivion. Why bother with all this angsty examination? Is that what Lena, or David, or Corny would say? If they could? It's not what Dylan Thomas would say: "Do not go gentle ... " What does that mean? How do you rage against the dying of the light? Ignore it? Live despite it? Let it surprise you? Get angry? Get drunk? What?

I imagine I hear John and Elizabeth. The dead love to hear us talk and laugh. Don't you think? They want the company. The reminders. This was once me. This voice-making body one-ness of love and breath. Wind and laughter. Discomfort and ecstacy.

Can I know the two - death and life - without knowing both at once? What does the dead man know? I imagine David Falk, who was born and who died on the same day, speak: "I couldn't have had one without the other."

Ride report
in: 12'C wind 10 ks SE
out: 22'C wind 30 ks SE

After the movie

2011-05-16T22:55:00.001-05:00

After the movie they re-enter the Spring haze of the 9 PM prairie, a rampant fecundity. In the car he disengages the air conditioner before the first stop sign. Moist evening air blows in instantly. It's cool enough outside. Cool. Real. They pull out of town and drive east toward the moon, sleeping on its purple-blue bed, just above newly seeded fields. Now it's clear. The night will arrive.

By the time he parks the car in the garage they step out of the its electronic glow and, wide-eyed, crave what daylight remains. They walk to the flower bed, still barren. They discuss the deep green lawn and the ravages of winter. They understand now, without words, that the premature evening of the film, has stolen something that only the oncoming dark may return.

Ride report
in: 12'C wind 20 ks NE
out: 19'C wind 35 ks NNE

Night song

2011-05-16T00:19:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit at a loss again today:

Family, obligation, virtue, doubt, love, loss, death.

Here's what's come of it:

Under these stars

beneath these lights

we rip ourselves open

with all of our might

and all that holds silence

all that holds right

pours out itself

into us tonight

While under the moon

within this light

we pour out our words

we bleed out the night

Beneath these stars

under the night

we bind up our wounds

we bleed out delight

till all of our sorrows

rage blind and white

and stare us down then

we see without sight

While under the moon

within this light

we pour out our words

we bleed out the night

These ropes and barbed wire

these teeth that bite

in such caves of steel

grows love's stalactite

in falling, in failure

in slow born requite

waters bending to stone

re-framing the plight

While under the moon

within this light

we pour out our words

we bleed out the night