A new bike and a potential world of gear

My new bicycle came in a week early and when I got the phone call yesterday I was pretty stoked. I’ve never been excited by the prospect of cycling before, but I’ve never been told I shouldn’t run anymore before either, so it works out nicely.

When I went to the shop (Action Bicycles in Universal City, Texas if you’re in the area) I had a few minutes to kill looking around and I was amazed at the amount of gear you can get with a bike. Then a voice in my head went off repeating a mantra you hear often amongst the British military, usually while talking about Americans – “All the gear and no idea.”

The fact the voice in my head was the Shadow’s voice should really come as no surprise to any but the first-time reader of this blog, but it did and it was her way of telling me from thousands of miles away to step away from the credit card.

But still it was fun to look – there is just all kinds of cool stuff from bike computers to tool kits to bags and pumps, lights and shirts, tires and levers and switches and…it was just candy-store like.

Still, I didn’t buy anything and today I went for my first ride. I already had a helmet and those gloves with no fingers (which really shouldn’t be considered an option if you enjoy your skin) and so with a song in my heart I found a park with miles and miles of trails. Not serious mountain biking trails with water obstacles and hills and stuff, but single-track trails that are plenty challenging when you’re 40 pounds of belly fat from where you need to be and haven’t ridden a bicycle with any alacrity since you were 6 when your bike’s banana seat matched those dangly things that were stuck into the handlebars. (You know what I’m talking about. You’re the guy who used to turn them like they were keys to start the bike – go ahead, admit it.)

Anyway, I’ve got pretty much everything I need except music but that’s not a big deal because it’s nice just to hear whatever noise it is you’re making or that nature makes sometimes. My phone has an app that will tell me how slow I’m going and how much distance I’ll cover and I’m pretty much set.

What I didn’t have, and again, if you’ve read this with any regularity you’ll not be surprised, what I didn’t have was any type of map. I figured I’d just follow trails until I came out of the woods again. That’s a great idea – if you’re an experienced rider who happened to bring any type of food substance with him. Not so good if it’s your first ride and you know in the back of your head there is the distinct possibility there could be walking involved. And swearing.



The camera in my phone isn't
great - trust me there are deer there.



About 40 minutes into the ride I heard an odd noise – that would be my phone. I have perhaps one of the nation’s least expansive phone systems and here in the middle of a very large treed space I was getting a call from the Shadow. Her timing, as ever, was impeccable because at that very spot where I stopped, not 30 feet away, were 4 deer – a mother and 3 fawns and they were just kind of standing there wanting to run away but knowing somewhere in their animal brains that I represented no threat whatsoever to anything other than perhaps myself. So we stared at each other for a while and then I carried on with my ride.

You don’t get to see that kind of thing as often when you’re running – usually because you’re too busy breathing or trying not to trip over tree routes or whatever, so it was a nice way to begin my relationship with my orange bike. It didn’t hurt that I found my way out of the woods fairly soon thereafter and didn’t have to consider which fingers I’d gnaw off first if it came to it.

When it was all done I’d ridden about 7-8 miles or so – not a huge distance by any means but it took an hour so the exercise was there and that’s really the point anyway.

Now as I write this, it’s several hours later and as I think about my visit to the bike shop yesterday, I realize one really important fact you would all do well to take note of should you embark upon a cycling as a way of getting/staying fit: as important as those gloves are, you’d do well to spend your first bit of cash on padded cycling shorts.

I'll keep the old knee, thanks

This week I had another one of those run-ins with middle age – those not necessarily painful, but subtle reminders that all your moving parts were fully formed two decades ago and that when humans got to the evolutionary stage where those parts pretty much settled into their current form, two decades was about all you had to use them. Today, of course, people in their 20s consider middle age problems for about as long as it takes to order another round of tequila shooters.

On Monday, I was told by my orthopedic doctor guy simply this, “if you keep running and abusing that knee of yours, you’ll be back here within 10 years getting prepped for a new knee.”

At least he made it relatively easy to understand.

When I considered it, I had to take into account the advantages a ‘new’ knee could possibly imply. Well, first, it’d be new wouldn’t it? That has to count for something. So, as I’m such an optimist, I assumed the following: If I had the surgery in the future, the following potential bad things (according to the Mayo Clinic) that can happen in a knee replacement surgery … would not: Infection, stiffness, blood clots in the vein or lungs, heart attack, stroke, or nerve damage. And of course, left unsaid, death.

With those happy assumptions in place, I had to take into account that in 10 years a new knee would still likely mean that I couldn’t run. And that’s what this is all about.

I really enjoy running. Earlier this year I was up to 6 and even 7 miles at stretch and things were starting to get better, faster and in a Steve Austin kind of way, stronger. My little endorphin factory was gearing up for production again and it felt good to be out and about looking around at street level.

To be told you can’t (or more aptly, shouldn’t) do something anymore makes you want to do nothing more than go out and do it. So, short term, this really kind of sucks.

Long term, however, I have to admit, it’s better than getting a new knee. I think the words ‘new knee’ could be easily modified into ‘1972 Fiat Spider Convertible’. I had one of those once and it looked fine and seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was easily a bright blue piece of crap. A new knee could be just like that without the benefit of being able to sell it for $20 and a case of beer.

So, the doctor gave me the ‘don’t run’ lecture and told me to get a bike, swim, walk etc., and he offered to give me a shot in the knee with something that would help protect what cartilage remained. He also said I’d probably have to/want to get another injection every 6-8 months, in his words, ‘like an oil change’. Great. Now I’m the Fiat Spider, but in a ’68 model.

I feel it necessary here to turn the topic of this post completely on its head and discuss for a moment socialized medicine. I know it’s a political topic and I don’t usually discuss politics, but I have to say I’m a fan of socialized medicine. My son was born in England where it cost me less than $20 in an English hospital and that was only so the Shadow could have a private room. I filled out next to no paperwork and a visiting nurse came by the house fairly regularly to make sure the new mum was doing well.

I mention this because as the doctor was injecting this stuff into my knee which immediately took on the shape and with the accompanying discomfort of a having a golf ball embedded under my skin, he said the following to me.

“This costs about a thousand dollars…”

Wha…?! For 6ml?! I can’t image crack costs that much. I’ve read that printer ink costs about $8,000 a gallon – making it one of the world’s more expensive liquids. Well, what was put in my knee isn’t, strictly speaking, a liquid, but I easily found two sites on the internet where I could get a 6ml syringe of the stuff for just a smidge under $400. Still, with more than 3,785 milliliters in a U.S. gallon, that means the stuff they injected into my knee (and will do twice a year for probably many years) costs about as much as a house – a little over $250,000 per gallon. Kind of makes me feel better about buying gasoline. (If you’re interested, scorpion venom comes in at the ludicrous amount of nearly $39 Million/gallon)

But that’s the problem with our healthcare system isn’t it? I can’t help but think that if we took all the money we spent on Medicare and Medicaid, ($793 Billion in FY10 – the largest piece of our spending pie); various and sundry clinic programs, and all the other medical related programs for various constituencies in this country, and brought some order to the pharmaceutical gang-rape of our health care system, we’d probably find that we could fund a world-class national health care system where people who struck themselves with a hammer wouldn’t wait hours before proceeding to the emergency room. (Where they would find that, yes, they had in fact broken their thumb … hypothetically, of course). Also consider that the second largest piece of our federal pie, social security (barely edging out defense) could probably get a little smaller too, because with national healthcare, people wouldn’t need as much money in their later years as their largest bills (medical) wouldn’t exist.

Now, I’m lucky because being in the service, I have socialized medicine. As do your elected Congressional representatives, by the way. (Personally, if I were you, I’d be pretty pissed that they think socialized medicine is ok for them, but not for you.)

So, what have we learned today? We’ve learned that golf-ball sized globules of synthetic stuff hurt when injected into a human subject; we’ve learned it probably doesn’t – or shouldn’t – cost more than 400 bucks a pop; we’ve learned that I’m going to have to buy a bicycle and learn to swim without those inflatable things on my arms; and we’ve learned that we should find a way to create a real national health care system – not whatever it is they’re half-heartedly trying now.

Maybe if we did that, when my kids are in their 20s, they’ll have enough money for a round of drinks as they consider the qualities of Jaegermeister as a cough suppressant.

Smart phones ... dumb people

Ok, so this week I finally went out and bought a smart phone. Why? Well, I should think it's pretty obvious why. I work in public relations, I blog semi-regularly. I live in a city that I'm unfamiliar with. A smart phone can help me do things I've heretofore (I've always wanted to use that word) been unable to do.

Plus, I really wanted to play Angry Birds.

Naturally, with a 188 page instruction manual for the new phone to digest, I set to work on updating the blog site. I hope you like it. There is now a feature in the upper right where you can add your email address in the box, and you'll get an email when something new is posted. I know 'following' the blog for many of you is a giant pain because of the hoops the site wants you to take, signing up and all that nonsense, so hopefully this works out for you and gives me an idea of how many people read this.

I hope you don't think this is a customer service issue. No, no, no. This is pure narcissism. I mean, that's essentially what a blog is, after all. Just a way to help people feel better about themselves. The more followers you have or more people you can see who have bothered to sign up for something you do, the more narcissistic you can feel. And the more that happens, the more you have to spell narcissistic and eventually you won't have to keep going to the tab you have open on dictionary.com to know how to spell it. So really, there's an educational benefit too.

So, you'll also notice the blog is lightened up a little design-wise which I figured is like house-cleaning. Once a year whether you need it or not. And you can also see the top-3 posts (by how many page views I guess) and the total page views of the blog. I'm going out on a limb here and assuming these don't count mine. Again, it's all about me.

Except when it isn't. I went to see Harry Potter 7.2 the other day and it was a fine film. I'm not going to get into that other than to say I really wish Radcliff hadn't waited until his last film before he started knowing how to act. Anyway, during a really quiet part of the movie, about 10 rows back, a phone starts to ring and the guy answers it. Now, I would like to think that most dinks who answer a phone in a movie theater would have the good grace to whisper or say a few words and then get up and leave so as to not bother everyone else. No, not this guy. Fortunately his conversation was quick, but entirely audible. That's what texting is for.

There is a theater down here, and I forget the name of it otherwise I'd tell you, where they have about 3 minutes of commercials outlining their anti-cell phone in the theater policy and it's very direct. In fact, they tell you that if your cell phone rings and you're talking on it, they'll escort you out of the theater and you will not get your money back. According to people who frequent that theater, they are as good as their word too. All theaters should be like that.

So, this post was really just a way to test the new page design. I hope you like it and I hope that next time you're back here there's something a little better to read. By that time I should be able to give you a good rundown on a couple recipie apps I've downloaded, and gotten past level 9 of Angry Birds.

I'll take weather over air conditioners every time

This is awesome. Two weeks with the Shadow and the children and all in the lovingly temperate climate that marks Vermont as the one place in all the world you'd gladly go to remind yourself that weather can change within minutes. Every hour. Every day.

At least that is what I was hoping for on this visit. Some 'highs in the 70s' kind of summer days that exhibit the total lack of weather that make Vermont summers so singularly refreshing. That slightly cool breeze that is almost, but not quite cool enough, to make you want a light sweater or a flannel shirt. Those days are magic.

Whereas Texas, of course, is like living on the face of the sun. You boldly stride from air conditioned building to air conditioned car. I know people in Texas who have (and proudly so) installed auto-start features on their cars so that they can cool them down. As anyone in New England will tell you, that's just foolish - auto starts are for heat - trees and shade are for cooling.

Alas, buildings in Vermont do not have air conditioning which is why I'm writing this to you now at 1030 p.m. with every window opened to within an inch of compressing the panes of glass - desperate for a breeze that just isn't there.

For hours I've been staring at wildlife in my front yard standing in front of my open windows hoping for the millisecond of cool air that floats their way when I open the refrigerator. It's that hot. And that humid.

Still, for all that, it's merely uncomfortable, not 112 degrees of Texas insufferable. And I have to ask myself why that is so...

Perhaps it's the trees or the grass that you can walk on and lay down on without being swarmed by a million red ants that would like nothing better than to pull you into their hill one deliciously tiny piece at a time.

Perhaps it's the knowledge that after a winter that availed itself of almost all of April, a little heat isn't such a bad thing.

Perhaps it's knowing that at mid-July everyone within 100 miles of me at this moment knows exactly where their snow boots are.

Perhaps it's not insufferable because the cree-mee stands and the drive-in theaters are still open providing a tangible link to a season that is all too short and all the more glorious because of it.

Perhaps it's because we all know that in a couple months, leaf-peepers from southern Connecticut and New York City and other places that have air conditioning but lack air quality, will jam our roads driving slowly and annoying us to no end with the word "charming."

Perhaps, just perhaps, it's because when I look outside at 1047 p.m. I can see a sky filled with more stars than I can count and by 1112 p.m. I can hear, very softly over the humming of a, quite honestly pointless, ceiling fan, a gentle rain that, even as I type these words, brings a soft breeze scented with new mown grass and a soporific relief that the best air conditioner in Texas couldn't hope to compete with.

Most likely though, these two weeks of summer are so wonderful mainly because I'm home. The Shadow and the kids are asleep and using the tried and true New England cooling expedient of turning over the pillow - and waiting a few more minutes for the weather to change again.

With all due respect to Texas, summers are much bigger here.

25th Class Reunion Mission a Success...Almost

So, after 25 years I finally got to attend a high school reunion and put into action all those plans I’ve been making for how to redeem myself and show that I’m a reasonably together mid-lifer instead of the total dorkmeister I was in high school.

For the occasion the Shadow figured I would be better off if she bought me some new clothes instead of what I was preparing to wear – black and white checked shirt with thin leather tie, ripped acid-washed jeans and a bandana ala Loverboy. (For the record and to aid the occasional reader of this blog, she didn’t really care if I made a fool of myself, but she was attending the event as well and she did not want to be on the receiving end of sympathy looks all night.)

Now, by way of a primer for those of you who have never been to a high school reunion, and as a public service, the following are some steps you should probably take to get ready for the big evening.

First, take a glance at your yearbook to see if you can remember someone – anyone. After 25 years the chances are good that you can convince at least one person you remember them from a party where you were both hammered.

Second, Grosse Point Blank is an excellent film to watch right before a reunion because of the reunion scene in the film. Odds are some of the guys at your reunion will have seen the movie. As we all know, a good portion of the male brain is dedicated to memorizing movie lines. These lines should only be used in an emergency when the conversation gets slow, or while in line for beer.

Third, and this is me being generous because really what I want is for you to learn this for yourself the hard way … girls still like to dance. And guys still do not. In many respects your high school reunion will remind you more of a 7^th grade dance in the gymnasium once the music starts.

Still, prepped as I was in my new duds and armed with movie lines and a bunch of money for beer, the Shadow and I arrived and found it wasn’t so bad. Most of the guys I remembered pretty well. All of them, in fact. The women…not so much. Even with nametags and fresh short-term memory application of the yearbook – I came up blank more than once. It was terribly embarrassing but not especially surprising as  women were not my major in any positive pubescent sort of way in high school.

As you prepare to talk to people at a substantive reunion, you should know that 25 years is a very long time and people change - and so do their families. Because I'm from a small town, I know many of my classmates’ parents, and some of the "catching up" stories were a little alarming – not so much because of the subject, but because these stories likely foreshadow our behavior in another 30 years. I won't relate any of these stories but suffice to say copious food storage, fear of anarchy and tinfoil hats figure prominently. On my news browser I've now got several new favorites including the hometown paper obituaries, the Darwin Awards, and News of the Weird. If these folks are going to show up again, it will be in one of those places.

A reunion also lets you be a little amazed by just how well people who were buffoons at 17 (that would be all 17 year olds) are doing at 43. Of course, anyone who might say, “I’m thinking of opening a meth lab in my bathroom…” is probably not going to be at the reunion, but the people at this event all had really respectable jobs. With big companies. Doing grown-up things while I’m spending most of my time wondering if I’ll make enough of a connection with my new apartment to name it. I was also impressed to the edge of fear because next year I’ll be out of work.

Fourth, bring business cards. You never know.

All in all, it was a lot of fun and it was good to say hi to folks I haven't seen in years and give life a little perspective. When we got home, the Shadow and I were discussing the possibility that maybe I had accomplished my goal of putting my past dork demons to rest. Then my lovely Shadow gave me a kiss and told me she loved me and I thought things were going to get prom-good when she grabbed my ass…and pulled back from me holding the waist measurement sticker from the back of my pants.

I guess there's always the 30th reunion in 2016.