An Insult to Artistic Sensibilities

some days I can’t take a good photo to save my life. What’s astounding is how each one was singularly more awful than the one before it.

I kept thinking one had to be good. I kept thinking if she picked up enough props, eventually there would be a gem! Do the SI photographers ever have days like this? talking to supermodels and going “ooh darling i’m so sorry, but your tits just don’t look good today. i am powerless, the camera can not help you!

Get Yur Umbrella

swear to god, she said this to me today. It came after a long day of playing in the pool and dropping rock-like into the water, and almost being able to tread a stroke, and climbing from float to float. t.Human grows smarter and bolder every day. i give her just a bit more rope every day.

Still…WTF? I mean, seriously, what the fucking fuck? I don’t even own an umbrella, did this come just from TV? and if so…seriously…wow! that is a connection getting made wow!

We went for our Sunday afternoon ride to the park. We left before 6, still a bit early, in hopes that we might have dinner ready to eat before 9 for a change. It was hot, she was romping, i was squirting her with a water bottle. It might seem like a Tianamen-Square-esque approach, i prefer to think of it as Pro-Active SouthWest Parenting. Clearly, she was being cooled.

Afternoons between us are my little treasure. I am at my most irie, even at work it is my best time, and she seems to be at her most playful. Or she responds to me, or not, i don’t care. Good times. Its fun when Beckie comes along, and its fun when she don’t, and yardwork often gets done with the latter.

I think due to eating a lot of watermelon, G decided after about 20 minutes that she really needed to poopy. I did not have a diaper, and Beckie for some reason sent G out in only underpants. The garbage cans at our little neighborhood park are inside a metal container with a potty-sized lid. I concluded the can could be used for multiple-purposes. whatever…i am white trash, and my kid shits in a public garbage can. there was no one there, my baby and me played on…that is good parenting as far as i’m concerned. And its not any grosser than tossing in a bag full of dog shit, of which i had done 15 minutes prior, thereby establishing my bona fides as a good citizen.

It was a good day in the park. Lots of extreme parenting. She climbed an archway made of monkey bars. I spotted her, and let her crash, a little. Enough to see the “Oh Shit, Fuck Me!!” look register on her face and for her to fall just enough to appreciate the danger. Each time i placed her down and said “careful” and did not let her go until she said “careful” back to me.

She rode the regular swings for a spell. She scaled ladders, she hung from the sliding tracks whilst i spotted. She is reaching for more.

She suddenly peed herself.

it didn’t seem to bother her. We’ve unfortunately taken to letting her p on the grass when she’s in the pool and gets the urge to pool-pee — this may need to stop, i think the ambiguity of the situation sends mixed messages. It didn’t much bother me; looked like more water i’d squirted on her. How bad can watermelon pee be? How much lower could I already sink than to have let my girl shit in a garbage can in the park? She was getting a bath as soon as we got home anyway! Play On!

Kila was rooting around in the bushes next to the playground, and G wanted to go in and chase her. The bushes had the makings of a line running through them, so I led and she followed and waited for me to pull the big branches back each time. It was good teamwork. We then made our way across the park back to the bike, which could not be easily seen by a 3-ft tall tinyHuman over the bushes and sandbox walls. I held her up, avoiding her pee-damp butt, and let her see the bike. Then she worked her way around terrain in that general direction for awhile. Another sighting was needed, but she otherwise required remarkably little course correction. It seemed like she was taking her cue from following the maps in Dora the Explorer. TV has redeemed itself in my mind, at least for a little while.

What Measure?

Bob Marley – Redemption Song

I had a meltdown last week. Thermo-fucking-nuclear. It was brilliant in its power and intensity and ferocity and righteousness. Absolutely brilliant. My fingertips still feel hot.

I’m over it. My life threatens to become harder. More complicated. It terrified me. I’m over it. There will be good. There will be bad. If you are positive, there will always be more good than bad. Some things you can control, some things you can’t. Can you be positive if you are a slave laboring in the sun all day, every day, until the day you die? Frankly, in that situation, what else can you be?

But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Wont you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
cause all I ever have
Redemption songs

I believe that happiness is the true measure of success. Sometimes that requires money, and security, and skills. Sometimes that requires outlook. I hope i can maintain a positive outlook. I need to make that a goal. What choice do I have? All I ever have.

Hug the Sun

I have not gotten out early this year that I can recall. During the week its virtually impossible since I have G in the mornings, and weekends it just hasn’t happened yet. This past week I found myself riding in 110 on a regular basis. The commute back home isn’t so bad since I have a tail wind and its fast. I did the Usery Loop on my roadie on Sunday from 2-3pm because that is when i had time, and the climb up the pass into a headwind seemed never ending. I kept trying to rally telling myself only another 15 minutes til I’m in the pool, but it was just brutal. slow-roasting. Last week I rode up and down National at 5pm. Cruising down the dirt road to the benches at the start of the trail, I had my helmet, pads and gloves all stowed. I just sat there at the trailhead in the heat haze. My pack was a block of ice, and as the ride went on i was drinking faster than it was melting. When i got to BV i sat there with a block of ice on my head, my shoulders, my belly, back to my head. All the while thinking what a stupid way to die in the desert this would be.

I didn’t really feel hot climbing up National, just in a bit of a fog. But for some reason I was climbing everything! Maybe my tires were melting? maybe i became pliable and sticky? The climb just drained me, but somewhere over the last few weeks I have re-evaluated my climbing move and improved some holes in it. On the Heckler, I’ve come to relax lifting up things and letting the Heckler stick and rebound, but i’ve lost some attack somewhere in the process. Starting to put that back, i next realized that you can relax and attack at the same time, and the calmness is helping me see the little moves within the big ones to get my bike onto easier and easier pieces of lines. The skills of descending are coming in sideways to help me climb, help me see things i had not seen.

At moments like this, when there is happiness and advancement for no good gawdamn reason in a sweat-filled cloud, its all about the bike. It makes me happy. It makes chicken salad out of chicken shit. Even my commute, as dull and dangerous and with the crapass roads on the Res, puts me in a better mood at work and upon returning home. The furnace is a way of life here, if I give in and quit riding, I quit trying to be happy.

I have made it to Somo 4 weeks in a row since getting back from Moab & Fruita, and i have commuted a day a week for 3 weeks in a row. Today I rode 30 minutes to the dealer to get the Prius, with no shirt and no socks and the lightest shorts i had and my balls caught a great breeze as long as I was moving. The sun has been awful, but its been great. I’m on my bike. Wednesday I parked at G’s daycare, rode straight down McDowell into work, cooked, rode home into an uphill headwind at the tail end of the first summer storm, which sprayed me and cooled me and gave my soul a boost after a week of 112. And then I picked up my happy little girl. Yesterday Alex and I rode National, we played, we sessioned, we socialized with the other regulars. Pieces of lines and moves, and adjustments within the moves, and jumping and rebounding and flow, slowing down in the heat. I rode the Spine again. It was under 100 and in the shade. The west side of the Valley is burning and the smoke blotted out the sun and sent winds across the Mountain. It was the nicest day in a month.

Sprinklers

I got to watch G play in the sprinklers at daycare yesterday, and it was awesome! She was a ball of happiness, it was incredible, i wish i could be so happy! She jumped in the spray and ran away through the grass with all her little friends and ran back for more screaming and floating on her happy tiny feet. Its nothing any parent hasn’t seen, but it’s awesome when its your kid! (though for the record, I still adamantly, vehemently, hate children). I was only there for like a minute, but seeing her like that has been this bright shiny image in my mind for the last 2 days!

She almost missed it, she was being a total pain-in-the-ass about getting dressed and getting out of the house. I was telling her all along…”c’mon G, let’s go its Water Day”. blah blah blah i’m gonna play with my trains, i’m gonna pick at my oatmeal, i’m gonna play with my musical instruments, i’m gonna run around nekkid. We finally get there, and I hear all the kids running around screaming, and so does G, and finally she understands why i’ve been saying “cmon gawdamit yer missing Water Day.” She couldn’t get into her bathing suit and swim shoes fast enough!!!!!

Whew!

Today I went and bought her this:

i also took our neighbors the Huey’s up on their offer to give us this:

at times like this i think i’m a really good dad, though i am doing this completely cause i want to watch her be happy again. I don’t think i should feel guilty that our interests are mutually beneficial

ghetto, part 2

2 hrs, and i did my DT Swiss rims for the Heckler, including strapping tape on the front, making valve stems, and mixing up a batch of homebrew sealant. Sealing the rear was surprisingly hard but cranking the compressor up to 100psi and soaking the rims with soap got it done. The compressor is not useful for a whole lot more than this, but whaddya want for $99? a 30 minute breakin ride with Kila at 11pm when it was finally done, and i was ready for National the next day. rode at 42 psi just in case – it rolled well, but was bouncy, all was grand ‘cept i ripped off a nobby — likely due to the high psi — and it exposed the sidewall and now will have to bust out a new tire . There is just no winning with tires!!! The day before on my commute i punctured a hole in my rear. My sealant had dried up in the summer in one month (hence the addition of ammonia to the new homebrew recipe), so i skulked around in our bike closet at work, taking the valve core off with a pair of pliers and spraying water in it with a water bottle and hoping there would be enough residual spunk in there to liquify and seal it up all before our anal Office Manager wondered what kind of trouble i was up to [and in this case, i can not blame her; sealant makes an awful mess on the floor]). This is the way of tires. I was thinking the other day how its pretty much the same thing with car tires – every corner has a Discount or a Big O or a Goodyear or a general purpose shop that will sell you some tread. And what is one of the iconic symbols of the Old West? The horseshoe.

I’m going to try to resign myself to being philosophical about this, and get happiness in my art and cheapness and having all the right tools in the ManCave.

Crazy Shit Women Have Said To Me

  • My boyfriend doesn’t touch me there
  • I think you raped me
  • 2 is the same work as 1
  • I won’t play on his team, he’s not nice
  • You’re attacking me personally
  • I just like dancing close, it didn’t mean anything
  • What do you mean it didn’t mean anything?!?!
  • This is my dildo
  • I’m not on birth control, i thought you knew
  • i dated this guy from Uganda; you should wear a rubber
  • Do you have any rope?
  • I’m sorry I led you on, but I really need your help with this account.

These are all true, or mostly true. Women are nuts.

♂ ♀

Going Ghetto

i broke a spoke at the bottom of the Tower Trail, and was commuting tomorrow for work, so off to the Man Cave to try to repair it. it was surprisingly easy, and the whole job including removing the cassette and truing the wheel took about 30 min. first time i’ve done that!

Since I was out there, and had finally fiddled with my new compressor last night, i decided to dive into my first ghetto tubeless wheel. I had an old crappy rim brake wheel that had seen 4 years on the Blur, took off the rim strip and covered it with one layer of pipe wrap. smoothed the wrap down with my fingers, sliced it just under the hook in the rim with an exacto knife. Used an old stem from a mavic tubeless rim, and covered it with a square of pipe wrap then punched a hole through the wrap. mounted my tire, slathered it with dishwashing soap, dumped in the latex, and filled it from the compressor. Poof! It seated and sealed up right away.

This was by far the easiest rim to seal for tubeless i’ve ever done – using either a traditional tubeless rim or a conversion. Though this was a UST tire. I think the secret really was the compressor. There is the tiniest little bubbling coming from the spot where this old tire hung on a nail, at 50psi. Took about an hour to do it all, then i’ve been fucking around with it for another hour dealing with the little leak, which may hold yet at 35psi.

This weekend going to try it on the Heckler’s wheels. This cost about $1 in parts for the pipe wrap and the mold builder, and $4 for the exacto knife.

What am i going to do with all the thorn resistant tubes that i will never use up?!?!?!?!?

The Mommy Tantrums

At almost 2.5 yrs, i thought we would miss the Terrible Twos. On the whole, G is remarkably tantrum free (thus far) and when she is, its usually pretty easy to identify the cause. It still is. She’s just gone psycho for Beckie. Much like Jo to me.

We get in the car to goto the gym, which she usually loves, and its “Mooooooommmmyyyyyyyyy ” the entire way there. If Beckie gets on the phone — no matter that G has been staring zombie-like at Diego the Explorere for like the last 30 minutes — and its “Mooooooommmmyyyyyyyyy “.

Sometimes it happens for no good gawdamn reason. Like in the pool, or at the store, or in the car.

G: where’smommy,daddy?

Me: she’s at home\work\gym\w. Kila

G:

Me:

fuck her, sometimes you need to appreciate what you got and how good it is. or love the one yer with. i don’t really care.

Development of Memory

I had this suspicion for some time now that G was developing memory of the short-term. Today, returning from the park where she was rather damp, Beckie said or asked something….

the effect of which was G saying “Sprinklers,” through which we had run. Its 110, what’s a good desert dad to do? Fun was had, memory was written. Thankfully, I believe there will be garbage collection, and not just null pointers.