Day: May 5, 2009

To All You EstrogenBags: STFU!!

/ chollaball / 2 Comments

Women develop an uncharacteristic boldness in offering unsolicited advice about a baby.   The quietest most-mousey woman loses all sense-of-place in an overflow of i-know-better-than-you.   Women are crazy, crazy about kids.   Mix that with their horrible tendency towards passive-aggression, and you get   alpha-dog bossiness prefaced with a pointless “excuse me, but…”   It might as well be a fist pushing you against a wall.

Others insist on touching the baby.   In any other situation the same woman would call similar contact sexual molestation.   They actually get offended when I ask them to keep their hands off.   My feeling is simple: you aint lettin’ me grab your tits, keep your tentacles off of Pod — you might have Swine Flu.

The loud-talkers are worse.   Someone standing next to you blathers, to no one in particular:   “oh I wish I was so comfortable\sleepy\getting a free ride.”   Then they think I’m obligated to say something stupid like “thank you for noticing my baby,” but I usually say something like “do you want to babysit for a while, I could really use the help?”

Most everyone else can’t just tune out the baby and go about their business.   I walk with the bjorn and freeweights, run with Alana in the stroller, yet some do-gooder slows down and stops and thinks they’re doing me a favor by   holding the door for me.   The thought is nice, but its not about my suffering child or weary back or the fact that I would not have her with me if I thought I needed help, its about these people and their need for feeling good about themselves or loneliness or need to go volunteer with Big Brothers.

Mostly its about how my privacy has now vanished.   If I was leering at a chick in the gym or making comments like “dayum you look hot!” I’d get arrested.   Getting into and out of anything is an endeavor with Alana, i don’t need the complications or the challenge to make conversation.   Leave me alone.

This is definitely the male way.   I don’t think its insensitive, its just efficient.   Kids are everywhere, everywhere!   They are not special, and women need men around to keep that thought in mind, and to keep them from drowning the world in maternalism.     Our neighbor the other day hugged her daughter throwing a tantrum for like 20 min straight pleading with her to stop.   WTF!?!?!   G doesn’t throw tantrums around me, at least, not for long.   Alana has been up almost nonstop for 7 hrs now, and is beginning to throw a fit.   She just refused a bottle, got her pants refreshed, and sat in my lap for the past hour – off to the crib she goes.

She will be asleep probably before I proofread this.

No Gnar Without a Car

/ chollaball / 4 Comments

How lonely the Heckler was getting, stranded in the garage! Fortunately Bob took up my offer for a fun Hawes tour with some suburban freeriding, a Sunday pace with beer and sessioning. Bob is awesome to ride with cause he loves riding just about anything, and he always rides strong. Some discussion over what bikes to take led to a new motif for Hawes:  

big bike all-mountain Sunday-pace shredfest.   The route was up the Las Sendas road, climb Tower Trail the hard way, then a long play-filled descent down to the river, down TRW to my little jump pit below Red Mtn Park. The vast majority of the climbing would be on the road, and make great warm-up and warm-down, with enough calories burned to justify a trip to EBF Mesa.

tada!

We both attacked the steep Las Sendas line. Bob pushing for air, and me dropping in from the right down the nasty face.

I hoped to get the camera to catch Bob hitting the staircase, but he was too fast right behind me. Stupid capable riding partners! The Las Sendas staircase remains off the internet. Then we tried Alex’s rock, tentatively named The Beetle since it looks like a VW to me, going down this time. Up Upper Mudflaps enough to get a 10-second jump filled run-in, but it still remains uncleaned going down. No pics were taken.

Down, down, down, down, down to the bottom of Las Sendas and my little play pit. Actually showing it to someone is cool, you put into words the runs and trials that only existed as ideas in your mind:

  • the climb up the center of the mound
  • harder climb up the wash side
  • hardest climb up the substation side
  • run down the spine
  • impossible run up the spine
  • point-and-plunge with jumps down the substation side
  • 1-3 foot jumps and climb out of the wash down the wash side

Quite a lot of fun for a 100 yd area.   I had the jump into and climb out of the wash clocked as a 45 second sprint!   We had some beers and then Bob upped the stakes attempting to clean the mesa, which I have never tried.   I once 5 years ago saw a guy jump a big bike off this and fly 30 feet.   Beckie and I were walking Kila after riding Tour De Farm and feeling like pretty little XC\roadies.   I’ve since never had the inclination to try.   It looks like the jump into Holbert Pit but maybe steeper, and was hysterical watching Bob throw his bike up it to climb it.

a little film I call Bob’s Angst

My laughing was really nervous laughing he might just kill himself. And sympathy laughing.   I know how Bob felt pissed that he worked so hard to get up there but just wasn’t ready to try it. His first line down was his stepping stone, still rather impressive to ride that when you’ve never seen it done, and get a feel for the slope and for landing pointing down. That inspired me to go up and hit the little line. It was not that hard if you did all the skills right – jump smooth, point downhill and stay dead center on the fall line, and abandon any inclination of using the brakes until easing into the bottom. Abandonment is a weird feeling, and it crosses over from skiing, the intellectual part of it. Having confidence for it on your bike is still hard for me, but this was a good step. For Bob, it was a great step. He hit the big line right after.   It wasn’t the prettiest, but he got it done.   Unfortunately i did not have the camera ready.  

On the way out we stopped by the new drop I found. I needed to step up, and after watching Bob jump it, I decided it was my turn. It was just like Bob’s vid, I approached and found something I didn’t like, approached and got my panties bunched, etc,   in a series of babysteps. But I did hit it on the 3rd try, flying about 5 feet further than needed and nearly getting thrown off the back on the landing.   It was good – it told me that jump is easier and I don’t need to pump the takeoff so hard.   No pics were taken.

Then back to the house via the church steps…more playing and coolness etc…no pics were taken.

We concluded that this route must be offered soon as a party or bbq or something that will hopefully include hooliganistic trespassing on the Red Mtn Ranch Golf Course (leaving no trace, of course). And we absolutely have to bring guys like Sam and Tim who like to video  

AntiParent-of-the-Year Almost Infanticides

/ chollaball / 3 Comments

It happened so fast.   I got up from my desk to go to the kitchen,   and had Alana in my left arm.   This is unusual, since I don’t hold her much.   Normally my attitude is if she is clean and warm and fed, the rest is up to her.   But here I was trying to be a good dad and calm her when she was upset.   The irony…

Something spilled on our smooth horribly-chosen kitchen tiles, and my legs slipped out…fast.   Crashing many times has made me discover nascent cat-in-the-air skills, and turn them into finely tuned cat-like reflexes, or at least try to save my shit in the instants during a crash instead of just wasting the time staring in befuddlement. Off-center by 10 lbs of Meatpod and turning left hard had me going down on top of her.   I braced my arm to take the fall and keep her skull from cracking the floor, and counterweighted everything else.   My forearm, elbow, hip, butt, quad and knee all kinda hurt, but none too bad – quite well played actually if I got that much square footage involved. I saw my arm with Alana in it hit the floor first, then my chest start to come down almost on her leg.

I had time to realize the following during the next 5 seconds:

  • i did not break my arm
  • Alana did not smash her head
  • how little weight does it take to tear a baby’s ACL?
  • her face is not normally that scrunchy and red

Her face just got redder and redder and smaller and smaller until finally it EXPLODED!!!!!! I got a little scared about the head and the acl, but after about 2 howls she quieted right down.

I’m a little like well that wasn’t such a chores, then I had bad flashbacks to dropping G on her head in Home Depot.   But other than the shock of disorientation, she seemed just fine.

So for the last few days I’ve been overthinking this whole thing trying to figure out what went wrong, how I’ve only fallen in our kitchen twice in like 9 years, and once was during New Years Eve when I was sloppy drunk.   Alana is not as fragile as she seems.   G should not have juice-boxes without lids.   I should wear shoes.   I should be more careful. Blah blah blah.

Take nothing for granted.

especially when they finally start to get interesting
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