The angry and lazy shall inherit the world

Here is a news story:

"Somebody threw tacks along Highway 30 during the annual Seattle to Portland bicycle ride, The Oregonian reported.

The communications director of the Cascade Bicycle Club told The Oregonian that one rider fell when they hit the tacks and was knocked unconscious. That person was taken to a local hospital.

Other riders reportedly patched their tires or used spare tubes to continue on.

As many as 10,000 people joined the 200-mile ride from Seattle to Portland. The annual event is hosted by the Cascade Bicycle Club."

So, let me get this right, someone upset with cyclists riding from Seattle to Portland threw tacks on the road? Did I get that? Is there a law that gives the death penalty to losers?

As a sometime cyclist, all I can say is a big giant fuck you to the sort of person who believes that tacks on a road is fun or funny. I have seen plenty of angry drivers who somehow think roads are only for cars and trucks. As if cyclists do not pay taxes and also own cars and pay car taxes and buy gas and all the other things that pay for roads.

No, some car drivers think cyclists should be riding wherever they are not.

At some point when the finite oil supply dwindles and gas hovers around 20 dollars a gallon, more and more roads will be converted to cycle only roads and at that point these lazy fat ass morons will be the minority and I can promise you this, not a single cyclist will be putting tacks down on the path dedicated to slow moving shitheads with bad attitudes.

Blessed be

Somewhere on this blog, if you dig deep enough and read every words, I may have mentioned a cab ride from Amsterdam to Paris. The driver and I bonded in Brussels over wine and sandwiches. He kept taking calls from his daughter, who was on holiday in Spain. At some point, while I was relaxing in the back seat of the Mercedes taxi and he had just finished yet another call from his daughter, I mentioned that it appeared she had him somewhat wrapped around her finger. He asked if I had a daughter, and I said I had two. He said, they wrap us around their fingers, but only because we let them.

Truer words.

I am reminded of that taxi drive more often than most taxi rides I have been on. Although one time in New York the driver started to shoot heroin at a stop light, that was memorable. I'm pretty sure he would not be wrapped around his daughters finger anytime soon.

It's an anniversary of sorts, seems like only yesterday, but trust me, it was a long time ago, this beautiful baby came splurging out of her mother, in no particular hurry, she seemed content, quietly entering the room, no need to make a scene. She stayed quiet for a while, then got cleaned up, had a snack and took a nap. Hard not to like that.

I am reminded of a moment, I am not sure when it was, but Permer, my gay fat lazy cat was with me. I was driving an old Volvo and I was in a hurry. There was an intersection coming up, but I had the right of way, the intersecting roads both had stop signs. As I said, we were in a hurry, not so much Permer, he was sleeping in the passengers seat, but I was monitoring a police radio and there was some sort of bank robbery taking place about 10 blocks from me. I was a reporter for an all news radio station, a bank robbery would get me on the air immediately. As the front of my car entered the intersection, a stupid idiot ran the stop sign on my right and smashed into the front panel of my car, pushing me into the on-coming traffic. I locked up my brakes, the oncoming traffic locked up his brakes, and the stupid idiot who had hit me finally decided to lock up her brakes. I came inches from hitting a large GMC truck head on, thanks to the bone headed moron who ran a stop sign.

I radioed into work, there were no cellphones, and I told them I would not make it to the bank robbery. I realized Permer was no longer on the front seat.

A little history. I hate cats. I really do. I am a dog person, always have been, I will die a dog person. You can bury me with my dog. If I die first, you can have her put down and buried with me, that is how much of a dog person I am. If I have a cat when I die, you can let it run wild, I will not care.

I do not like cats. Of course, that said, Permer was a cat and even then, at the blossoming of our relationship, I already had taken a shine to him. He was lazy, he was fat and he had been a long haired persian, but for whatever reason, now he was shaved bald,. which seemed to ruin what little self esteem he had, and he had gone into a funk that led him to over eat, causing him to get more lazy, making him even fatter, it was, in a couple of words, a vicious cycle.

After the accident, when I realized Permer was no longer in the passengers seat, and my door was hanging open, I thought he may have high tailed it out of there. Cats do shit like that. In a storm, some cats have been known to hail a cab, get to the airport and fly to Cuba. True story.

I looked in the car, he was not there.That meant he had run, was probably already at the airport and soon would be gone for good. I liked Permer so I got pissed off at the stupid shithead who was in such a hurry they had to run a stop sign. I began yelling and telling her what sort of education she must have failed to receive as the police pulled up. Soon enough, miss "I don't stop for posted stop signs" was tickted, insurance information exchanged and everything would be worked out. As the tow trucks began to show up, I realized, again, this time a little more seriously, that Permer had not come back. I went back to my car to grab my police scanner, some equipment, a few notebooks, some illegal weapons and Permer. He was back in the passenger seat, sleeping. You have to admire his audacity.

We walked back to the house I was renting. Actually, I walked back to the house I was renting. I carried equipment, pads, radios, assorted important stuff and a rather large, overweight shaved cat with low self esteem. When we got back to the house, he pissed on my pants, thank you very much.

16 Years ago I cried when that cat died. A few months later this beautiful, perfect baby was born and from then on, I have stopped making babies and focused more on raising them.

Tabloid Journalism

Run Rupert Run...

BILLY BRAGG - NEVER BUY THE SUN from Billy Bragg on Vimeo.

Then this happened

On my desk is a pile of papers. Actually, there are two piles. I'm sorry, there are really three. On the left side is a pile of papers that are kind of important, but not so important that I could not put them in the pile on the left. The ones right in front of the keyboard, those are the outstanding bills, one is a car payment, the other a cable bill for $2.24, seems like a waste, but there it is. The paper on the right, those are the important papers, legal stuff, a will that is getting dusty, doctors papers, prescriptions and notations, important things, and then today, more important papers came in the mail, so I opened the envelopes, deemed them important, and put them in the pile. Then I realized, having a pile of important papers that just sits there and does not get my attention does not really mean much, so I knew something must be done.

I had a salad for dinner and thought about my paper work problem. Some of these forms could be life changing, I needed to look them over. Some were just very important, things I should read and understand, but since I had not read them, I probably had failed to understand just how important they probably are.

Many years ago, when I was a young reporter, I was always looking for human interest stories. As much as I liked a good murder or car crash, I had a real love to finding quirky stories and letting people let their freak flag fly.

I met this dumpy Jewish teacher in the Catskills of New York. I was a radio reporter, about to stumble upon what would be the biggest story in the country and one that would last for months and occupy my life for a long time, but until then, I did stories on the people who race pigs and a blind woman who was a bird expert, go figure. Then the short dumpy Jewish man started talking to me at a public meeting and at some point while he was yammering on about some social injustice or another, he mentioned how he had just returned from riding his bicycle across the country.

At that point I had been riding a cycle around the Catskills just because I had an excess amount of energy, but something in this guys zeal for the ride, how he described it in real terms, how at some points he hated it, and a few times he was determined to quit. In the end, he made it. I did the story, is was nothing special, but since that chance meeting, somewhere in my mind I have harbored the plan to ride a cycle across this country.

As things happen, the biggest news story of the time stretched through the summer and I had all sorts of fun with it, and every chance I got to get on my bike, off on the back roads of the Catskills I would go, because in my mind, at some point, me and that bike were going to hit the road and ride back to the west coast.

As luck would have it, around September, the biggest news story in the country had been proven to be fabricated, which meant all that time following silliness and idiocy was wasted, except in the overtime I had earned and the extra income I made selling crappy interviews to the New York Post. About a week after that circus left town, my all news radio station changed format one morning and just like that I was a free man, with money in the bank, a bike and nothing to keep me from leaving. So I left.

I packed up what I would need, which was basically nothing. I put the bike in my car and I drove to New York City to spend the night with my best friend, and then the next day I would ride out of the city and across the nation. I parked my car near my friends apartment, walked to his place, rang the bell, he answered, he walked back to my car with me because I was going to store a couple of boxes of my important stuff at his place, and in the time it took to walk to his door and ring his bell, someone had broken the back window of my car, removed the boxes and my bike and disappeared. All this in broad daylight.

Change of plans.

So, one of the things I realized recently, while I was staring at the vast piles of important papers on my desk is this, I need to ride a bike across this great nation.

Soon.

Human kindness

I have, for at least 20 years, considered myself something of a milkman of human kindness.

Times like these

I am wearing a shirt I exchanged with a young baker in London a few years ago. There is a story behind how I came to exchange my t-shirt with that of a young baker in London, but that is not the point of this post.

No, the point of this post is accomplishment. On some level, I guess, charming the shirt off of a young baker in London is something of an accomplishment, although again, that is not the point. Being in London is the point. Walking the streets of foreign lands. Being a small part of a new culture. Having dinner in a cafe without the ability to understand the menu, nor order a meal, trusting the young baker on a selection worthy of a night out in a strange land.

I have a long running fantasy that plays endlessly like a broken loop inside my head. I am laying on a beach in Italy, the sun is squarely overhead, I am dark and sweating, out of the ocean a beautiful perfect body appears and approaches, Australian I would learn, carrying an ice cold beer, for me no less.

I have never been to Italy.

Then again, my own father had never been to London.

I called my brother last week, breathlessly, because quite honestly, I had been punched in the face and I thought I might need reinforcements. If we are lucky in life, we all have siblings with characteristics that we would like as our own. My brothers sense of calm in almost all situations is one I wish I could borrow. I told him of my most recent tango with a hurricane and he was quiet for a second, and then he asked what could he do to help.

I think, in the midst of any sort of traumatic drama, the only thing one really wants to hear is "what can I do to help."

I had a Chaucer professor in college, who sadly enough, was teaching Shakespeare and because his knowledge of Shakespeare was equal to my knowledge of professional hockey, the class was kind of a bore. Except when we tried to figure out the use of the garden as a metaphor. I forget at this point what brilliant concept we all agreed upon, suffice to say, Chaucer would have been proud. There may have been a point here, but it is lost on me at this time.

A one time thing

As some of you know, here at this blog, we have a strict no edit policy towards the comments. Which often means that the comments may have naughty words, or bad grammar or other intellectually insulting aspects to them that piss some of you off.

Oh well.

To be honest, I hardly ever read the comments, except when ordered to by my dear friend Becky from the heart of the wilderness. Sometimes she will email me and say "someone thinks your dog should run for president." A couple of times she has actually called, which is a lot of work for Becky from the Wilderness, because she has neither a conventional phone, nor a cell phone. She has one of those hippy solar generated phones, that only works at noon, on a sunny day and hardly ever allows for both speaking and listening. She will call and I will hear her faint voice, and she will say, "someone in the comments said you are a fat turd." Usually, her voice will fade, the line will go dead and if I do call back, I get a Grateful Dead song and a computer generated voice that says the voice mail box I am trying to reach has not been set up.

So, other than the comments being factually accurate on occasion, sometimes, especially lately, probably because of the heat of summer, people have been playing a new game called, Who Gets to be FIRST. Now, I have never played this game, but I am guessing the object of the game is to be the very first person on any sort of blog to post the first response. I know, I know, big deal, right? Still, I am getting frantic calls from Becky from the Wilderness, saying that there is a gaggle of nimrods (her words, not mine) trying to just be the first commentator, without so much as an actual comment.

This is what has become of this once great nation. And on this, the Fourth of July BoozeFest Weekend. I am, obviously, already drunk as possible, so I will avoid actually answering Becky from the Wilderness's trouble with First Responders, but I will say this, Max Gentleman has got to stop emailing me.

Lucky me I do not need "organic Cialis" - but Max Gentleman sends me these emails once a day, like clock work. Now, Max, I appreciate your interest in my wang, but as far as I am concerned, my body is my temple, or brothel, depends on the time of day, either way, your services are not needed, but again, the offer is sweet, but unnecessary.

Where was I?