She’s good.

My wife:  “So, when are we going to call the restaurant, about 10 minutes from now?”

“Whenever we’re done having sex.  So yeah, probably about 10 minutes from now.”  She gives me a look.  “Well, I’ll be done in 10 minutes, at least.”

“You’re already done, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I burst out laughing.  She says,  “Yep, there’s your blog, right there.  You’re welcome.”

Still got it!

Or maybe more honestly, perhaps I obtained it sometime recently?  Cuz if I’ve got it, I don’t know when I received it, cuz for a long-assed time I definitely didn’t have it.  Anyway.

I had to meet someone for business reasons today.  Turned out she was a moderately attractive lady, by my estimation well within the my-age +/-5 bracket that would in theory interest me.

And maybe I’m crazy, but it seemed like there was some chemistry there.  Don’t get me wrong, we were perfectly professional about it – no flirting, no innuendo, no banter.  But if I know anything about men and women, there was a little bit of a spark there.  If nothing else, sure did seem like the meeting took about four times as long as it needed to, in a less-than-ideal meeting space.

Anybody else ever have that happen?  A completely mundane encounter that began and ended and will go away without regret, but for some reason just seemed a little…for lack of a better term, charged?

So, what now?  Nothin’.  I’m having dinner alone with my lovely wife tonight (woohoo for friends inviting our son to Movie Night with their son!), so I’m gonna take that energy home to Baby.  *evil grin*

What a good time for a weekend.

How not to get back in the saddle

I was replying to Sue’s comment on my well-wishes blog for Lori Cannon when I stopped and thought, hmm.  Maybe this deserves a bit more in passing.

Sue said one of the hardest things she ever did was get back on her ex’s bike after a crash.  And I’m sure she’s right.  On a level that I’m not even familiar with, because I’ve never crashed while riding as a passenger.  (Sue, that’s how I interpreted your statement – if I’m wrong, smack me correct!)  Riding as a motorcycle passenger requires a hell of a lot of trust, and climbing back on after an accident requires even more.  Seriously.

But just getting back on the ol’ iron horse after a crash definitely takes some guts.  And while I talk a lot about what Pirsig would call the romantic aspects of motorcycling, there is hard reality there also.  Maybe it’s only fair – and more honest – that I talk about my cold experience with harsh reality.  And I can already tell that I should update my glossary a bit with some new biker terms after this post.

In my own case, well, I’d crashed bicycles badly enough to get second-degree roadrash burns as a kid, and I’ve dumped dirt bikes a time or four when I was a teenager.  But I crashed my road bike twice:  once when a lady in a Honda hatchback ran me off of a little backcountry road and didn’t bother to stop to check on me afterward, which all in all was a fairly minor 20mph lowside (although I sprained the shit out of both wrists), and once a year and a half later when I leaned over too hard on a new rear tire that wasn’t adequately broken in yet, and lowsided again.  That one would have been minor, also…if not for the guard rail.

I can tell you that, while the world doesn’t exactly move in slow motion, the two seconds I spent sliding toward that guard rail definitely seemed to take a while.  I was going uphill into a constant radius, positive cambered left-hand turn at about 30-35 mph, so there was no blinding speed involved.  The rear tire just slipped out to the outside.  One second I was hanging off to the left and on the throttle, the next I’m sliding on my left hip and watching the bike slide away ahead of me.  (Leather slows on pavement faster than aluminum and plastic.)  It took me a pregnant instant to realize it:  “Holy fuck, I’m on the ground!”

Well, realizations came pretty quickly after that.  “Oh shit, the bike’s gonna hit the rail!  Oh…crunch…fuck.  Damn, that su…wait a sec, oh fuck, I’m gonna hit the rail!  This is gonna…oof.”

Sliding uphill on my left side, I took the guard rail to my back, about three inches to the right of my spine and an inch above my waistline.  Other than a nasty bruise there, though, I was unhurt.  The bike had definitely seen better days, though.  I rode it home, and then to make an already long story somewhat shorter, there’s my long profanity-laced tirade about insurance and repair shops that ends with the bike being totaled for what I estimated I could have fixed myself for about $1000.

But this post isn’t about bike repair or insurance.  It’s about fear, and overcoming fear, and getting back on the horse even when you’re scared shitless.  And I have a somewhat stupid angle on that story.  You see, I had entirely too much (as in, an unhealthy amount) of my self-image wrapped up in my biker identity NOT to get back on.  After some years (too many) of reflection, I can say now that I’m still a biker, even without a bike – but I recognize that I’m a biker but not just a biker, or even predominantly a biker, if that makes sense.  I’m bigger than that.  Motorcycling is still a unique fix, and one I’ll probably never get out of my system, but there’s more to me than that.

At the time, though, it was somewhat pathetic how frightened I was of losing that identity of “Biker” that I’d wanted for so long and held not long enough.  Particularly after my first crash, I was much more afraid of that than I was of whatever else might happen to me on the bike, so I pushed myself way too hard and way too fast to get back on.
After my first wreck, I ordered the parts and did the repairs to the bike even while my wrists were so badly sprained that turning the wrenches almost brought tears to my eyes.  I got back on and rode even though twisting the throttle and using the levers definitely brought pain.  I knew I was being stupid and tempting a worse accident by pushing through the barrier of pain AND fear of crashing, but I couldn’t stop myself.  The cost to my self-image was too high to contemplate otherwise.  In retrospect, that whole episode was one of the most pathetically foolish times of my life.

After my second accident, while riding my damaged bike back home, I actually did contemplate hanging it up.  I’d been riding long enough to know people who’d been seriously hurt.  I had a wife and a child who were depending on me.  And I’d crashed twice in two years, which although there was bad luck involved in both, there were things I could have done to have prevented them both.  I didn’t exactly have a sterling record as a rider to be able to tell my family “No, really, this time it’ll be all right.”  And my wife’s terrified tears when I made it home safe definitely gave me a lot more to think about.

But ultimately I decided I wanted to get back on it again.  I think that time it wasn’t quite as unhealthy as before, but probably still somewhat so.  I couldn’t let it beat me, and I still didn’t want to let go of that self-definition.  Obviously that’s still true to a degree.  Hell, I call myself “Taoist Biker” when I haven’t sat on a running motorcycle in over two years now, ferfucksake, and it’ll be at least two more before I can start seriously thinking about it again.  But now, after reflection, even though I still want to get back onto a motorcycle, I think I have a better perspective on the whole thing.

And I’ll be a little afraid when I climb back on again for the first time, still.  But as bikers sometimes tell each other, the day you’re not afraid of it anymore is the day to hang up your helmet.  It’ll be hard for me, and it’ll be scary, but I think I’ve learned a whole lot about myself not only from riding, but from crashing, from getting back on too soon, and now by not being able to get back on.  Honestly, I think talking about my past fears and foolishness helps in that regard.  So I hope I can be a little bit wiser when my next opportunity rolls around.

True Night Falls

WOOHOO!  Okay, so after my book meme of the other day, I’ve been thinking of one of my favorite fantasy books which I recommend heavily in that post:  C. S. Friedman’s Black Sun Rising.  So just today I recommended it to Laura when she posted the same meme.  Then, what the heck, I did a bit of googling, and whattaya know!  The prologue that I love so much is available online!

If you like fantasy literature at all, you MUST go read it here.  And then go find the book.  It’s great stuff!

Speedy Recovery!

I just found out that Lori “Killgirl” Cannon (who’s been mentioned before in this blog) was in a motorcycle accident this past weekend.  She seems mostly okay, aside from some bruising and a broken wrist, but word is she’s a bit shaky after her first crash.  I can definitely empathize with that.

Anyway, while I’ve never met Lori or her husband Darryl, I’ve enjoyed their blog and their photography for almost five years now, and everyone I know who’s ever met them says they’re as nice a couple as you could hope to meet.  So I’m sending wishes for a speedy recovery along on Dragon’s wings, and if any of you folks feel like doing the same, I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

Thanks, and remember folks, stay safe, wear your gear, and keep the rubber side down.

Whither the next step?

I was reading my alumni magazine last night and they discussed a former faculty member who’d given a distinguished lecture recently.  No big deal, except that said faculty member is dying of pancreatic cancer.  The interviewer mentioned that he conducted the interview via the guy’s bluetooth cell phone while he bicycled.  Because the guy was so damned determined to get all these things done before he died, he’s been figuring out ways to multitask more and more.

And I thought, wow.  If it were me and I was told I had six months to live, I’d pull the plug on all my professional commitments and just go do things for me and my family.  This guy has it all wrong:  he should be focusing on his life, not his career.  But then I thought:  no.  This guy believes that he has important work left to do in teaching others…his career is a huge part of his life.  The fact that he’s dying doesn’t mean he drops his career to focus on his family, or drops his family to focus on his career – he’s trying to do both as hard and as frantically as possible.

Now, that’s my interpretation of the article and maybe that’s not exactly true, but the important part was that such a concept was quite different from my own instinct.  See, I’ve talked before about making big changes in my life.  And many of those changes, I’m proud to say, have been successful.  But at this moment, I definitely don’t have a career that I’d want to keep plugging away at as hard as possible if somebody told me I was about to shuffle off ye olde mortal coil.  And as I read that article, I thought about how nice it would be to have something like that.

I found out a few weeks back that it’s not inconceivable that we could be looking at layoffs here at my employer, and if so, I’m in the category of people that might come under the axe first.  Not something you want to hear when your son is in a private school for autistic kids and you carry the whole family on your health insurance.  But I’ve been in this position before, actually.  I left my previous job to take this one knowing that I was at risk of being laid off if I hung around…and, sure enough, a month or so after I accepted the job offer I found out that I would have been laid off if I’d stayed.   And this move has turned out to be one of the best things ever to happen to me.

Now, while I’m certainly a little anxious about the potential problems ahead, I’m not dwelling on them.  You see, the most successful things about the changes I made in my life a few months back center around my taking a more Taoist view of things and just letting go.  That is, I’m not so much just sitting back in the lotus position and waiting for things to happen to me – I don’t think you can be a very responsible person, partner, or parent by doing so in our modern world.  But I’ve been much better at not worrying about things that are in the future and out of my control.  And I’ve put much less stress on myself to live up to false expectations from myself and others.

That’s not to say that I don’t still have some frustrations with myself.  I do still feel like I wish I had a driving sense of purpose, like the professor mentioned above, or as Laura discussed yesterday.   I feel like my family is a driving purpose, and I’m proud of that, but I feel a need for something defining that’s outside my family as well.  But at the same time I am proud of the fact that, while I may not know what is me yet, but I’ve at least finally decided that a few things that I was trying to make me, aren’t me at all.  Or even all that important to me.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going and I can’t see the path before me yet, but I’m growing more confident that I’m moving in the right direction, and so I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Book ‘em, Danno.

I enjoyed this literary meme by Allison and Matt so much that I wanted to do it myself, it just took me a while.

1. What is your favorite passage/line from a book?

Well, my favorite is probably a section of the first chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which Pirsig attempts to describe what it’s like to be riding on a cross-country motorcycle trip with his son and his friends. But that would be too damn easy for me, so I’m going to switch it up and present another one of my favorites, this one from Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel Neverwhere: (page 64 of my edition)

Varney ran his tongue over the wreck of his teeth. “Are you bribing me?” he asked.

Mr. Vandemar had picked up the morning-star. He was pulling the chain apart, with his free hand [he was holding Varney up in the air with his other hand - TB], link by link, and dropping the bits of twisted metal onto the floor. Chink. “No,” said Mr. Vandemar. Chink. “We’re intimidating you.” Chink. “And if you don’t do what Mister Croup says, we’re…” chink “…hurting you…” chink “…very badly, before we’re…” chink “…killing you.”

“Ah,” said Varney. “Then I’m working for you, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are,” said Mr. Croup. “I’m afraid we don’t have any redeeming features.”

“That doesn’t bother me,” said Varney.

“Good,” said Mr. Croup. “Welcome aboard.”

I don’t have the book at hand, but the last few paragraphs of the preface to Black Sun Rising by C. S. Friedman are awesome.

2. What do you consider the best film adaptation from a book? What do you think is the worst film adaptation?

Best: I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but I think I’m going to go with Peter Jackson’s work on the Lord of the Rings. I thought he was very true to the spirit of the texts, even when he wasn’t true to its letter, and I think he did a good job in choosing what to leave out, such as the Bombadil story. Maybe a little too much comic relief in the form of Gimli, but I’m a little biased toward Tolkien’s dwarves.

Worst: Shaara’s The Killer Angels being made into “Gettysburg.” Not that Gettysburg is absolutely horrible, but it’s pretty bad, and overall just a poor match for Shaara’s work, which was well done on all accounts in my own humble opinion.

3. What is the first book you remember reading?

A comic book, Shogun Warriors or something like it if I remember correctly. I credit comic books (and the book-and-record things my parents bought for me) as the reason I learned to read before I started school.

4. Did you have a favorite kids’ book as a child?

Like many, I adored Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. But I also read a lot of more adult stuff as a child…Jakes’ North and South and its sequels, for example, and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. I also read an adaptation of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood stories, King Arthur stories, my aunt’s collection of old 60′s Tarzan comic books, and I absolutely loved Kipling’s The Jungle Book. I don’t know of anyone besides myself who actually claims to have read The Second Jungle Book. How can anyone not love “Red Dog” or “The King’s Ankus” or “The Spring Running?” It’s available free on the web courtesy of Project Gutenberg for those who would seek it out.

5. What book did you hate reading for a school assignment?

Anything by Dickens. Blah.

6. What is the most recent book you read (or are currently reading)?

I just finished the last novel of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, Confessor. It’s been a tolerably good series, but really the first book (Wizard’s First Rule) was far and away the best. I’m currently re-reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (hence the quote above) and finishing re-reading Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ incomparable graphic novel Watchmen. Wow. Every time I read that one I catch something else that I’d missed before. So much detail layered over and over itself, both in the words and the illustrations. Seriously, go read the Wikipedia entry on it linked above.

7. What book would you most like to see turned into a movie?

Black Sun Rising by C. S. Friedman, but I don’t think they could ever pull it off convincingly. As an aside, Watchmen is supposedly being made into a movie, but I’m afraid of that one because I’m so completely doubtful that it can be done justice.

8. What book did you cheat and read the “Cliff Notes” version?

I never did, although there were a few I just plain ol’ didn’t read, Hard Times by Dickens and large swaths of Tess of the D’Urbervilles coming to mind.

9. What book would you never read again, no matter how much someone was going to pay you?

Silas Marner. I want that month of my life back.

10. Are you more of a library or book store person?

Library, although it’s fair to say I’ve amassed a decent library of my own through bookstores.

11. Have you tried audio books? Do you like them?

I haven’t really tried them. I doubt I’d like them; I read entirely too quickly to be held up listening to someone talk in real time.

12. Has any movie ever inspired you to then read the book on which it was based?

Not that I can think of…there are a few movies that I later read the books, but in every instance I can think of I read the book more because a friend told me “Dude, read the book, it’s so much better”…so I read it more on the friend’s recommendation than because of the film.

13. Describe a passage from a book that made you cry.

I can’t really think of one that actually made me cry, but several passages from books choke me up or make me upset. Arwen’s final and lonely death in the appendices of Return of the King. Mowgli’s final farewell to the jungle in “The Spring Running.” Miriamele’s attempt to “save” Simon from loving her by forcibly telling him of her seduction by Aspitis Preves in Tad Williams’ To Green Angel Tower. Aslan’s self-sacrifice in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

14. What is your favorite book series?

C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy: Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, and Crown of Shadows. The middle book isn’t as strong as the other two, but the characters of the warrior-priest Damien Vryce (who struggles to maintain his faith and his identity while allied to darkness), and the undead sorcerer Gerald Tarrant (who struggles to maintain both his demonic immortality and his humanity) are my favorites in all literature.

15. Describe your favorite place to read.

I wish I could still climb a tree and read like I did when I was a kid.

First Blood to the 1098

And before I sign out, congratulations to Ducati.  On the maiden race weekend of their new 1098 Superbike, Ducati’s Troy Bayliss won the first race of the World Superbike season in Qatar from fellow Ducati pilot (and former Rossi whipping boy) Max Biaggi.  Suzuki’s Fonsi Nieto won the second race, but five Ducatis followed him home in places 2-6.

All told, Ducati placed five bikes in the top ten in race one (places 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10) and six in the top ten in race two (places 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9).  Not a bad outing for the first race on a new bike.  Maybe good enough to have the rules tweaked against them, even.  We’ll have to see.  Anyway, good job, Ducati Corse!

Monday Music

Ugh.  Yep, sick, and so my brain ain’t firing on all cylinders today.  I’m still a little behind on my blog reading, so for all of you who haven’t heard from me yet, gimme another day or three to shake this shit off, dig out at work, and get back into the groove.

Today’s Monday Music is a song my wife and I love, even though she’s generally not into the metal I like.  This is a great example of a song that merges its parts well to become greater than the sum:  the verses are all about the mosh-rhythm, but the choruses are all soaring melody and harmony.  Very well done.  I think the video’s amusing, too.

Sevendust, “Enemy”

There’s also a video of Sevendust recording the song in the studio, which is always interesting to me.

Wintertime joy

I think I’m finally starting to get whatever damned virus my son and wife have.  Which means we made the right call leaving the in-laws’ when we did, because if I got too sick to drive, we were screwed – my wife will probably be days longer recovering.

Next week should be a blast.

I’m still a little buried by work stuff, but I can peek at sunshine at least.  Hopefully things will be a little more back to normal next week.  You know, as long as I can breathe, am not huddled on the couch with a blanket, a mug of soup, and the remote, etc. etc.