40-ish

Okay, I wanted to find out the limits of my endurance. If I'm to survive a pair of 85 mile days in September (sponsor me!), I figured it was high time I did a really long ride.



The Indian Creek Trail runs 17.5 miles in Johnson County, then continues for something like two miles into Jackson county. I say something like because each city the trail runs through is responsible for its own set of markers.





Olathe does the best job: not only do they put stout, obvious markers every half mile, they also post signs clarifying which way the main trail continues when there are forks in the road. Sometimes it's obvious, but often an access lot branch is upwards of a half mile long and wraps around a stand of trees or something.



Get into Overland Park and it's modest mile markers, ones that are easily missed. And someone has spray painted arrows onto the pavement in some places, but mainly if you don't know which is the main trail you end up doing some backtracking when you realize you're in the parking lot of some apartment complex or at an entry point in a subdivision.



A rider who helped explain the detour (there's a detour around some trail construction that involves riding over the pedestrian bridge at I-435 and Roe) told me 'Wait until you get to Leawood. Gets real confusing.'



And it does. Thinking I was following the main trail I ended up on Mission Road by the Mission Farms shopping center looking for a trail continuation that wasn't there.



Anyway, if Overland Park and Leawood assume you'll learn the trail through trial and error, get to the Kansas City part of the trail and the mile markers have all lost their numbers. According to MapQuest, it's 2.01 miles from 103rd & State Line to 99th & Holmes where the trail ends. That's taking surface streets, but it seems about right.



There's a visitor's center at 99th & Holmes, a guy with a really friendly Airedale dog, maps and free cookies. He told me they're building an extension of the trail, maybe even thinking of hooking it to the Trolley Trail, which would be awesome. I'll have to take the girls there sometime, they have an Indian mannequin guarding a bank vault and stuff.



I stopped along the way back at the Sonic on Roe. My two water bottles were empty and my stomach thought my throat had been cut. I ordered a sonic burger and a limeade. The carhop looked at me like I was the most amusingly unaccountable customer she'd ever seen. She was very sweet about it, encouraging me to take a seat at one of the tables to eat. And I'm like, no really, if I sit down I won't be able to continue. And my car is something like fifteen miles away.



I talked to another cyclist, an older guy who looked like he was having a tough time. I originally stopped because I wondered if he needed medical help. He didn't. He told me about a round-about to avoid one of the few granny gear hills this trail offers. He said he flat out won't try the hills, but I thought it'd be cheating to avoid it since most of the Indian Creek trail is extremely gentle ups and downs. Then I guess I missed my turn or something and next thing I know I'm in a part of the trail I don't know and then when things looked familiar again it was, 'Oh, yeah, that hill is back there.'



With the detours and backtracking, I figure the total for today was around 40 miles. I can barely walk up stairs, my fingers are still partially numb from my body weight leaning on the handlebars.



Was I at the limits of my endurance? I don't know how much further I could have gone but I was sure grateful to be back at the car. I'd been gone for five hours, a fairly pitiful 8 mile pace. Of course, stopping to take pictures, stopping to eat, stopping to talk to the old guy...

Fireworks

I've never seen this happen before that I can recall: the breeze was coming towards the audience, and as the smoke accumulated from the shells going off, it got to where the smoke formed a cloud that obscured much of the finale. Not totally, you could still see the stuff, but some of it was like looking at Hubble shots of nebulae.

July 4, 2009, Gardner, Kansas from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Cool. Despite the lame attempt to put a country music soundtrack to the display.`





Earlier, we tried to go launch rockets at Celebration Park but it was way too windy. Ended up taking a kite for a walk around the lake. Just love when my honyocks get along with each other.

The Day Before

Edgerton did their city display on the 3rd, which I think is nice. Lots of people from Gardner come down for the Edgerton fireworks, then Edgerton comes to Gardner for its fireworks. And we all get a double dose of flash-flash-bang-bang.



I only caught the last four minutes or so on video. I spent the bulk of the time trying (in vain) to get good still shots of the fireworks. Fireworks are hard to shoot, I didn't have my tripod set up, and my camera really isn't the man for the job anyway.



But we had fun. You can hear Mo laughing in delight in the background of my video. And whistling, counting, singing...

Edgerton Fireworks 070309 from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Crazy Training Through the Hollers of Johnson County

Okay, I wanted to test myself and see how far I can ride at this point. There's a trail that runs from the Kansas River to south of 119th Street, over 15 miles of trail. If I can go from end to end on it, that's 1/3 of the daily ride on the MS Ride I'm training for.

And, by the way, really. SPONSOR ME! I know the economy sucks hard right now, and if you can't, you can't. If you're one of my many out of work friends, I'm not hectoring you. But surely not every single person I know except one is insolvent these days. I'm going to ride 170 miles in two days and sleep on the ground in between. I'm not asking you to go along, just make a donation to a very worthy cause to encourage my behavior.

I remember raising $200 to $300 for the Relay For Life a few years running and all I was going to do for that was walk around a track at night for an hour.

Anyway, I didn't get to see if I can really do the whole trail. My original idea was to start at the river and go south, then back north. Theory being, the river is likely the lowest point on the trail, topographically speaking. So wouldn't it be nice to finish with an overall downhill situation? But I was running out of daylight, so I started from 119th/Northgate.

Well, it turns out there are many peaks and valleys between Olathe and the Kaw. The trail does indeed have long flat stretches, skirting the edge of enormous meadows as it follows Mill Creek. But there are plenty of hills, ones that require braking on the down side due to hair-pin turns and blind corners, and going the other way can only be described as Ultimate Granny Gear.

I was honestly awestruck by how beautiful a lot of the scenery is. Who knew Kansas was so beautiful?

And anyone ever tells you Kansas is flat, ask them if they own a bicycle.

When I was getting ready to set out, I wondered about the sign saying the park I was leaving from closed at dusk and the gates would be chained shut. The curb was hoppable, but I wasn't sure how stringently they enforced this dusk closing. Or what they considered 'dusk.'

Another person parking there said, 'Don't worry, they don't lock up until after nine, maybe even ten.'

It was eight when I started off...

I made it from the 14.5 marker to the 6 mile. Then I realized that the sun was going down and it was getting dark faster than I anticipated. Plus, at mile marker 6 the path was going downhill pretty steeply and I didn't relish the thought of climbing back up it.

I should have turned around a couple miles sooner. I saw lots of deer, which is cool. I saw more deer than cyclists, runners, etc., actually. As it got darker, I saw bats, too, in the wooded parts of the trail. I felt, rather than saw, why I was seeing bats: tiny bugs, billions of them, come out right as the sun goes down. These bugs pelted me so fast I thought at first it had started to rain. Creepy feeling, sailing along the trail (hauling ass to try and get back to the car while there was still some light, struggling to see the trail) being peppered by insects.

It got harder and harder to see the trail in the wooded sections. Eventually, I heard voices coming from behind a house that backed to the trail. I could go forward on the trail but it was a black hole as it disappeared into the woods. And I remembered that part of the trail (between 119th and College) was the craziest combination of hills and turns.

I went to the voices and asked directions. The kid told me to take a right and then an immediate left on 114th (which he described as a 'really steep hill' to my delight) to Ridgeview, then right to 119th and right to my car.

As I huffed and puffed up 114th, which was the Return of the Son of Ultimate Granny Gear, a couple of boys I'd guess were about ten asked me if this was tiring. I grunted that it was, and one of them said, 'I feel sorry for you.'

You and me both, I told them. I've been feeling sorry for myself awhile now. They thought this was funny, but I had to go back to panting and hoping I wouldn't pass out.

It was good to get back into civilization. Breath the wholesome goodness of car exhaust and ride through air free of tiny bugs thanks to liberal doses of insecticide. And street lights, they don't put those on the trail.

The detour added about a mile, far as I can tell, to my ride, which I'm calling 18 miles. 17 if I'd stayed on the trail, I think my detour added roughly a mile of extra east-west travel.

The park was still unchained when I made it back to my car at 10:00. I guess maybe next week I can try and see if I can get to the river and back...

Fridge Letters

My Dad's fridge spells out the names of all the grandchildren. Who often rearrange these letters. I decided to rearrange them myself, and Em had an apoplectic fit.



So I made sure to come up with combos she'd like in a special way.



And some potential band names...

Salmon: The Other Red Meat

Well, not really, I know. But we got together for a belated Father's Day (travels prohibited it last week) and Dad bought a wild-caught Copper River Sockeye salmon filet to grill.



I've grilled a lot of salmon, eaten a lot of salmon in restaurants. Never seen salmon with such a bright red color. Grilled some veggies and had all sorts of other trimming son the table, wild/brown rice, a couple kinds of salad, etc.





But this salmon was, without a doubt, the best salmon I have ever eaten in my life. It tasted just like other salmon I've eaten but more so in every dimension. Makes me want to move to Alaska just to bait a hook. I had a slight mis-step getting it off the grill, the fish separated from the skin, but no harm. The fish was moist, light, flaky and too delicious.





Em had fun playing with her cousins. She bought Candyland at a thrift store yesterday and was thrilled to have apprentice players.



That and the elephant pool set up out back. Which had a timid spray until Mo came out and took one look, cranked the water pressure. All of a sudden the water was shooting clear up through the canopy over the pool.

Musicale (Getting Reacquainted With Stage Fright)

This was the usual dinner party at Melissa's except she had this idea that Foolkiller's first performance should be part of it.



Okay, she says the band will never be called Foolkiller. Seems really dead set against it. But if I pretend otherwise, maybe she'll come around. She hates all my other suggestions even more (such as Camel Toe, Split Wet Beaver, A Confederacy of Dunces, Three Rails of Blow & A Hooker, etc.) It seems I can't come up with an alternative so bad it makes Foolkiller look good enough by comparison.



Anyway, Rachel & Meghan were our merchandizing act, our opening band. They played Mozart, The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (320d). Well, not all of it, and they didn't have an orchestra, so humming and laughter tended to fill those roles.



Well, that and the occasional daughter wrapping herself around Mommy's leg.



I saw Rachel cringe every time she made a mistake, but dude, this is a piece neither had played in over twenty years. They were sight-reading it. I started to video them, and Rachel told me to knock it off. So I found this on YouTube: it was more or less like this but with Melissa's furnace where the orchestra should be:



So anyway, I realized listening to them that not only did they have balls to do this, but any slight mis-steps were perfectly understandable given they were reading it cold. Such things are unavoidable, even by the most accomplished musicians.

Suzuki Bow from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Whereas the band Melissa says can't possibly be called Foolkiller, we've been working for months on this handful of songs. And rehearsed as recently as yesterday. So all my self-critical interior voices were saying to me, Self, what's your excuse?



It's the interior voices that give me the nerves. Mostly, anyway. It crossed my mind that Meghan did go to Julliard, which is about as elite as it gets. But Melissa's done (if I recall) a Berklee summer program and graduated from Eastman, and I don't get nerves loading my gear into her basement to play with her.



Really my nerves weren't bad for Weenie with a Tragic Cramp and Vertigo. Well, there was an aborted run at Vertigo, where Em came running downstairs to get me (she was being paid a bit to keep an eye on her sister while I participated in the musicale, with the understanding that she come get me if I was needed. Needed as in a seizure, or really egregious behaviors. I almost dropped my guitar trying to get it off and get upstairs before finding out all it was, Mo had asked to go home. She was bored.



So anyway, those first two songs weren't total train wrecks. I've played better guitar solos, but we started and ended more or less together.



Then it came to Code Monkey, the number I sing. My knees went a bit wobbly and my mouth went dry. I realized in mid-phrase that I was running out of breath because I hadn't inhaled when I should. We started out fast (because I start us off and I was having a little anxiety attack) but by the first chorus we were slower. But at least we were together, so I guess that means we were listening to each other enough to speed up and slow down in unison.



There's a level of stage fright that actually improves my performances. This was about 16 levels above that, a fight or flight response that could have gotten someone killed, at least if pitchy singing were a gun. I was having fun, don't get me wrong, so much so I suggested we go ahead and inflict Modern Love on our audience. And as we started it, I noticed my middle, ring and pinky fingers on my right hand quivering. My thumb and index were holding the pick, which kept them steady, but the other three were having a full-blown nervous breakdown.



I know I need to practice a lot more, and we need, as a group, many more hours of rehearsal. The part I have trouble figuring out is why I want to go do it again, given that performing in front of even the smallest and friendliest audience possible made such a credible attempt at scaring me to death.

Camper

Picked up Em from Camp Chippewa this afternoon, where she spent the week. The artist formerly known as Frau Lobster went there when she was a little honyock.

I was surprised going in and seeing the place how beautiful it really is. Almost made me wish my parents had sent me to camp. But my parents never went to camp themselves, so I don't think it ever crossed their minds.



The cabins aren't air-conditioned, though, so that cured me of that false nostalgia. There's probably a word that actually means nostalgia for something you never experienced, and if there's not there certainly should be.

I asked Em what she did all week and she struggled with an answer. 'Same old same old,' and 'I don't know.'



Then she talked to her Mom on the phone and told her extremely detailed stories about what she'd done at camp. Then at the musicale at Melissa's, she was telling some of my friends, in detail, what she did. I guess there's a blockage when it comes to explaining camp to a Dad who's never been a camper...

May I Offer You Some Schadenfreude With That?

Okay, first off, I have to share this with you.

Goodnight Daddy from Chixulub on Vimeo.

My ex emailed it from her phone last night when circumstances prevented my routine bedtime call. It's important, because it is easily the high point of the dark period since Monday evening's bike ride and Steak & Shake scene...

My car was in the shop for a mighty $1291 in repairs, for a start. This was true, actually, Monday. It just wasn't until late Tuesday that my mechanic was finished with the two radiator fans, the timing belt, water pump, and I'm pretty sure a heart-lung-liver transplant on my 97 Accord.

This right after my home's AC blower fan melted down to the tune of $547. Right on the heels of the $125 snaking of three (or more) pairs of Mo's underpants from the sewer line. And all this while my income has been cut by 20% for months—not that this decreased my child support, mortgage, or any other obligations along the way...

How could it be any worse? Jehovah! Jehovah!

Right?

So I'm on I-35 this morning driving a car that hasn't even been out of the shop for a whole day and I see wisps of steam? Smoke?

I pull over, pop the hood and find it's steam (that's good, I think, at least the fucker's not on fire). Green stuff is leaking all over my brand new, very expensive radiator fans. I call my mechanic, who dispatches a character I'll call Igor simply because I didn't get his name. Igor showed up in an old Buick Century that was a mobile testament to mechanical prowess. Only a wizard could keep this thing running. His wasn't quite the same year, I don't think, but it was basically the car my 97 Accord replaced.

Igor tried to tighten the hose clamp on the leak (where the radiator met hose, but to no avail. The bottleneck that comes out of the radiator was crumbling. I didn't know they could do that. A radiator is a device filled with boiling-hot fluids all the time, I thought they were made out of, I don't know, METAL or something. Nope, this one's plastic. And toast. Another $179 plus tax and tow.

Did I for just a moment wish I'd let that salesman push me back to the finance office when I test drove that Nissan Cube? No, not really. I love the Nissan Cube, it is the perfect automobile, my dream car (if they offered it in yellow anyway), but no. I have no desire to be on that awful TV show where they show the fat chick and the dirtbags repossessing people's cars. And since I can afford, presently, a car payment of about zero, that's where the whole Nissan Cube affair would end.



I've had plenty of humiliations in life: divorce, bankruptcy, being 39 years old and having to ask Mommy for help with bone-crushing car repair bills, but I've never had a car repo'd. I haven't had a car payment since I was 22, when I paid the last payment on my one ill-advised car loan, and consequently I've not been vulnerable to this one particular shameful experience.

It's not that I've totally embraced the Dave Ramsey Lifestyle or anything. I have a couple of credit cards, full ones. I have no emergency fund saved and see little opportunity to put one together. To hear Dave tell it, if I had an envelope with $1000 in cash hidden in my freezer or coat closet, all this shit wouldn't break. I can't prove the theory wrong since I've never in my life had anything that resembled this 'emergency fund.'

As the skit goes, where does this 'saved money' come from???

But anyway, lest you think this is all about appliance and car repair, it gets better. Well, worse, but I'm counting on schadenfreude to make this worth your time. Sincerely, I hope you enjoy my misfortunes because I can't. It's okay, laugh a little at the Lobster, I'll laugh at you when you're circling the drain. Depending on who you are, I probably already have.

Igor dropped me at work and had my car towed back. If you're not impressed he had this old Century running, check it out: the air conditioning even worked. Impressive for a car built before the invention of air conditioning.

My Dad (dropped me at the garage to pick up the car) offered to take me and Mo to dinner. My night for the girls this week but Em is at camp.

So we go into Bob & Dee's, a restaurant Mo has eaten at and enjoys. And she's loving on me like I'm the reason we're in there. And I order her the three piece fried chicken dinner, which has every single one of her favorite foods, and she's got her lemonade.

And she starts shouting. She cups her hand over her mouth to create and echo and, well, it's more like a bark than a shout. But it's fucking loud.

So I roll out the tried and true admonishments to use her quiet voice, and it's not even making a dent. I try a time out and she screams, and I mean a coach's whistle can't compete with this. So we box up the food and leave, and as a consequence I took away her favorite soundtrack to being in the car (the Jolly Rogers, which she refers to and asks for as the 'Silly Rogers') and the computer. As in, when we get home, no computer because you made bad choices and ruined dinner.

I know I could have stayed and eaten and let Mo ruin everyone's dinner, but I'm not an asshole. Well, not that kind of asshole anyway.

We get home and I hit the garage door opener and nothing. Then I notice the house looks eerily dark.

Now, I mentioned above I've had a few unexpected expenses lately, right? And I've been on 32 hour weeks for a few months, so money would be tight anyway. I paid my electric bill on the way to work today because today was the cutoff day if I didn't. And because I only last night had enough money deposited to cover that check.

So I figured they had cut off my power before anyone checked the drop box and I was screwed. But I tried the after hours number trying to think of an angle that would get them to turn the power on at 7:00 p.m. My CPAP, my autistic daughter, the fact that you can't live by candlelight with a child who can't abide a lit candle (they're for blowing out) and who likes to eat candles.

Fortunately, everybody's power was out. Yay! It was a fallen tree and a messed up doo-hickey. Driving around, killing time (the car was much easier to share with Mo than an unlit, un-air-conditioned house), I even saw the linemen make the final vital repair: placement of a doo-hickey on a thingy up the pole. I saw a spark and the cherry-picker came down and I asked them if that meant the power was back on and they said yes.

I love those guys. And envy them their completely recession proof jobs.

All the while we were in the car, Mo asked for the Silly Rogers. And I repeated, over and over, 'No, you made bad choices and wouldn't find your quiet voice. Your bad choices ruined dinner, no Silly Rogers, no computer.' After an hour and a half, I think it almost sunk in. She tried to turn on the computer, first chance when we got home of course. I'd locked up the power chord, so nothing doing.

I'm aware, by the way, that some of the stuff I'm bitching about here is the result of my own bad choices...

I Rode With Elvis

Roj is one of my bestest friends in the whole world. He drew the buckaroo lobster in the masthead of this blog, the only tattoo I've ever gotten. But I haven't seen him in over ten years.

Not because he lives in Copenhagen or something. He lives in midtown. No, Roj is a bit of a hermit when he's not acting. If I really wanted to see him, I should have decided to shoot a movie. Then he'd show up.

Turns out, there's another soft spot. Cycling. JSC talked Roj into coming to Trek for the Monday night no-drop ride. No-drop is what I call the No Lardass Left Behind ride. And that's me, the one bringing up the rear huffing like he still smokes 3 packs a day (I quit 14 years ago).

Roj showed up, in character, with his Mongoose BMX bike, circa 1981. Restored including replacement decals. And a girlie backpack with a flashing light. And a skateboarding helmet.



I was reminded of one of my favorite books, Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan.

I bought the bike from a junk shop for twelve dollars. It was an old-fashioned cruiser with a high aristocratic seat and handlebars, the kind beautiful Italian girls with perfect posture ride in films set in the 1940s, pedaling past olive groves...

...I thought I had some local color, some neighborhood folk hero charm...

...Until the day I caught my reflection in a storefront window. Sitting high on a girl's bike, my bulky rain pants yanked up to my neck, my shiny yellow Gorton's fisherman slicker, my tiny child's helmet like a vulcanized yarmulke on top of my head. Those smiles and thumbs-up were really saying, "Look at that retarded boy riding his bike in the rain. And all by himself too! Good for him!"

Okay, so Roj's bike isn't a girls' bike, but it has one gear and tiny wheels. And most of the riders in this group wear the full uniform of padded bike shorts, a rash-guard like shirt, a camel-pack, etc. Many have special pedals that require a shoe with a cleat that hooks in to allow them to pull as well as push the pedal.

I was so relieved. For once, I wouldn't be the slowest member of the group. The one the leader asks, 'Feeling energetic?' of before deciding whether to take the way he wants to go or the easy/short way.

Except Roj smoked me. I was riding a $2000 mountain bike borrowed from my brother (thanks Bro!), a bike so easy to propel I felt like I was cheating. And I was getting my ass handed to me by the goofy guy riding a child's plaything.

Oh, the shame except I love Roj. I prize eccentricity and have collected my share of strange friends. And if he's not the weirdest one, he's tied for first with someone.

Like I say, Bill Clinton was President last time I saw Roj, I think. Well, I saw him with his sister at a sidewalk cafe last year, but I was on the clock and on the move and couldn't stop. It felt like an Elvis sighting.

So I rode 12 miles in the sweltering heat and humidity of Monday evening (gotta train if I'm going to finish the MS ride—SPONSOR ME!!) with Elvis. I didn't even want to be outside, it was so hot. But if I'm going to do 170 miles in two days, I gotta train when I can. Help me out, I'm trying to talk Roj into riding, too. And he'll be the one on a BMX bike, nobody will believe it...

Give It To Us Raw and Wrrrigling!

I don't eat out much, let alone in toney restaurants like Kabuki. But this is where a shit-ton of old friends were meeting and I really wanted to be in on it. Common denominator, all but one of us went to high school together.






I tried to think, when was the last time I ate some place this upscale on my own dime. And I think I was still married. I tend to think of Five Guys as an extravagance, or for that matter McDonald's or Long John Silver's.



Sushi, though, is one thing I've never learned to make at home. I had the Chirashi platter tonight, with some roe and Uni on the side. Delicious.






I have to say, though the restaurant is very upscale, I was surprised at the service. This is where Julie and Roger deflowered me of my sushi virginity, but when I showed up early, I was abruptly told they didn't open until 5:30. It was 5:25. When I came back and we went in, I made an inquiry about the beers available and instead of an answer, I was given a menu that didn't list the beers. I ended up having a Mai Tai instead, but anyway...



This was about friends, friends I hadn't seen in a long time (from two days to four months to 20+ years), and we had a blast. Though at one point one of my dinner mates asked what one of the things on her plate was and commented, 'I'd ask the waitress but she'd probably reprimand me.' So I wasn't the only one who thought she was a little short on the service side.



Sorry, but have you seen the news? This recession that's going, it's impacted everyone I know and me, big-time. If Kabuki's sales aren't off this year, I'll eat my shoe. You'd think they'd be falling over themselves, nine customers walk in. Granted, nine separate checks, but we're slow where I work, too, and I don't care how high-maintenance a customer is, I want their business.



I over-ordered. My cash should have been ample, but when the check came I only had about a 4% tip available. Good thing the waitress ignored my empty Mai Tai (which was gone before my food arrived). Since she never asked me if I wanted another drink (I did), I didn't go over my money. Normally, I'd feel really guilty leaving such a tiny tip, but in this case I'd say it was fair.



I'd still go back to Kabuki. Being deflowered by Julie and Roger there alone makes it special. And it is great food, if pricey.




And we had so much fun. I'd have paid every penny twice to hang out with this crew, and it wouldn't have mattered if they fed us at all.





And yes, Julie, I'm posting this under Grub. And I'm giving you credit, right here, for most of the pics. All the good ones were taken by Julie (plus all the ones with me in them); if they're a tad dark and noisy, she was using my camera with its child-like capabilities.