Winky—The Obese, Guatemalan Snowman

One thing and another, I haven't been on the bike like I should be. There was that whole distraction of coronary bypass surgery last summer, of course. And right when I started to get back in the groove, I went in for a vasectomy because the heart surgery had put me to the max out of pocket on my insurance (or I'd have gotten fixed years ago—I have two nearly-grown children and zero business running around with a loaded gun). Get a free vasectomy with any double bypass, you know.

I have been out on the bike more than this blog would indicate—I'm still processing Christmas Eve photos in the middle of January, and that's unlike me. But after I was clear on the vasectomy front I caught a nasty cold, one of those that just sucks your will to live, constant sneezing and drippy nose—during which I learned that the only reliable daytime remedy I've ever found, pseudoephedrine, is off menu for me. I was still going to cardiac rehab, and they monitor your heart rate and blood pressure throughout the workout there. She checked my blood pressure twice while I was on the stationary bike and said, 'I'm going to shut you down, I don't want you having a stroke on me.'

Coricidin HBP was what they suggested for my symptoms, and I tried it. I don't recall how well it worked for the nasal congestion, but I spent that day feeling psychotically on edge, so that's not going to work for me. So when my nose was running so bad I had to take the Sudafed stuff or else drip on my shirt at work, I knew it was likely pushing my blood pressure up to where I shouldn't be exerting. And the way things go, I seemed to get a second cold right on the tail of the first one, and with holiday events and my last scheduled visits to cardiac rehab, I found myself driving far more often than I would have otherwise.

Which is a long ways to go to tell you why I took this picture (see Julie, I'm trying to put text that's relevant to the photography). On my ride home tonight I spotted this snowman in front of the Guatemalan market/restaurant around the corner from my house. I've never seen an obese, Guatemalan snowman before, and I named him Winky because as far as I can tell he only has one eye. Or maybe he should be Guiño (that's a Google translation, forgive me if that's a bizarrely inappropriate name for a fat, one-eyed snowman).

Jello RIP

I didn't do a very good job taking my farewell photo of Jello. The rule with shallow depth of field portraiture is get the eyes in focus, and I got his shoulders pretty tack sharp, not so much the eyes.

I only had this cat for fifteen months or so, but he went to the vet enough for fifteen years. I knew when I got him that he'd been hit by a car and patched up—I just didn't know that the patch was so dodgy. He was really prone to intestinal blockages, and had to go in to be professionally dug out under anesthesia a few times. In between, we tried different special diets, laxatives, and so on.

It probably didn't help that he was such a mighty hunter. He caught several mice the first day he was here and we never saw sign of such rodents again. I'd say that was a job well done, but he decided to look farther afield. Moles weren't really a surprise, nor were the occasional field mice we found on the porch, but Jello was a master at killing squirrels.

I've never told someone this and had them say, "Yeah, cats do that all the time." The usual reaction, including from the vet was skepticism.

I worried with the first one that he'd gotten a sick squirrel, one that was somehow feeble and unable to outrun and out-climb a kitty. But by the fifth carcass it was pretty obvious that Jello had their number. He even caught one just a day or two before his last trip to the vet. He was too stopped up to eat the squirrel, but he dragged it up on the porch to show it off.

The vet had some possible options, and I went in still in denial, thinking that there'd be some miracle fix for him. But I knew. The two options outside euthanasia were either removing his colon, which the vet said had about a 20% chance of fixing the problem long-term (after three months or so of diarrhea), or re-breaking his hips and rearranging them. The latter was a longer recovery, more invasive, but the vet thought there was a 50/50 shot with that approach.

I guess another option was keep having the cat in to the vet for 'dig outs,' but he'd really been through the mill on that one already and it was starting to get expensive to boot. Corinna asked about doing the dig out at home, giving the cat enemas and whatnot, and the vet was pretty skeptical even if she has experience as an animal groomer. There's not an anesthetic we could take home that would be sufficient in his view.

I bawled uncontrollably after making the decision. Corinna actually handled the paperwork because I wasn't very together. She picked home burial rather than pay $45 for cremation, ever the frugal and thrifty woman. Said she'd deal with it when I said I didn't want to try and dig up the frozen earth to save less than fifty bucks. I even briefly toyed with the idea of a home cremation, just build a big fire in the base of my smoker and put his body on top when it was good and going—until I pictured taking the lifeless body of my buddy and watching it burn up. I kind of insisted on paying the $45 in the end, especially when I realized that she meant to 'deal with it' in the morning, meaning we'd have to keep a dead cat somewhere around the house for twelve hours or so without the dogs finding an interesting new chew toy.

His brother Zippy has looked for him some, I think. They were pretty attached, adopted as a set because they were buddies over at the Humane Society, sleeping together and wrestling a lot. I'll probably go get another cat from there in the fullness of time, so Zippy won't be perpetually outnumbered by dogs, and because I'm a cat person at heart. I really enjoy them. With a little luck it'll be a cat he wrestles with and pals around with like Jello was, though I don't have any illusions, I know cats will do what cats will do—probably part of why I am a cat person, they're instinctive anarchists like me.

The name Jello, for the record, was a tribute to the singer of the greatest punk band of all time, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys. I named him this in part because he was aggravatingly smart (the cat liked to turn on the water to get a drink when I got him, but he wasn't into turning it back off), independent and had an attitude. Altogether more flattering than his brother's name, Zippy, which came from a certain newspaper comic strip...

Christmas at Mom's

I have a bunch of Christmas photos to sort through still. These are just ones from my Mom's house, the Sunday before Christmas. Fried chicken dinner and presents.

We also had the girls Christmas Eve at my house, except we took them to our friend Bev's house for a joint celebration.

Then on Christmas Day, we visited a couple of friends' houses.

Boxing Day there was the pizza party at the home of some of my oldest and dearest friends.

Then Saturday after Christmas was the gathering around the Festivus pole at my Dad's house.

Which is part of why I'm still sorting through pictures. Holy cow. Is this what Jews experience every year for Hanukkah? A week long orgy of food, family and friends? If so, what's not to love about being Jewish?

Corinna was really proud of the wrap job she did on my nephew's present. It was a Dalmatian costume, as in 101 of them, and it was wrapped to look like a dog's head, with the handle of the bag serving as the nose, two gnawed dog bones for eyes, and a leash that formed a tongue hanging out.

He tried it on while I was in the bathroom, and the way it goes with three-year-olds, he had wriggled out of it and moved on to the next thing by the time I emerged to grab my camera.

Cranksgiving

I didn't get to ride Cranksgiving this year. I'd had a vasectomy five days before.

When the urologist who did the procedure on me told me to stay off the bike for a couple of weeks, I had to ask: are you telling me it'll be painful, or are you telling me it will be dangerous? These are different things, and while I don't subscribe to theories that pain is just fear leaving the body and other macho silliness, I really wanted to do Cranksgiving. Enough to maybe try it, I thought.

"You'd be amazed at how much blood a scrotum can hold," the doc said. He explained that other parts of the body, the tissue kind of holds stuff together so only so much blood can gather in one place before clotting takes hold. The scrotum, though, is totally loose.

"You end up with a big purple grapefruit by the time you get to the ER," he said. And with that, talked me out of it.

I took the money I was going to spend on the event and donated it to Gallmeyer in hopes of him winning heaviest load. It's a category he's won before, but before they had the inscribed trophy.

The cold weather really knocked down participation, but there were still dozens of riders who showed up in their winter gear. I think this is my favorite alleycat race for the very reason that you get urban cyclists and suburban roadie types alike. The latter group of rider pretty much never shows up for other alleycats.

Tandems, fatbikes, I even saw a Krampus, a Surly model of barely-fat bike I've been thinking might be a fun trail bike. Not as extreme as the Moonlander/Pugsly thing, but lots of cushion for tree roots and rocks, some extra stability on the loose stuff. I've never learned to really enjoy offroad biking, but in my mind I want to try. What better way than to pop $1500 to $2000 for a new bike?

That is the way a lot of bikes get sold, I know, but no I don't plan to throw that much money into seeing if I can learn to dig trails. Besides the fact that I still have a lot of heart surgery to pay for (having hit my maximum out of pocket for the year was in fact why the vasectomy now—I'd have done it years ago if it wasn't for the expense), I have a theory that spending more money on bikes tends to actually result in less bike riding. I don't fully understand the mechanism, but I have a dear friend, for instance, who rode a very nice racing style bike, but coveted the all carbon fiber Madone—and eventually talked herself into buying one. For whatever reason, instead of cycling more than ever, she dialed her attention more towards running. I've seen other instances similar to this, so even if I was solvent enough to run out and buy a Krampus, I might be inclined to hold back.

What I probably will spend some money on, though, is a better helmet. My friend Dr. Greg was riding with a POC model I'm keen on, except I don't think his was MIPS equipped. This is a technology being licensed to several helmet manufacturers that is supposed to reduce the risk of concussion from rotational forces on the brain in a crash. Given the hell my wife has gone through the past six months, with no certainty of full recovery or even an idea of how long recovery will take, a $220 helmet is looking more sensible than extravagant. Nothing's perfect, but we can't help but wonder what if she'd been rolling a MIPS when she cracked up.

She got off cheap, though, because Lazer is making children's sized helmets with MIPS that cost far, far less, and Corinna happens to fit those sizes. Me, I've found a Scott $120 model called the Lin, which might almost be big enough for me enormous melon, but I can't find anyone selling it; then there's the POC like Dr. Greg's that has MIPS that's $100 more expensive, comes in an Extra Large, and nobody local seems to be carrying it either. I have a local bike shop calling suppliers and making inquiries on these fronts—either way I want to try the sucker on before shelling out big bucks.

And I generally try to avoid buying bike stuff online anyway. I'm not mechanically gifted, so I need these shops with their mechanics on duty when I break down.

Back to Cranksgiving: the winner overall for speed was F.C. He credited his victory with the fact that last year's winner (and I think maybe the winner for two or three years running) was home with a baby.

Gallmeyer did indeed bring in the heaviest load by a wide margin, if memory serves over 80 pounds. That's right, folks, by bike, one trip.

I may have had my bike loaded that heavily once or twice, it's a very physical experience just trying to steer and brake, let alone climb hills.

I got to have fun hanging out at the finish soaking up free beer and shooting pictures.

The band was challenging to shoot, of course. One of their friends approached me to ask for photos to put on Facebook, and I commented that I'd do my best but they were in a cave. At which point the stage lights were turned on—to pretty much zero effect since they were all directly overhead.

It was an enjoyable band, varied in personnel with multiple guitarists and a couple of singers, playing old school R&B. Hard to go wrong with that material, pretty much everyone can enjoy it.

The Communists were even represented, and a lot of food and necessaries were raised for the church's food bank. All the more critically needed, we were told, for the fact that a lot of the benefits that have been getting people through the Great Recession has been getting shut off.

Oh, and since Julie asked me if it would kill me to have text that related to the photos from time to time, isn't this couple just too stinkin' cute? They rode the event on a tandem, if their snogging doesn't do it for you.

Drink Up!

While we are at Moon Marble, a cute young couple came in with a wedding gift someone had given them but that they needed marbles for.

It was a drinking game, and they just add crimson and blue marbles, liquor of your choice. I wanna come over and play!

Stocking Stuffer Shopping @ Moon Marble

They got a cool new tag on the back of the building at Moon Marble. I remember them saying one time that they'd talked to Scribe and some other local artists about having the building tagged up, but nothing had come of it. I don't know if they encouraged this particular tag or if it was spontaneously donated by an unsolicited contributor (which is how I tend to think of illegal tags provided they have a modicum of artistic flair and originality).

But of course I wasn't at Moon Marble to look at tags, or for that matter to watch Bruce yet again make sticks of glass into beautiful spheres.

That stuff is all cool and everything, but I've been hitting the Moon every year for a few years now for stocking stuffers. I know the jig is up, my kids don't believe in Santa anymore—or probably even in their Dad in a lot of circumstances. But I haven't let go of the stocking thing yet.

Em was hinting at stuff she'd like to find in her stocking, something she wouldn't have done when she was young enough to still believe. Unfortunately, the stuff that worked for her back then doesn't seem to hold much interest for her now, and she kept hinting at items that cost more than what I had in mind to spend in total, for everything, both kids included.

Mo isn't much easier, she mainly wanted a rubber chicken, which they were sold out of. And even the cool sunglasses thing, those suckers were ten bucks and I wasn't convinced she'd ever wear them.

I guess I'm slipping on the Santa front in general since Em came out of the closet as knowing it was all a sham. She kept it up until she was, I think, almost 16 years old—not out of actual belief but out of fear that once she admitted to being in on it, the goodies would stop.

I've heard some Christians say they think of Santa as 'training wheels for God,' a way to teach their children faith in the unseen/unprovable-yet-beneficial. I disagree: tell a kid to believe in something for years then step out from behind the screen and say, 'Just kidding, it was me!'—that is the training wheels for atheism.

Or it potentially could be—in my own case, the atheism was apparently almost a born characteristic. In my adult years, I've strayed, in part from seeing and experiencing things I can't otherwise account for, but I can remember hearing the Creation story from my Dad at, I think, the age of four and thinking, Dad, you're going to have to come up with something better than this God character throwing gases around the universe. I remember picturing a gasoline can wielded by man in a denim jacket, what a goofy origin story. I believed, wholeheartedly, in Santa at that age, but God was obviously a bunch of silly talk.

I do also remember at that age being absolutely sure that adults could read children's minds. To the point where I tried to redirect my thoughts lest the adults around me pick up on them. No doubt this was fueled by situations where I thought I was being sneaky and devious but was completely transparent and obvious. How did you know I was the one that broke that? No, I wasn't just about to hit my brother.

For some reason the mind reading had a distance limitation I just intuited, so I could daydream about a girl I had a crush on at school or listen to Dr. Demento covertly when my parents where in their room or the living room, but if they walked down the hall by my door I had to knock it off lest they pick up on my brain waves.