I Was Always Partial to Sub-Zero or Liu Kang

Growing up I always assumed a few things, and it is interesting how those assumptions play out the older I get. For instance, I assumed I’d never be someone that would ever communicate his annoyance or displeasure with sloppy or incorrect English to those offending parties. I just assumed I’d never be the cranky old man behind a desk penning missives to companies that spell things wrong, or make a grammatical error. Turns out I’m exactly that person. I do however think that it isn’t solely that I have the mind of a grumpy 50 year old man decrying the decay of the youthful society around him, though there is that. I think that the ease at which it takes to communicate my complaints via the internet means I’ve reached this road much earlier than anticipated.

Case in point, this Saturday (which will get its very own extended blog have no worries) I was in a car that happened to pass by Kids Kastle Learning Center in Beaverton and I quickly remarked that it didn’t seem quite correct to misspell the Kastle since this is after all a learning center. This stuck with me until today when I actually sent them the following e-mail which in order to do I actually had to fill out an application for admittance to their prestigious learning center. To be fair the learning center is really just a pre-school, but still school is where we learn things like how to spell castle rather than kastle.

“I do somewhat apologize for wasting your time since I have no kid. I'm writing because it seems strikingly odd that a learning center would actually misspell a word in the title of your business. Kastle, as you know, is not correct and while it does create a visional alteration, Kids Castle, is still a phonetic alteration which is actually more important since alterations are base on sounds of words, but not how the they look. My point is by misspelling castle you pretty much muddle up the mission statement of a learning center and lose a lot of credibility just for the sake of being cutesy.”

Certainly not my best efforts, but I am all excited every time I see I’ve received an e-mail. Sadly they haven’t gotten back to me. There is also the distinct possibility that this place is actually focuses solely playing of and surrounding lore of Mortal Kombat. If that’s the case I withdraw all concerns and applaud their efforts to teach the youth of our nation how to execute Fatalities.

"Our showers looked like a hate crime"

Le Tour

For three weeks in July I'm in pure sporting heaven. I love everything about the Tour de France. It is, without a doubt, my favorite sporting event followed closely by the World Cup and then the NBA playoffs. This year's Tour is shaping up to be fairly interesting and I thought I'd take the time to try and explain why you should pay attention. I plan on being up at 5:30 a.m. or early for the live feeds this year. Hello sleep deprivation!

Story One: Team Astana

Astana features three guys that can win the Tour. If Alberto Contador, Lance Armstrong, or Levi Liepiemer, don't outright win the Tour Astana will be sorely disappointed, and the whole cycling world would be fairly shocked. Contador is who the team will be riding in support of as he's the team leader. To briefly explain, while each team is comprised of 9 members realistically only one memeber of that team can win the whole thing. The other 8 members sole job is to protect their leader, shield him from the wind, run to and from the team car for water and food, do anything possible to give his leader a shot at the podium at the end of the whole thing. The thing with Astana is they have three guys that could conceivably win, four if you consider Kloden a threat, which I do. While right now the team is saying Contador is their leader and everyone, including a certain 7-time champion, says they are riding in support of Contador that can all quickly change. What if Contador has a bad time trial, or falters in the mountains? What if Lance goes super human and is minutes ahead of Contador in the second week? Are we really to expect them to keep towing this line that Contador is the leader if Lance or Levi is riding better? Contador is young, and he's been put off by Lance coming back to Astana. Tensions right now seem low, a week into the race that could all change. This is the story to watch in the Tour and it should be endlessly fascinating. Oh, and please do not kid yourself into thinking Lance cannot win an 8th tour at the age of 37. The dude came out of a three year retirement to place 12th the Giro last month. Some riders ride all their lives and don't finish in the top 20. He can still ride.

Story Two: The Field

Can any other team really compete with Astana? Yes, and here's who to watch amongst the rest of the field. Cadel Evans of Silence-Lotto. He's shown this year he isn't the passive rider he has been in the past is ready to match any and all attacks in the mountains. Factor in his usual excellent time trailing abilities and he's a threat for the podium. The Brothers Schleck from Saxo-Bank both young and can climb, but I'd say they are more likely to finish in the top 10 not the top 3. Last year's winner Carlos Sastre from Cervelo Test Team. I hope he finishes in the top 3 simply because he rides the bike I covet the most, and the guy is a pure climber who always loses time in the time trials, but makes up for it in the mountains. Finally there is the big Russian Denis Menchov who's a personal favorite riding on Robobank. He certainly looked good in winning he Giro last month. finally there is the other American hope Christian Vandevelde who rides for Garmin-Slipstream. He suprised many last year as a legit podium threat but that was in a vacuum since there was no Astana last year which meant a lot of teams had members finishing higher than can be expected. Still, I'm going to say atop the podium it will be an Astana member.

Story Three: The Sprinters

Who wins more stages Mark Cavendish or Oscar Freire? Really we should all be pulling for Cavendish for a variety of reasons. First, his team is sponsered by Oregon's own Columbia Sportswear, they better they do the better our local economy does. I'm not sure if that's totally true, but it sounds good. Plus Cavendish is young, 24, and brash. The old guard hates him for being a cocky little prick, but the man gets results. He won a record 4 stages last year before dropping out to train for what was ultimately a very disappointing Olympics for him. Friere, Hoshvod, and the newly reinstated Boonen (the Belgian superstar whose Tour participation was very much up in the air because the kid likes the nose candy) should all compete for what could be the most tightly contested points race in some time.

Story Four: The Route

The second to last day is not an individual time trial like most years where for the leader to maintain his yellow jersey simply has to post a decent not great time trial. No, the second to last day is a brutal day of climbing featuring a beyond category climb Mont Ventoux (21.2 km (13 miles) at a total elevation of 1912 m (6273 feet)). What this means is the Tour could still be very much up in the air on the second to last day of racing. In fact nothing could be settled going into the final week as uncharacteristically has three (1, 2, 3) mountain stages, all of which may shatter the peleton leaving the fittest five or six guys to duke it out alone over the climbs without the help of their teammates. The route may make for the most exciting Tour in years.

Since I know at this point eyes have very much glazed over I'll just stop as those are the big four stories I could think of. As the Tour progresses I'll post an update here and there about things to pay attention to.

Predictions:

Yellow Jersey: Alberto Contador
2nd: Cadel Evans
3rd: Denis Menchov
Lance: 10th

Polka Dots: Sastre

Green: Cavendish

Over/under of how many riders will be booted for failing a test: 4 and I'll take the under.

If you want to follow the action daily here's your best web resource.

Hairy Blowy

At 10:30 I swung my leg over my bike and began what I had penciled in as a 6 hour journey to Gearhart from my home in NE Portland for Paul and Mel’s wedding. I reached the ocean at 4:24 p.m. wind whipped and exhausted. Factoring out the half hour of stoppage time this put my actual time at roughly five and a half hours for a pace of about 16 miles an hour. But to limit the ride to just those few sentences would do no justice to the journey.

Musical selections for the ride to the beach:

Metallica – Master of Puppets
Iron Maiden – Somewhere in Time
NIN – The Fragile
The Offspring – Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace
Orphaned Land – Marbool.

Honestly I mishandled the music selection for the ride there, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

I reached North Plains about an hour and half later. I knew the ride was going to be a little rougher than anticipated when I, for that hour and half, battled a hard head wind. I stopped for a moment to eat a Clifbar and communicate with Ash that of all the things I forgot to pack with me was my wallet. This was troubling for two reasons. Had I wanted to buy anything along the way either food or water that option was now gone, and also should I get hit I had no ID on me. The latter being a little more troubling. It was when I was talking to Ash my gut rumbled and I became very worried that a poop was imminent. I weighed my options for a bit and the pressed onward to 26W.

Having ridden a bike in traffic for close to 9 years at this point I’m pretty used to it. I don’t get fazed easily by cars passing me. I will however admit that 26W when it is still four lanes wide is a little intimidating. I’m unsure why, as I was riding on 26 at this four lane wide point I felt the need to compose a text message to the effect that not getting hit is my number one goal. While doing so I felt it would have been very fitting that I would get hit at that moment. Clearly, I didn’t.

Just a comment about mile markers. They really don’t need to be there every mile. It is a little maddening to tick off the mile one by one on a ride that is 90 miles long.

Finally after being battered by the wind for two hours I approached the first climb on 26. It was beyond fun. There are a few things to note about 26W that from a car perspective you just don’t get. The 1000 foot elevation mark is the designated spot for throwing away Christmas trees.

The tunnel that is at mile markers 41 is terrifying while on a bike. My exact thought was, here’s where I die, in this fucking tunnel.

Shortly after the tunnel I passed a roll of toilet paper. I took two more pedal strokes before slamming on the brakes, dismounted from the bike, and picked up the TP. What went through my head was “this toilet paper is a like a gift from the heavens!” The rumbling in my gut never fully abated all trip. Any time I took in water I got a cramp, and any time I ate I felt like I was about to shit myself. As far as comfort level on the trip to the coast I’d say it was low.

For about an hour before finally hitting what would be my lunch stop of the day I grew despondent. I came to the conclusion that the ride to the beach along this route was a poor decision. I began to have serious doubts if I’d make it or not. I also hadn’t really studied the trip as much as I should have and was unsure how much more climbing was left. As far as I was concerned I was not even half way done with this ride. My water was running low which was another concern. In short, mentally I was done with this ride.

I finally hit this amazing fresh water drinking pull out off the side of the road and solved my water problems. Then a mile later was a rest area where I decided to take a 20 minute lunch break. I consumed one very soggy sandwich and stretched out my muscles. Things began to partially look up until I saw the sign that told me that Seaside was still 35 miles away. What? 35 miles? How is that even fair? What was even worse is a monument at the rest area let me know that the frightening tunnel that I thought would be the end of me was only 12 miles from where I was. I hung my head and imagined another 2.5 hours on the bike and begrudgingly commenced my journey.

Shortly after starting again Nine Inch Nails’ the Fragile finally ended, and as if by magic my mood shifted. I passed a sign that said Seaside was only 25 miles (I’m still confused by how the two signs could be off by 10 miles) and things began to look up. The lesson I learned here is never, and I mean never, listen to Nine Inch Nails if one wants to foster a feeling of good spirits.

I finished my climbing and began what should have been an easy 14 miles to Gearhart except the wind, that bastard, was whipping hard on the coast.

After I finally reached Gearhart I sent some communications to various people and proceeded, as planned, to jump in the ocean. I instantly regretted doing so. With no towel to dry off with, I was actually cold for the 3 hours it would take for everyone else to arrive and I could take what was a life restoring shower.

How does one kill 3 hours in Gearhart while cold, with no money, and no where to go? Well what I did was find a bench located in the sun and slightly shielded from the wind that was located in downtown and shivered. I did learn a lot while on that bench. I learned that Lauren would be attending the University of Arizona, she would be studying psychology, in a week she would be going to Maine, and that she has been bored for a the full month she’s been in town. I learned that Matt Miller was having a party that night, and that the youth of Gearhart bonfire. You’ll note that here bonfire is a verb. The lady responsible for watering the plants in the potters drives a green Tacoma. That no one bothers to lock up their bikes when they go into a place of business. The grocery store closes at 7:00 p.m. and the employees then leave at like 7:07. Not so much town related, but I learned that I have no patience for shit fantasy written by Dave Eddings.

The next day was the wedding and reception. I’d be not an asshole if I didn’t relay some of the events from the reception.

First the food was fantastic, truly commendable food. After eating came the fun and dancing portion of the night. I was having a great time dancing up until a point and then my dancing fun was ruined. Generally speaking weddings make people a little odd. By odd I mean desperate. There they see an image of true happiness and if that is missing in their life they want it, and they want it right then. Truthfully this put me in a funk, which also sort of dictated how I acted the rest of the night. Now while I was in a funk that I was trying to dance my way out of another woman at the reception was manifesting her desperation in the somewhat predictable I-must-hook-up-with someone-here variety. This meant that as the night progressed I was simply unable to even step foot on the dance floor without her approaching me and trying to dance with me. Let’s be clear I dance with no one, I am a man alone on the floor. She would not leave me alone. So what does one do? Well I went with two tact’s. One was to turn my back on her and dance away. This was surprisingly ineffective as she just followed me where I went. Tact two was, whereas, I generally tried and failed to control my farts this evening, when around her I let fly. Yes, totally true I attempted to gas her away from me. That also didn’t work. Also, seeing that logic typed in text makes me feel odd.

At one point she approached me from the side. I didn’t make eye contact, but I dropped my head, audibly said “oh gosh,” and then walked away to get a beer I didn’t want. I took a sip of the beer, put it down on a table, and then walked outside. There was nothing more I could do to tell this woman I wasn’t interested. She eventually moved on to another guy after I did some quick spin moves at the end of the night.

About my gas. I would like to humbly apologize to all at the reception. I was, as I say, blowing it out that night. I’m unsure why this was, but I had it bad from about 2 in the afternoon until 1 a.m. or so. All attempts to hold it in where foiled by the vigorous rump shaking I was doing on the dance floor. I did attempt to leave the dance floor, but often didn’t make it. I’m not saying every fart was my doing, but I’ll say that 90% of them were me. Again, a thousand apologies.

As the night wound down Ash demonstrated his true Jew powers by boxing up an entire meat and cheese spread into one take home box.
Perhaps the less the said about the post reception bonfire the better. I’m going to just posit that some of us made some choices they wouldn’t have normally made had they not been drinking since 6 in the afternoon. Not, me, I was in bed, terrified of my drunken roommates at 2:30.

By 10:40 a.m. the next day I was back on my bike and pedaling.

Musical selections for the ride home:

Avantasia – The Scarecrow
Foreigner – 4
Hiberia – The Skull Collectors
Running Wild – Dead Hand Inn
Slough Feg – Ape Uprising
Sirenia – 13th floor

Not a downbeat album in the bunch. I learned from the NIN mistake two days pervious.

The ride home was mostly unexceptional. I did find a super sweet Strom Trooper action figure which is now proudly displayed in amongst my bobble heads as a memento from trip. The weather was perfect. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. I have some really terrific tan lines from my time spent in the sun. I made it home in a little under 5 hours, but I’ll just put it at 5 hours even. It was about an 18 mile an hour pace home, such are the joys of a tailwind and my desire to get back to home.

In all the weekend was everything I wanted it to be. I finally was able to check off riding to and from the beach from my list of life goals. Plus I made great time and honestly my legs never once felt like they were overmatched for the ride. Now how my taint region felt for most of the ride is another story.

Happy Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. I did not get my own father a single thing, not even a card. I had every intention to get him a card, but then forgot about it when I was doing my shopping. My dad was not offended in the slightest by this because he told me he didn't want anything, and he knows my stance on cards. The fact he didn't expect anything actually speaks as testament to my dad. He knows that currently I'm living paycheck to paycheck. He knows I'm trying to save money so really by him excusing me from spending money on him, when really he does deserve it, exemplifies many traits of my father that I look up to.

In short, my dad is, has been, and always will be a fantastic father. I really couldn't ask for anything more from him, if anything, he's done too much for me. When I had to move and had no money for first and last month's rent plus deposit he provided it. When my car broke down (semi his fault, okay not even close) he helped me out then too. Last year when my bike frame cracked and I called him up in near tears he took me around the next day frame hunting and then graciously paid for the frame. These examples don't just mean to highlight the fact that he's helped me out financially throughout the years, but that whenever asked he's there to help me. He's given me enduring support growing up; he's been the very definition of a good, involved father; like a real life Danny Tanner.

Some scenes that I think about when I think of my dad:

Him and I grocery shopping on Saturday mornings at what I believe was WinCo that had this insane soda dispensing wall. He always let me choose the sodas for the week. He also during one of these trips corrected me and told me that I'm never to say "son of a bitch," but rather, "son of a gun" will do just as well. I still never to this day say "son of a bitch" it is always "son of a gun."

When I would awake in the middle of the night with intense abominable cramping and then hellacious diarrhea he would sit up with me in his underwear on the edge of the tub for hours trying console me. There really isn't much you can do when your kid is shitting for 3 hours, but he was there trying to make things better.

He came to every soccer game he could make it to. He never once yelled at me, the coach, or anyone. He stood there silently and watched the action. The one time he talked to me while a game was in progress was when I had been subbed out and he saw me sitting on the sideline. He took me aside and said that sitting was no way to make it look like I wanted back in the game and that I should stand and follow the coach around. I did so for very single game from there on, I played a lot more because of it.

I puked up Tang in the back of his van. He was mad for like three seconds.

He never once talked down to me or altered his word choice. If I didn't understand I had to ask what a word meant. This probably helped me develop the 6th grade vocabulary I currently enjoy, much better than the 2nd grade one I would have had otherwise.


I could go on, but does anyone else really want to read dumb vignettes from my childhood? Do I want to make this 10,000 words when a new epside of Harpers Island is waiting to be watched? I'll just finish this off by saying that while it hasn't always been fun and games, he is a hardass after all and I was a royal pain in the ass for a long, long time, I couldn't ask for more or better from him. If I can be like 80% of the father he was to me, my kid will be the luckiest kid in the world because I truly feel like the luckiest kid in the world having my father be my father.

Shoot, now I better do one of these more my mom otherwise she's going to be mad at me. Hey, Mother's Day is only like 11 months from now.

View From A Bike 5

A lot hills in and around Portland are great fun to descend and feel much like a rollercoaster complete with that stomach dropping out of your body sensation. I have learned however that should I get that stomach dropping from my body feeling it means I’ve misjudged a turn and some emergency braking is needed less I want to wind up off the road and in pain.

When Sneaky Means Not Sneaky At All

Some you may know I have a little napping/reading room that I take my lunch in daily. It has a couch and is really quite comfy. I can spend half my lunch reading and the other half sleeping. The downside is that all that separates my little sanctuary from the corridor where people come and go from the elevator lobby and into their office area is a door, and the door does almost nothing to block out sounds. I can hear everything, doors opening, doors closing, people drinking from the fountain, people talking on cell phones, anything that happens in that hallway as clear as if I were standing in it. This generally relates to a woman who has private conversations on her cell directly across from the door. This makes sense because she’s actually as far away from her office as possible and out of sight from her employers. I loathe this woman. She has a super irritating laugh, and her conversations are generally banal. I however did really understand how stupid she was until yesterday.

I was sleeping, very much passed out and in a happy spot when her voice awakened me. I tried to ignore her and fall back asleep but her conversation was too loud, and in this cases almost interesting enough that I laid on my back and passed judgment on her character. Now to be totally clear I feel for this woman because it became totally apparent she was talking to her friend about the demise of her marriage. Something that made a pervious conversation I had overheard from her make a ton of sense. In short, a few weeks ago I heard her talking to man. The man was talking loud enough I could almost hear his end of the conversation as well. I could however pick up the tone which is to say it was short and angry. Anyway, back to the conversation from yesterday. I’ll just excerpt out the two parts that really made me just shake my head.

“He’s so, sneaky, so, so, so sneaky, like get this, he has all these numbers in his phone that I don’t recognize and have no name attached to them. And the text messages from him say things like ‘meet me for drinks tonight?’ See he’s so sneak, so sneaky.”

“Oh another sneaky thing he did, see he’s sneaky, is he opened another bank account, a separate from the joint one, so I can’t see his spending. He’s so sneaky, so sneaky; do you see what I’m saying?”

At one point during this I said out loud “are you fucking kidding me, you’re a fucking idiot.” Okay harsh words I know, but really does she not know what the word sneaky means? Because based on those two snippets of conversation I’d say she thinks sneaky means something like blatantly obvious. Sneaky would be like having a whole secondary phone that was only kept at work or on the person and never, ever, ever left out for someone to grab and check messages. Sneaky would be opening a bank account and having all the mail directed work or another, non-home location, and in no way having it found out by your spouse who you’re treating so poorly it’s pretty clear you want a divorce. At least she correctly concluded that the asshole is cheating on her.

Another fun thing happened was it was midway through this conversation that I needed to pee. Thing was I didn’t want to pop out of the room and have her know I had been in there the whole time. On the other hand I really didn’t care. Still I held it and happily her friend seemed to have cut her off, probably because she was sick of being made dumber from having to participate in the conversation.

Now do I feel bad I overheard all this? Not really, there really isn’t much I could have done. I didn’t actively seek that out it just happened. I just wish she’d, I dunno go down a floor. I don’t need to hear about her failing marriage while I’m trying to sleep.

Fru-it

With my third bachelor party well enough behind me that I’m no longer feeling its effects I figured a rough sketch might be fun. This one was probably the most successful in terms of a lack of mental anguish as it did not feature a failed one night stand, or night terrors so complete I was felt compelled to get in my car and drive it into a river. Both totally true happenings from the previous two bachelor parties.

Places I peed, a list:

Off the top of the roof which took some advance climbing.

In a sand bunker of a golf course.

Into a water bottle in the closet where I was sleeping because I was concerned that using the toilet and the subsequent flushing would wake up Paul. Never mind that Paul at this juncture was absolutely passed out to the world and had a B-52 taken off in that room he still probably would not have been prodded awake. I only sort of remember doing this as I was both pretty much asleep and still drunk. Regardless I spilled not a drop.

While I’m discussing bodily functions Theo would like me to point out that “Bend/Sunriver are the Vortices for Bowel Movements.” He says this because while there bad things happened to all our bowels. For instance Theo counted himself at 6 poops in 2.5 days which is a tad excessive. Les arrived and spent the next 3 hours out of 6 in the bathroom. The amount of pooping was so much that bets were made. On the other hand I, who has very regular bowels, didn’t poop once in the three days I was there and had to wait until Monday before even farting. That’s right I didn’t fart from Friday until Monday. Monday was rough. It is also quite evident that 11 dudes in a house drinking will lead to the whole place smelling like farts. In Dougie and Theo’s room which comprised of two beds and maybe five feet of floor space between the two smelled so bad on Saturday morning from farts that I feared for both of their lives as I felt like there was lack of oxygen for breathing. I weighed myself on Monday morning and was up 3.7 pounds. I feel like most of that was poop that was just incubating in my colon. Bad things happen in Sunriver.

I ate the best pancakes of my life.

I ate some of the worst pancakes of my life.

I will pretty much refuse to eat with a group of people of more than 5 at sushi place ever again. I feel like paying 41 dollars and getting one roll and two pieces of tuna isn’t worth my money. Most of what I ordered errantly eaten. This is partly my fault, but still, never again.

The two coolest things I saw where Chris Horner on a training ride. Who’s he? Oh just a pro cyclist for Astana, the same team as Tour de France favorite Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong. The other was Point Break which I had somehow never seen before.

I pulled the trigger twice. Once on Saturday morning as the car ride into Bend, mixed with the sludgiest coffee I’ve ever made, and the previous night’s debauchery made me so nauseous I had but one option. The other time being Saturday evening when I ate too much and again felt nauseous. I believe Theo was the only other one to pull the trigger. In any event I win this category.

I played maybe the best three basketball games of my life. I expect to never do that again.

I did ride a bike, twice. The second time involved me riding on the fairway of the golf course that was next to our house. It was either that our try and figure out how to get unlost from where we were. I think we made the right choice.

To briefly describe the house. Think of the place that Patrick Bateman would have constructed as a vacation home to murder hookers. The place was totally built when coke was all the craze. The place was white with accents of white and there were giant mirrors where a plain wall would have worked just fine.

Les once again made some of the best desserts I’ve had. His frosting was consumed by me via spoon on a number of occasions.

I think that sums up my experience, it was fun, if not a little boring for stretches. And hey, at least I didn’t pee myself like a certain member of the party.