The Narrow Bridge

In this day and age, I still don't know why they still have one lane bridges. It probably helps to know that this particular one lane bridge is adjacent to an old mill of some sort that no longer functions (unless decay is a function), an old train station to which the tracks were pulled up years ago, and a post office that does not have any mail trucks. In this town, to get your mail, you are required to not just leave the house, but in most cases, leave your street.

In other words, this bridge is a symbol. A symbol of a time that some people, particularly conservative people, desperately cling to, assuming it was a better time, conveniently forgetting that in those "simpler" times, people around them were being crippled by Polio.

The problem with this bridge is not so much that it is narrow or that it is a symbol. It's that there seems to be no clear cut consensus as to what the proper protocol should be when there are cars stacked up on each side waiting their turn to get across. As only one car can fit at a time, width wise, two way traffic is not generally feasible without converting us all to SmartCars.

There are those who are certain that the proper protocol is one car north - one car south - one car north - one car south. Then there are those who think that the proper protocol is two to four cars north - two to four cars south, etc. And then there are those who, thinking like a traffic light, think it should be a whole long line of cars north - a whole long line of cars south.

I won't tell you which camp I'm in. I did try to Google whether there is some official right of way law regarding one-lane bridges, but didn't find any that were definitively applicable outside of New Zealand. Of course, I was Googling while walking the dog, and so was a little distracted. I may have missed something.

It happens.

The fact is, I can see merit in all of these approaches, but the first -- the one car alternating in each direction -- seems to be the least efficient of all to me. Yet I know people who are passionate about their beliefs that that is the one right way to go, that it is the only fair way.

And one of those bastards angrily honked at me tonight when I had the abject audacity to insinuate myself onto the bridge right behind another car that was going in the same direction as me. At least he didn't flip me off.

Well, maybe he did, but I didn't see it.

On Our Own Terms

It hasn't happened to me yet. God willing, it never will. But I imagine that few things make a parent feel like a failure quite like learning that one of your children smokes.

I know that both of my parents were incredibly dismayed when I took up the habit during college. Of course, we'll conveniently ignore the fact that both of my parents smoked more than a pack a day themselves. Parents see their culpability acutely enough, without having it pointed out to them.

So perhaps it was unfair of me to suggest to my mother that maybe I was born addicted to nicotine, seeing as she probably smoked while I was in utero.

She didn't appreciate that at all. Even if there may have been a kernel of truth in there.

You have to give them credit though. Once they got over the initial shock of my habit, they managed to walk the delicate line between understanding and wishing I would quit without becoming annoying or cloying.

Heck, for a while, my mom and I smoked the same brand and would regularly bum smokes off each other.

But they always made it clear that they wished I would quit.

I don't remember what started it, but at one point, my father decided that he was ready to quit. And since he wanted me to quit too, he came up with a plan: we would make a bet. We would quit together, and whichever of us smoked first would have to pay the other a decent chunk of money. I would have to pay him $150, and he would have to pay me $500. (I was a college student -- he was a businessman, hence the disparity.)

It was the easiest $500 I ever made, because he didn't last a week. He had a business trip, was alone in a hotel room, and caved. To his credit, he called to tell me almost immediately.

I confess, at the time, I had a bit of an antagonistic relationship with him, and I took this as one more sign that this bet - that I - wasn't all that important to him. I was wrong. I know that now, but at 19, I was riddled with anger and frustration and weltschmertz and was all too happy to have a convenient direction to point it in.

I used that self-righteous anger as justification to start smoking again. Especially when months went by and my dad didn't pay up, further proof that he wasn't serious about it.

Until Thanksgiving day, when he dropped a check in my lap - a well-timed check, as I was on the hook for a $200 pair of glasses.

Of course, I was smoking again by that point. Talk about feeling low.

He knew I was smoking, but he also knew that he caved first. He never heaped excess guilt on me, and in future conversations when I expressed regret, he always told me that he didn't feel like I did anything to feel guilty about, that I had won fair and square.

Still, there are times when I still, to this day, feel like I should give that money back.

Post Script: I stopped smoking about four years later when my wife told me she wouldn't raise kids in a house with a smoker. My father quit smoking around a year ago when his health got to a point where he could see smoking shortening his life in concrete ways.

So, in the end, the spirit of the bet has been upheld by both of us, on our own terms.

These Shoes Were *NOT* Made For Walking

I didn't report on it, but on Tuesday I went on my first bike ride since the accident. Three weeks to the day since I spilled. In the interim, I had taken my bike (for those of you who are into geeky stuff like this, a 1999 Cannondale F600) into my local shop for a tune-up/chain and rear gear cassette replacement.

The bike rode like almost new. It was heavenly. And it felt great being back out on the trail again. Ribs felt terrific. Hadn't lost too much stamina. It was a good ride. I came back muddy and sweaty and flippin' alive!

So, yesterday, I couldn't wait to go again.

About 4 miles into my 14 mile ride, I hit a bump and then heard a loud hissing noise. I had punctured the rear tire. Pretty profoundly from the sound of it.

"I am so glad I remembered to put a spare tube un my pack," I proudly thought as I dismounted and prepared to remove the rear wheel.

I assembled my tools. Tube - check. Tire irons - check. Pump- ....

Ahem. Pump- ....

No check. No pump. And no phone, either.

When I took the bike in for service, I had removed all extraneous stuff from it. And when I got it back, I had failed to put my little trail pump back on the holder.

And I was at best 4 miles from home.

A friend of mine, the friend who actually got me into riding, lives about a mile from where I was stranded. I decided to trudge to his house. Walking along the side of the road pushing a bike, wearing spandex bike pants -- I just don't know how a person can feel more conspicuous or stupid.

I arrived at John's house, but he wasn't home. I tried to find his pump. Cause if I had a pump, I could change the tube and ride home from there. But his pump was locked in the back of his little Honda Element, and I am pretty sure that we're not good enough friends that I could smash his car window without reprisal.

So I left the bike there and walked home. Four or so miles, I think. Along busy roads with no sidewalks. And I was supposed to be gone an hour, and it was already at that one hour point, and I had a child at home alone who didn't know where I was and I had no way of telling him what was going on.

So on I trudged.

If you are not a bicyclist, at this point, I need to tangent a bit. You see, there are many types of pedals you can get for a bicycle. There's your standard flat pedal you get on most bikes. On medium end bikes, you often get the pedals with the toe clips which allow you to pull the pedal up on the backstroke at the same time as pushing down on the fore stroke. But on some bikes, for varying reasons, they have these things called "clipless pedals".

Clipless pedals are actually round brackets, with detachable cleats that click into them. To use them, you need to buy special shoes that you then screw these cleats to. Then when you want to ride, you click your feet, shoes and all, into the pedals. You want to get off, you twist out of the pedal.

For engineering purposes, these shoes are usually quite rigid in the sole. And the heels are often lower than the ball/toe range. Walking in them feels quite strange, but that's generally okay, as they aren't designed for walking -- they are designed for riding.

But on that unscheduled four mile hike, that's what I had.

It was a pleasant night for a walk. And if I had better shoes on and wasn't worried about my kid, it would have been a nice change of pace. I arrived home an hour later than expected, and when I entered the house I said "I'm so sorry I am late," and I explained what had happened.

He looked up at me and asked "You weren't here?"

Can't You See The Real Me?

So there's a little something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I won't say that it is exactly the reason you haven't heard from me much lately*, and in fact may only be a very small contributing factor, but still it's there. And this is it. I am really starting to question my whole "anonymous" thing I have going on here.

I think that there are two reasons I have been anonymous in the first place -- 1. I wanted to be able to bitch about clients. If you know who I am, you can probably figure out who my clients are. Or if you are one of them, you can figure out when I am talking about you, even if I am using fake names and stuff. And I would hate to have a bitch session come back and cause harm to my company. 2. There are certain topics that I am pretty two-faced about. In my public life, I toe the party line, but when I ponder these things in my heart, I feel I am not being honest. Politics and religion kind of fall into these categories.

Well, as for the first, I don't really do that much of it anymore. I don't have any problem clients right now, and so don't feel the need to release that tension in this forum. And yeah, I suppose one of my past problem clients could look back through the archive and find all the stuff that I used to write about them, but I don't work for them anymore and they would have to be on one hell of a witch hunt to go to all that trouble.

As for the second... What am I afraid of?

Actually, I can tell you what I am afraid of, honestly. I am afraid of being labeled an apostate. Of being shunned by people that I currently refer to as friends who might be small minded enough to decide not to like me or not to associate with me based on my world view. So, out of fear of that disapproval, I maintain my anonymity.

Pretty chickenshit if you ask me.

People in this world are being killed because they hold world views that are not in the majority opinion (see "Iran"), and I'm worried about a little disapproval?

And let's talk about that supposed disapproval. Assuming for the moment that I think that my opinion is a valid way to look at things, which - oddly - I do, why should I hide what I have to say? And if a person is going to disapprove or shun or whatever the hell else me based on my politics or religious views, are they really people I want to be associated with? Honestly?

Ah. Good question, but... This is not an easily answered question for a guy like me. I am a pleaser. Although I won't blow unnecessary sunshine up your rectal orifice just to get on your good side, I am extremely skilled at finding ways around telling you that you annoy me, that your breath stinks, that you're an asshole. I am a diplomat at heart. I couch all my words with the utmost of caution. I avoid causing offense wherever possible.

And when I slip up and fail (which I do, because I am after all human) I chastise myself for it. And I rarely make that same mistake twice.

Here's the thing. At the end of the day, I'm a little sick of pretending to be someone that I am not. And at times, there is a part of me that wishes that more people who know me in real life knew the real me inside. I do find it interesting that there is an entire class of people I know who know me in real life, but not in certain contexts (i.e., in the confines of my small town) who I am completely unashamed to share this side of me with. For those people, I guess I feel like I am not pressured to keep up appearances. I can be liberal, humanistic, optimistically cynical, what have you without any fear of reprisal.

Of course, if I do this thing that I am contemplating, there will probably have to be a few changes around here. There are some posts in my archives in which I speak about specific people in unflattering terms -- just to vent. If I open the whole thing up to everyone, any post that could be read by someone that I care about that is steeped in hostility toward that person would probably have to be moved to one of my other hiding places. (Perhaps I would create two versions of Niagaran Pebbles -- the public side and the private side?)

You may have an opinion about this. I'd certainly be open to hearing what you have to say, but I suspect that I simply have to probe the depths of my own sense of self to see where I come out on this.



* Honestly, the real reason? I'm exhausted lately. Most nights these days, I'm getting home from work and not even taking the laptop out of the bag. Just don't want to see it. I get my emails on my phone, so if something happens I can respond to it. But my brain is simply ... mushy.

Really??!!

Your car is the size of a shoebox.

And yet, you somehow managed to take up TWO parking places?

Granted, there's not a lot of competition for the spots, but come on... Is this your idea of humor?

Open Letter To All Who Have Responded To My Recent Craig's List Ad

Don't you people know how to READ?!

I think I was pretty clear on a few things.

You must have at least 3 years of experience with this specific content management system. I don't care how many languages you program in, or how many database platforms you have worked with. This is a very specific tool I am working with and I don't have time to wait while you learn how to use the API. If you aren't listing 3 years of experience with this API, you need not apply.

You must be within reasonable proximity to Philadelphia. Okay, this might have been vague, but I am pretty sure that Florida is not within reasonable proximity. Nor is Russia. Nor is Bangalore. I have nothing against offshore developers. I love your prices per hour. But the time difference and lack of face to face accountability makes outsourcing a non-option for me. From experience. I need someone who can occasionally come to the table and meet with the client in person. You can't. Plain and simple.

You must be a programmer with proven hands on experience. I specifically asked that development houses or staffing agencies who are trying to sell their wares or services not contact me. I realize that you may be able to serve our needs, but again, I need someone who can come to the table with me. Also, it is my experience that the better developers contract directly, rather than go through an agency. By the time all the hands take their share, most agency developers are earning half of what a developer outside an agency makes. And a developer who earns more is more gruntled and works harder and better, if the laws of supply and demand are to be believed.

Word to the wise -- I will not hire the willfully ignorant. Likewise, I will not hire anyone who somehow imagines that the criteria I stated somehow do not apply to him/her.

Learn to frikkin' read!

Calling Hitchcock, or an Ornithologist

There is something about birds that just generally freak me out. I don't know exactly what it is, or why, but I think it's a combination of a few things: beaks, talons, and flight. I don't know what you see when you look at a bird, but the first thing I see is that beak. Sharp. Hard.

That sucker's a weapon. I don't care what anyone else says.

The next things I see are those talons. You see them particularly emphasized on pictures of birds of prey - eagles, falcons, hawks, etc. - grabbing at some wolf or bear or picking up a human baby or something.

Again, weapons. Yeah, yeah, I know -- they're hands for birds or something. Sorry. Not buying it.

The last thing I see is mobility in the air. The ability to position that beak and those talons at the soft parts of my body where I am most vulnerable. Particularly, my eyes. I always imagine the damn birds going after my eyes.

This morning I woke up and took the dog out in the yard for his constitutional. He made a beeline for the back corner of the yard. Generally for his first time outside of the day, I like to just let him wander freely-ish for a while, as he often has to kind of work himself up to his task. So I followed him to that back corner. In that corner, there are a few bushy trees and a shed. On top of the shed, a blue jay perched him/herself, glaring at us, blaring out some sort of warning noise. Up higher in the trees, a couple of other birds were flitting from branch to branch, replying to the one jay's calls.

They were clearly agitated about something. I can only assume that they were trying to build a nest there. Or maybe that already had a nest and eggs had just hatched or something.

Soon the dog finished what he was doing there. I took him back inside and went out to clean up the ... deposit. With shovel in hand, I went to the back corner, picked up the mess, and took it to the designated place for this stuff.

The birds yelled at me the whole time. They even followed me as I tossed out the mess, and one even strafed me as I walked back to the shed with the shovel.

I still had to feed the rabbits, which are hutched in that back part of the yard as well. This organized gang of intimidating birds yelled at me through that whole process and one flew so close to me to that I felt his/her wings brush my arm.

As I have said, birds freak me out. This is like something out of Hitchcock for me. When I have to feed the rabbits tomorrow, I'm going to be tempted to wear pads and a helmet, because the last thing I want is to wind up bleeding to death, alone in my back yard, because some blue jay slit my jugular while I was just trying to mind my own business. I mean, come on, do I look like a predator? Really?!

This may very well be irrational. I realize that. But I don't care. Those sons of bitches can fly and come at you from behind you when you aren't looking. They have those claws and beaks. They're directly descended from dinosaurs, and I saw Jurassic Park and I know that dinosaurs are NOT your friends.

So. Here's the crux of it.

How do I drive these birds out of my yard?

If I get the Best of Michael Bolton and play it on a loop out the back window of my house for four hours, will that be enough? Should I get a sniper BB rifle and start winging these guys from my TV room? I don't want to kill them. I just want them to leave.

I want them to look at each other and say "Hey baby? Yeah, you know what, I know you got a nest built there and all, but this Michael Bolton and BB barrage are really not working for me. Whaddya say we move next door to the crazy neighbor's yard instead? Hmm? I know she never leaves her house and won't feed any rabbits near us. Come on. No, leave the nest! Leave the eggs! We'll make more. You know we like making more eggs! (wink wink)"

So, any ornithologists out there who can help me out with that?

Bottom Feeding

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a concert at a local venue by a group called SMV. I won't assume that you know anything about SMV, as until about a week ago, I didn't. SMV is a fusion jazz supergroup comprised of three living legends of fusion jazz bass virtuosity -- Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, and Victor Wooten.

If you are a fan of the bass guitar at all, you owe it to yourself to look any of these names up on YouTube. What they can do with a bass, whether electric or standup, is nothing short of awe inspiring, no matter how you feel about jazz, in particular fusion jazz.

The trio finished up with one of the greatest bass driven fusion jazz tunes ever -- School Days, originally recorded by Clarke in 1976. It was incredible. Nothing short of amazing.

I think it may have reversed my vasectomy.

But here, see for yourself:



Now that I've told you about these guys, what they can do, how amazing they are, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the opening act. The Marco Benevento Trio. Piano, drums, electric bass. But not your standard bass/drums/piano jazz outfit. I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to label them. At times, they sounded as though they were channeling Genesis, at times like Radiohead, at times Ben Folds, and at times they just went off the deep end, doing to the piano what Coltrane used to do on a sax. It was pleasant, but not earth shattering.

I did buy Marco's album on iTunes today, but suspect it won't get strong positioning in my rotation. More of a curiosity piece, as in "Hey, I saw these guys at the Keswick."

It was really an odd choice for an opening act for SMV. I was particularly curious about how the bass player must have felt. Here he was, standing in a theater filled with lovers of the bass, lovers of amazing proficiency. And truly, he was no slouch on the bass, had a few nice solos and such, but it is unlikely that SMV would have asked him to fill in should there have been an illness or something, if'n ya knows what I mean.

I put myself in his shoes for a moment. And I felt bad for the guy. There was no way he was going to get any love from this audience. What sort of self-loathing or self-delusion must this guy have to be willing to put himself in that position? I can only wonder.

In fairness to all of you, I dug up this for you as well...

Tempting Fete

Several years ago, I bought a nifty new digital camera. A Canon SD300. Nice and small -- fits in my pocket. I loved the form factor and the pictures it took were absolutely outstanding as well.

So, I took it with me to a local annual fair -- called the June Fete -- and went on a few of the rides with my sons. After getting off one ride, I went to turn my camera on to take a picture and it wouldn't go on. It had been in my front pants pocket. On the last ride I had been on, there was a lap bar that went right across my lap -- and pinned my camera to my body with something like 140 newtons of force.

I guess all that force damaged the logic board. But I was fortunate that year. I sent it in for repair and they sent it back fixed under warranty, even though I was clearly a month outside of warranty.

Yay Canon.

The next year, I cautiously placed my camera in a side pouch so as to not wreck it again. And when I got off a ride, one that supn around and around, I discovered that my camera had been pinned between my hip bone and the side of the ride. The LCD panel was smashed. But I was able to order a new one and replace it myself.

Yay me.

This year (I didn't go last year because I was in Tennessee for my brother's wedding) I brought my camera to the June Fete again.

You'd figure by now I'd have learned a thing or two. Like leave the damn camera at home or something, right?

Well, I think that this year my recent rib injury saved my camera, as I only went on a couple of rides, and on these, I remembered to keep my camera in my hands the entire time. So, no damage.

Yay ribs.



Rib Update: It was almost exactly a week ago, and I am coming to the conclusion that I merely bruised the holy living shit out of my ribs, as I am definitely feeling much better. Still gets really stiff overnight and rising from bed is a bit of a challenge, but I am definitely in much better shape than I was last Wednesday when I couldn't get my shoes on. If it weren't for the fact that we have rain clouds a-looming and my son has a baseball game scheduled this afternoon, I'd probably venture out on my bike again today.

Stupid is as stupid does

Perhaps I have mentioned before, but lately my preferred means of exercise is mountain biking. Now, I'm not a trials rider or anything, and I don't get my rocks off riding over logs and on narrow boards with sheer drop offs on either side. I'm strictly a cross country single track junkie.

And I like to ride fast.

I like to keep my legs pumping for close to an hour straight, always trying to keep resistance on the chain as I barrel along. I like hills. Steep and long. But not those sheer cliff-faces some of my friends who are real mountain bikers ride up.

In reality, I am probably a roadie at heart -- someone who would be happiest on a road bike -- but all my friends are mountain bikers, and I own a mountain bike. And I can't afford a new bike. And my preferred trail passes through a good number of miles of off-road trail.

On my preferred ride -- around 12 miles round trip from my house -- there is this one hill. It's a real killer. I don't know from angles and I don't know how long it is from bottom to top, but on all my rides, this hill separates the contenders from the pretenders. My goal is always to get to the top with as few downshifts as possible. Legs pumping up and down. Breathe in, breathe out. Just keep going. You can do it!

Lately, I have been turning right around, hitting the bottom, and heading back up to the top again. That second time I allow myself more downshifts.

Heading down the hill, if you get yourself streamlined, you can get going pretty fast. My max speeds down that hill on my last few rides in miles per hour: 41.5, 38.1, 43.5, 41.1, 45.2, 44.5. Which is fast on a bike.

Last night, I hit my max top speed since I started keeping track of such things. 45.8 MPH.

Perhaps I failed to mention that this hill is on a road that does have some vehicular traffic. Not much, but some.

Perhaps I failed to mention that there is a blind curve at the bottom of this hill.

So imagine if you will flying down a hill, perched on a small little bike. You are trying to decide if you are going to head right back up or continue on home. You're feeling good. It was supposed to rain and it's actually quite sunny. You can't spare the attention to check out the speedo, but you know you're going damn fast. You get to the beginning of the blind curve and about fifty feet in front of you you see an oncoming car. If you stick with your current track, you will be joining up with that car. In the flick of an instant, you make your adjustment and aim a bit more to the right, but as it's a curve you now see that you're headed for the embankment, so you cut back to the left.

Too little.

Too late.

You run up the side of the embankment, and for a moment you think you might somehow pull out of this one.

And that's when the bike stops.

And you don't.

All 220 (+/-, I don't own a scale) pounds of you hits the dirt at something less than 45.8 miles per hour, but how much less you don't know. The brakes were on, but for how long? And did they do anything, really? You slam your chest full on against the ground, and continue to slide for about 15 feet.

Your chest feels crushed. Everything hurts. You know that you have scraped a lot of you off on the bushes and grass. You manage to get up and realize that you can walk, but that moving your torso hurts. A lot. Your bike lies in the bushes a few yards back. You pick it up to assess the damage, but there doesn't seem to be any.

Lucky you.

You're still close to 6 miles from home. And it's mostly uphill this way. And you are coming to the realization that you have either severely bruised ribs, or you have cracked ribs, and possibly broken ribs. Each bump you hit sends a shockwave of pain through your body, but soon you realize that if you keep your right arm isolated from the handlebars as you hit the bumps and stand up on the pedals, the pain is actually manageable.

And when you get home, finally, you see that despite the mishap, you had a pretty decent average speed for the distance. And although your bike is somewhat abhorrent to you at the moment, you are still aware of this weird little voice in the back of your head yelling at you "Don't take too long to heal. We LIKE riding."

Fine. But maybe next time, I won't feel the need to go so damn fast down that hill, eh?

Post script. I feel better today than I thought I would. Holding out hope that the ribs are only bruised and not cracked. Always the optimist. Still quite sore. But not unbearably so. It only hurts when I move.