She said, “Does anyone have a LIGHTER?” and waved a cigarette around.

The girl next to her said, “I’ve got one.”

“No, I want a GUY with one!”

No guys had a lighter. So, she used the one the girl next to her had.

I just got home and saw a lighter laying on my kitchen counter next to my protein bars and it reminded me. Next time I see her I’ll tell her I have one at home.

Listening to two senators claiming that each other voted for pork barrel projects is one of the most ridiculous things I can imagine.

Might as well be claiming the guy wears suits.

The speaker crackled to life.

All that space, out here floating and burning fuel and taking on more fuel and burning that too, and it’s still possible to press a button and say a name and make a speaker electronically hump the air in the pattern of a voice.

“Are you there?” her voice.

“Oh yeah hey, what’s up?” he sent back.

A conversation was had. He ended it thus: “Well, I’ve got to get moving here but I’ll catch up with you this week and we can hang out.”

“Ok,” she crackled.

Days passed. Fuel burned. Stars were reflected in eyes and on porthole windows.

It was nice to hear from her. Must be the product of doing what you’re supposed to do, he thought. Get out there and really give the universe hell, and it can only respond with good things for you. All of the exertion and studious moderation would pay off in the end after all.

Days passed. Fuel burned, more fuel all the time. He looked ahead at the fuel he’d be burning in six months and was amazed but hopeful. He looked back at the fuel he was burning only six months before and felt smug and satisfied. Did anyone ever really have to train up to get to 5 thousand pounds of fuel? Ha! Those pussies. Of course, he’d had to.

Well, the only thing to do when you’re feeling so satisfied is to pluck the fruit from the vibrant vine that is the result of all that labor. Ha! Why not? Anyone can see he was moving along very well.

Her frequency. His finger, the button. Presumably somewhere, a crackle.

He waited. It took a while. Well, space is pretty big after all. He flipped knobs and turned dials and piloted. Still nothing.

He went around his ship in the usual routine, pulling this lever, checking that level. Always a wandering eye on the speakers behind their white grilles set into a near wall here or there. They remained mute.

And so.

Gradually eyebrows fell. Gradually the corners of a mouth relaxed. Gradually there was nothing but him and the fuel again. Burning, burning, more all the time. Sooner or later it had to pay off.

Have you ever noticed that people on TV can say pretty much whatever they want about a person, but never say anything bad about a product?

dinosaurs roamed the earth
one said
“I txted with her this weekend”
another
“yeah she said she was lonely”
the first
“happens to the best of us”
then the first realized he was writing
with a pen from her work

dinosaurs hurt and roamed the earth

You have no idea how I sit here with these sweet discrete chords washing over me and bouncing off the veins protruding from the skin on my arms. You and whatever cocaine you did then or now or when or how regardless of the beauty the drugs left you are independent of me. Here. With these chords.

And they sing of the summers I had, or wished I had.

And so I’m just me, the blood pulsing capable sack of meat waiting for someone who has all the beauty that the drugs left you and more. Waiting.

For you, love.

My love, how I lie with you every night, a ghost sleeping up to me like a wave on a beach.

Fahrenheit 451 is a great book that I’m a big fan of. It’s illustrative of some things that are going on for us right now, but it’s kind of guilty, in a way, of doing what it was written to rage against.

Bradbury supposedly meant 451 to show disdain for television and for turning knowledge into tiny digestible bites that are the antithesis of real rational thought.

The problem is that in the book the protagonist Montag is shocked and amazed and has an epiphany based on his first time seeing the man on the moon, and his first time talking about the dew on morning grass, among other things. But these really are just simplistic metaphors for the real things that are fooling us because it would take too long and take away from the narrative if Bradbury were to really spell things out.

In reality, those sneaky truths that we don’t want to see and thus rarely do are far, far harder to ferret out. Sometimes one’s sneaky truths are easy for other people to see but very hard to discover for ourselves.

It sounds silly in the book to hear Ms Montag excited that the dancing white clown will be on the three parlor walls, but is it any different from the 20 greatest celebrity quotes or the 40 best celebrity homes or whatever’s on tonight?

If there is anything I have noticed as an endurance athlete, it’s that everyone has an amazing story of how they overcame whatever and went on, against all odds, to become whatever else. Literally everyone has one of these because the training is long and hard and you lose weight and try to eat healthy and all that.

The problem is that since everyone has one of these stories, most are guilty of sharing them. I certainly am not ashamed to tell people how I’ve lost over 100lbs and all that.

I heard a joke: How do you know if there’s a pilot in the bar? Don’t worry, he’ll tell you. Weight loss people are that way too. I try to keep my mouth shut about it, but people are always noticing and commenting on it. I kinda wish they wouldn’t.

I feel about my weight loss and fitness more that I’m finally going through the process of filing down a gigantic ugly horn that is protruding from my head than I’m doing something great. It’s not that great, in the grand scheme of what people regularly accomplish who are cancer survivors and firemen and so forth. When people bring it up it’s like they are congratulating me on filing down my horn when we both know there is horn left to file.

When I hear people tell stories whose numbers are less than mine, e.g. Oklahoma housewife loses 50lbs and goes on to do a 5k race for instance, I want to be like “Hmph, what a pussy”. I read a story in Triathlete magazine, I think it was, about a woman who lost like 200lbs or something obscene like that and then went on to complete an Ironman race. I was totally jazzed for her, but then the article mentioned her surgery for her weight loss and I am immediately like “Jeez, what a pussy”.

I can only assume that people up the chain from me look at my race results and/or weight loss and go “Harden the fuck up, pussy”. Like the guy I was talking to who has a severe Iraq-related leg injury and recently completed a 24 hour triathlon with his team of other amputee veterans. They completed something horrendous like 14 triathlons over 24 hours together. Are you fucking kidding me? Now THAT is being hardened up.

Last night I participated in a 24hr bike relay race known as Faster Mustache. It was awesome. I was with some really cool and inspiring people which made me want to ride as hard as I could. The riding ability I saw was truly staggering.

You will note that I grew a kickass cop style euro cycling mustache for the race, a fact with was met with cool indifference by almost everyone. I thought it was really amusing, but since no one there really knows me they have no idea whether the mustache is a permanent fixture or not.

My friend Andy, on the other hand, knew that I didn’t normally sport a mustache when he asked “What’s with the dick duster?”

I intended to post updates form the race after every lap, but I get foggy when I am exercising hard and I stopped wanting to fiddle with my phone at all. Also my phone got really sweaty and stopped working very well so I took it apart and put it in my shoulder bag to rest.

Here are the posts I do have, however.

It is 9:49pm. In one hour I will be leaving the house to participate in my 12 hour shift, from midnight until noon tomorrow, in the Faster Mustache 24 hour relay bicycle race.

I’ve just cleaned and lubed my bike. I’ve eaten. I’m ready to roll.

I’m excited, but I have no idea what to expect. I’ll be posting updates throughout the night from my phone and posting pictures and whatnot tomorrow.

I’ve even grown a mustache myself in order to participate properly.

Wish me luck!

I loaded up my crap and headed out to the car in my spandex cycling kit. I stopped by the ATM to grab a few dollars for my registration fee and to pay for my team shirt. it was a bit strange to be in line for the ATM in a busy entertainment district at 10:30 PM with all the people going to bars and whatnot, but I don’t really care anymore what people think of me or my skintight pants.

I got down to the race, picked up my waiver and found my team. I was ready to ride. I wanted to get my first lap over and done so I’d know what I was dealing with.

I was on Team Blitzkreig. Soon the last lap from the previous shift came in and I was saddled up and ready to ride. I had ridden the loop a few times earlier in the week so I knew where to go. My rider came in, tapped the finish and start swipe pads with the timing swipey card, and I was off, bike lights blinking.

The first lap was somewhat chilly but I felt ok. My legs warmed up and I shoved around the track at a decent pace for me. I’m by no means an excellent cyclist and I’ve only been at it seriously for about six months but I get along okay. I tagged in at all the checkpoints and made it back just shy of 44 minutes or so. I don’t remember exactly.

The really good folks were turning in 35 minute or less times and I wanted to be able to ride that hard. I resolved to crack the 40 minute mark.

Here’s the update I typed in from my phone after lap 1.

Well I got lost twice but I still managed to turn in a 43:59 (if I recall correctly) first lap. I was pushing it pretty hard but I didn’t feel like I killed it. A lot of guys are turning in sub-40 minute times.

Hopefully I can shave some time off my lap next go round. My legs feel good.

Our little team circle of chairs is near enough to the porta potties that I catch a whiff of pee every few minutes.

Attached is a cell phone photo of my super aero super light bell which was mandatory equipment for this race.

The bell was mandated by the race organizers for the purposes of warning pedestrians or cars of our presence. There was some discussion about the merits of simply shouting, I heard, but apparently there was a good reason to require bells. I was not privy to any of the discussions, but one $6 bell more or less isn’t going to hurt anything, I figured. I never rang mine except once out of boredom and tiredness at about 9am.

As you can see, it has an awesome patriotic paint scheme. America, baby. Fuck yeah.

I ate a slice of pizza and drank a Sprite, then rested in a chair for a bit. Shortly it was time for lap two.

41:xx I forget my actual time and its hard to type. I really want to crack 40 badly but I don’t know if I can hack it.

I’ve only put in 24 miles but definitely 24 hard ones. I’m going to have to really push.

Which I do not particularly feel like doing.

I might go inside and get some pizza here in a second.

9 hours to go.

As you can see, my already beleaguered cognitive abilities were depleting rapidly in the face of sleep debt and exercise, but even though I was exerting near my physical limit, I was barely scratching the surface as compared to some.

My friend Gabriel who turned me on to the race in the first place was racing as part of a duo team. He personally did probably 4 times as many laps as I did and was turning in splits at least 5 minutes faster than my fastest and over ten minutes faster than some of mine. This would be comparable to pasting fur to your skin with elmers school glue and quietly going “roar..” in my case, and actually being a 12 foot grizzly bear in the process of devouring a lumberjack in Gabe’s case.

At left you can see an artist’s rendering of a grizzly chowing down on a hapless lumberjack with three-color blood also rendered by the artist. This photo is suitable for framing and hanging up in your kitchen or your child’s bedroom.

Another friend of the group I was with was doing the whole race solo. It was really impressive and amazing to watch those guys. The winning solo rider completed a superhuman 32 laps, I believe, at 12 miles a lap makes over 300 miles. It made me realize just how much I need to harden the fuck up.

It was time for lap three. One of our teammates who had been racing for twelve hours already was completely shot, so I took a lap early to let him rest. I was itching to have another crack at the course so I could break that elusive 40 minute mark. I had also gotten some course update information, so I thought I might be a bit faster this time.

I hammered it as hard as I could the whole lap, figuring I would have plenty of time to recover between laps and I’d be golden. As I rounded the final checkpoint for home, my bike computer said 33 minutes. I was probably within striking distance of my 40 minute goal. I stomped on the pedals and gave it every single thing I had.

The last little section was a big downhill and then a big uphill with a traffic light at the bottom. If I could get the green and hammer down the hill I should have just enough momentum to crest the other side and make the final right hander onto the home stretch. It was going to be close on time so I needed every second of that speed.

I rounded a corner and the little valley with its traffic light came into view. It was green. Holy hell, yes!

I pounded the gears as hard as I could, breathing like a brahma bull and hunched over the handlebars. I was the only vehicle anywhere in sight and I was just a few minutes of hard effort away form my goal. I picked up speed, shooting down the hill toward the light, which silently changed to yellow. Damn it!

I pedaled harder. I had to crack 40 minutes! The light flipped over to green, and I had to make a decision. Run the light at top speed and potentially get crushed by a car or grab the brakes. I looked at my bike computer. It said I had time. Barely, but time.

I dabbed at the brakes just enough so that I could stop if I had to and just enough to quiet the roar of the wind in my ears so I could hear any approaching cars, the buildings at the light making it impossible to see if anyone was coming. No one was. I got back on it.

I had lost a lot of speed and it came down to a hard granny gear stomp near the top of that hill. I was breathing so hard that I was actually spitting and frothing. I gave it everything, breathing through my teeth in a grimace.

I made the top of the hill and picked up speed, cut into the last right hander leaned all the way over and stood up on the pedals to sprint out the last few hundred yards.

“Rider up!” the traffic volunteer shouted as I pulled into the parking lot that was the start/finish line. I dug out the timing card and tapped in, looking at my bike computer. It said 38:50.

I’d done it! I was shaking. I was sweating like a cold beer on a hot bleacher seat. My teammate grabbed the timing card from me and dashed out for his next lap and I went to sit down and wait for my time. I went over to the timing table and checked in to verify my lap.

I got it: Forty minutes, eleven seconds.

“Fuck!” I shouted. Eleven seconds! UGH!

Here’s the post I wrote:

40:11 god damn it eleven seconds.

I finished that lap shaking and foaming at the mouth. Not sure I can continue to get faster. I smoked that lap. Sigh.

I have burned 2980 calories in five hours.

I’m so mad that I haven’t cracked 40. Ballsacks.

After that I was wrecked. I did three more laps at 48, 47, and 45 or so, I think ( actual results). I should have played it smart and taken it easier on the first two laps so I could have kept my average down, but I had a goal and I gave it everything I had, better or worse.

I ended up riding something like 72 miles over a 12 hour shift and doing a total of six laps. The last three were grueling. My teardrop muscles hurt every single pedal stroke.

Before the last lap I even got a massage in hopes of squeezing one more relatively pain-free lap out but it was not to be. I was totally shot. I didn’t even write any more posts with my phone.

The people I rode with were totally cool, and the race was a really unique fun event for me, and I am already burning to come back next year and kick it square in the nuts. With luck I’ll be turning in times 10 minutes faster than this years and I won’t have a lap OVER 40, let alone under. I’ll definitely play it smarter next time, though and not burn myself out early.

After my last lap I packed up all my gear and headed out around 1030. The group was going to do a parade lap all together but I had to shrug it off. There was no way I could enjoy another lap. I wish now that I’d done it but I’d been up for 24 hours at that point and I was done.

I bought a half gallon of skim milk and a honey bun, ate the honey bun, took a shower and climbed into bed not to emerge for the nest 24 hours.

I’ll get you next year, Faster Mustache.

I don’t really know precisely what it means when you see those letters and numbers written in the top corner of a car’s back window in some sort of magic marker, but I think it means the car or the window itself is a salvage sort of situation. Which is to say that either the car or the window or both came from a junk yard.

I was considering this when the car bearing these strange markings viciously cut me off. It was a red late 90’s era Jetta. I hit my brakes, thankful to have recently installed front and rear brakes on my fixed gear around-town bike.

“Whoa!” I yelled, not having a horn, then “Asshole!”

The windows were open, thankfully. I like for drivers to hear me yelling at them when they do something fucked up. It makes me feel like I am contributing to their improved road worthiness going forward.

The tint applied to the window with the markings obscured the occupants, but not the finger flipped at me by a passenger in the back seat with longish curly hair. The finger was a dark, defiant shadow in sharp relief against the sunny roadway seen through the car.

And it was a finger that didn’t care if I died.