Blue Valentine

Somewhere in the middle of this movie, maybe a little bit past the middle, Dean (Ryan Gosling) sings "You always hurt the ones you love" (accompanying himself of ukulele) while Cyndie (Michelle Williams) dances. They've just met and they're in the midst of those marvelous moments when, as the bard puts it, "they have exchanged eyes." For that scene and the scenes that run up to and away from it alone the movie is worth watching. That is, if you don't mind being reminded (hopefully you've got a moment like this to be reminded of, to hang onto, to cry about) about a time when you were unreasonable and stupid, but you believed that was actually everyone else's problem.

The mechanics of falling in love are not the only issue here, though they figure prominently. For instance, are "on the rebound" start-ups doomed? Can your parents hang-ups and failings be overcome? Is getting beat up for your girl a turn-on? Should you rent a theme room to try to spice it up? Should you marry someone who's having someone else's child? Should you marry someone who proposes to you after you've walked out of an abortion clinic, having decided against the procedure? Are guys actually more romantic than girls because they really do fall in love (they're always first ... in so many ways ...), while girls tend to settle for boring bread-winners?

What sets this movie apart from other oh-crap-that-relationship-is-going-down-the-crapper stories is the way the story gets delivered. The evidence of the hand of the filmmaker is minimal. Present blends into flashback and back into present without the obvious signage. You have to figure it out. And since you're not an idiot, you do. Further, the everyday things the characters say and do provide all the weight necessary. They find the dead dog, and they cry. They rent the "Spaceship" theme room and "go into the future." He throws away his ring in anger, and then won't get into the car before he finds it. He finally walks away while the neighbours blow off fourth of July fireworks and she carries in the little girl who starts crying because she thinks she's not allowed to watch the show.

They're all around us, these markers of significance, shooting off into the sky in multi-colour barrages. Not until that pain invades our lives do we look up to note them. Sometimes not even then, but they're still there. Can you tell me why we always hurt the ones we love?

Winds? Hills? What's the diff?

If it seems I'm obsessing about this upcoming trek up Ventoux during our trip to Provence, well it's more than seems. It is. I am. Obsessing. Frankly, I'm concerned. So I'm riding with a little more desperation. Today, with a 30 k wind from the Southeast, which ended up shifting to the South, I thought, well here's a solid challenge that might be a bit like that hill. A bit. So I headed into it, obliquely at first, and then fully. The whole ride was 56 ks, and about half of these were partially or fully into it. (7 ks were completely with it, and the remaining were managing a full-on side-wind.) Well I had to battle my disappointment at my mental fortitude. It was tough (except for that 7 k break). I know it's early in the season, but I was disappointed with a 27.25 k/h average (just over 2 hours). I know that riding up that French mountain will take a full two hours (likely more), and there won't be any "with wind" break in those two hours.

So I've been looking for some kind of comparative measure between riding up a hill, and riding into the wind. Of course the variables are pretty ridiculous - body size and weight, wind direction, grade, etc - but I found a "bicycle speed (velocity) and power calculator" set up up by a German, of course, that allows you to enter either the grade of the slope of the hill, or the windspeed, along with all the other variables, along with the distance and speed you've travelled. Then it tells you the watts you'd need, or have used, to do the ride, along with the kcals you've used to do it. Pretty great!

I punched in my numbers and ended up feeling okay about how much I worked today, and how that might translate on an ascent up a 22.7 k hill. Geez though! I shouldn't be waking up at night in a sweat over a bike ride in France. I have got to learn to take it easy on this stuff!

Visiting Dad

On the face of it this trip was about saying hi, going out for coffee, picking up the tax return stuff, then heading over the GeeVs and JWos with SaerBear for supper. Well all of the that happened, more or less.

When you get older, you don't remember things that well. So although Dad knew I was coming in, when I got there, a little past 2 pm, he told me that his allotted time of respite had been adjusted from 2 to 4, to 1 to 3. We'd have to hurry, he said, just to pick up a few groceries and be back in time before the respite worker left. We boogied on over to the Sobey's picked up the fruit (tangerine oranges, pears , bananas) mac and cheese bologna, cereal (oatmeal crisp, shredded wheat, corn pops!), toothpaste (2 tubes of Colgate regular), shampoo (Head & Shoulders), and hearing aid batteries (#13). When Dad's pushing the cart, he moves! Sure I had to hoist him up into the truck (I would have taken the car, but Boo needed it), spot for him as he got out (unjamming his feet from one another), and hold his hand as we crossed the parking lot, but once he got behind the cart, he was on a mission. He knew what he wanted and where the stuff was. He's 91 and he's focussed. That might mean that he bumps out one of the clerks stocking a shelf, but he's all cool making a joke about his age compared to the kid's and they both chuckle and keep on keeping on.

We joke around as we get him back in the truck. I say I'm going to bring the cart back and he tells me that I should just leave it because they have people hired to do that work. Okay, I say, and leave it by his door. We drive off at 2:50 confident we'll be back in time. He's in a good frame of mind. He likes living. It's cool to be out with him and see that he still has energy to do mundane things.

So we get back and find that one of their floormates has fallen and likely broken his hip. The respite worker is out there helping. She's glad we're back. We think, of course we're back. We head into the apartment and Dad tends to M, while I unpack the groceries. Then I make coffee and, since it's M's birthday, and there's a cake already there, I cut off two slices and we sit down to it. This will be the coffee time we were going to have outside, at a coffee shop. This will do.

We're finished the cake when the respite worker comes back in and asks why Dad has come back early again.

You have until 4 pm she says. We've lengthened the time by an hour. You have from one till four on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Saturdays? says Dad. I thought it was Fridays.

Saturdays are better for me, I say.

Well sure, let's leave it as Saturdays then, he says. Would you like some cake? It's M's birthday.

Sure, she says.

I cut her a piece and she sits down to ask questions and pass the remaining 40 minutes of her work time, with us in the room. I suggest to Dad that we go out for a walk, but he declines.

I've had enough of being out, he says. We'd just have to come back in.

She finishes the cake and we talk about this and that. She likes one of Dad's books and he lends it to her. She says she knows someone whose parents live in Altona. She tries to remember the name, but can't. She says it's probably a pretty big place anyway. I say it's not. She says oh well. We both think, Well, we tried. At five to four she says good bye to M and heads out.

M's been in bed the whole time, except for a bathroom break. She wants it that way. She's tired. She's ready to go. You know, the BIG go. But Dad's doing all right. He shows me the tax stuff. I go through it. Ask a few questions. Then supper comes for M and Dad helps her get out of bed and to the table.

Dad's got the meds pack ready for her. She's working at the bubble-wrap domes as I stand there. You want a tough job, she says to me.

Sure, I say. She hands me the foil and plastic sealed packs. I unpack them (which isn't that easy, actually) and put them on the table in front of her. She takes them, with prips. I unwrap the salad and glob on the ranch dressing (also from a plastic and foil pack - is this the way the world has to be? plastic and aluminum foil wrapped everything?). Dad unwraps the cherry dessert. I say that if I was 93 all I'd want to eat is dessert, because by then I figure I'd have earned it. M smiles. She starts to eat the meatballs and carrots. Dad says that he's not sure about that. He says that when you get older your tastes change. Nothing about who you are when you're young is guaranteed.

(Wow. Take notice everyone. Live like you can now, because it might be can't later!)

Dad takes his leave to go to the common dining room for supper. I walk him out, we say good bye, and I head off for my supper with family (which was more than wonderful curried chickpeas, purple wild rice, and mango papaya salad prepared by GeeVs and JWo (capped off with a hookah-fest dessert and attempts at smoke-rings).

Well I hope my tastes don't change too much. I like desserts. I enjoy good times with family. I'd love to be 91, pushing a shopping cart into young clerks at the grocery store and then using my age as an excuse to make a lame joke. I hope my taste for that gets stronger. Though it's likely no one else does.

The Barnay's Inaugural

JS, DK, and I went for a 60 k ride today! Rode to Barnay's in Letellier for lunch, and then back around through Altona.

Stopped at a windmill to listen. Humdrum. A bit of something seemed loose in the cowling. Every time the third blade came around (or was it the second?), you could hear something rattle around in there. (I knew they'd have quality control issues!)

We then paid our respects at a recent accident site. A lot of people were taking it easy at that intersection today.

All in all, with the warm sun shining, and a light wind from the SE it was a great great ride!

Choirs and gamily fatherings

I expect I'm preaching to the choir here, but here's the reality of today:

Faith & Life Men's Choir at church

- lots of singing in general

- even a Mennonite rendition of an African folk tune to make me all farm and wuzzy

CMU 10th Anniversary concert at Buhler Hall

- lots of high quality singing in general, with new choral music selections galore

- ever noticed how easy it is to nod off during a long, low-volume passage of near atonal modern music?

Gamily fathering at our place for faspa

- good food

- dictionary game

- scrabble

- bo nooze

- word!

My bro-in-law who's been to Provence scared the crap out of me with his description of the climbs out there. (He's ridden out there a few times, but never done Ventoux.) I'm preparing to disappoint myself. It's about time.

Quasi-cross bike riding

Rode 30 ks (18 miles) on gravel today. I love riding my quasi-cross bike! Compared to the road bike, which is best ridden on paved or concrete surfaces. You can ride it on gravel, on grass, over snow, in the mud (until you sink). I can get in a good ride, with lots of variety, without the route being dictated by pavement.

It's a wonderful life!

30 days till I ride Ventoux!

Heartbeats

My resting heart-rate today was 60 beats per minute. It usually is that, or less. I did the math, and this is what it would look like for me (give or take youth and exercise (higher), and sleep (lower)) if I have 2.5 billion beats (about 80 years):

60 beats/min

3,600 beats/hour

86,400 beats/day

31,536,000 beats/year

2,522,880,000 beats/80 years

The math for the (apparent) human average of 72 beats per minute, indicates that he's going to get, for the same 2.5 billion beats, 66 years. Or his heart will need to beat half a billion times more than mine, to get him to 80.

72 beats/min

4,320 beats/hour

103,680 beats/day

37,843,200 beats/year

3,027,456,000 beats/80 years

What if there is a limit to the number of beats your heart has in it? What if once you get to that number, say 2.5 billion times, it stops? Obviously there are many interactive factors that must be considered in a rigorous pursuit of the answer to the question, but it makes sense to me that most of our hearts have a "shelf-life." And it also makes sense that this life-span will not be measured so much in time or duration, as it will be in "paces." Consideration should be given to how often the heart has to beat strenuously, and also to if it never has to beat strenuously; if the pipes are clear and flow is easy, and to the length of the piping, and so on.

Suffice it to say, I'm interested in how quickly my body and mind are eating up my allotment. How well are my beats being spent?

Ride report

in: -7'C wind 20 ks NE

out: -4'C wind 15 ks NE

Mountain dulcimer

What you won't find at an MCC thrift store: nothing.

What you will find at an MCC thrift store: all kinds of stuff that people have given away, of their own free will.

This 4-string mountain dulcimer is a recent example, found at the local MCC.

It's a reasonable lower-end (I think) instrument that's in great (nearly new) shape.

There are several ways to tune it, but I'm starting with D A D, with the 4th string working as a drone with the bottom D. It's not a sophisticated instrument, and it reminds me that many early instruments were designed from the unsophisticated player. Really, if you're spending your days out working on the fields, who has the time to become adept at playing a piano, much less carry one around. The dulcimer would be perfect sort of percussive, loud instrument to play for a dance.

We've turned musicianship into an art, and an artifact, rather than a simple, pleasure-loaded past-time. Now that's likely just me wishing I was a better guitar player, but this instrument will occupy me for a while (years?) yet.

What I'd like to understand is how does someone conceive of an instrument like this? It's simple enough when you look at one already made, and it makes sense and all, but the process from conception, through refinements, to a pattern that seems to work consistently - that's intriguing. If we weren't so busy typing and clicking and running around to banks and stores maybe we'd be less amazed by the ingenuity and creativity of it. As it is, I'm left with finding something like this at a second-hand store, taking it home, and wondering what it's worth. (Even while I'm playing it, I'm thinking, "What would someone pay for this?") As if making music doesn't make it priceless as it is.

Ride report

in: -8'C wind 20ks SE

out: -4'C wind 20ks ENE

Here's to you

At 2 pm I open my work email for the first time since around 11 am. I've been out at lunch and then looking for Rabbit Proof Fence - a movie to conclude a unit on prejudice. I couldn't find it. So I headed back to my room to get ready for my next class.

I remembered that I had to photocopy - scan actually - some cartoons from the New Yorkers I brought along with me from home. I do this. Then I feel like I'm ready. So I open my email inbox, but I'm not ready. Not for this.

My dad's old, but he's doing okay. My father-in-law is living with congestive heart disease. He's hanging on. When we're around them this phrase, "Are you ready to die?" hangs in the air. My dad says yes, but he's willing to live a few more. Five, he said in my last phone call with him. He thought he'd be okay if he could live five more years. That would make him 95.

I want to be brave when someone, my own child maybe, asks me "Are you ready to die?" I want to say "yes" I'm ready. But like my father-in-law who's fighting it right to the end, I know I'm not. Not now. I'm no more ready now than he is. I have things I want to do.

At least you and I can hope to live long enough to have someone ask us that question, but you never imagine the question: Are you ready for someone you love to die? Are you ready to lose a child? a daughter? a son? a sister? a wife? You don't get asked this question because the answer is obvious.

So when I opened my email and read the urgent and private message, that was the nature of the situation, for someone I know. Of course it would be crass to say that I was grateful to read that it wasn't my child, but I thought about what it would feel like if it was my child who'd been in that accident. Another phrase that people throw around at times like these is "There but for the grace of God ..." but I didn't feel that either. And there's not much point in saying why that's a distasteful sentiment to express.

We are spirits first and bodies second. Moments like this, like this physical clicking of the mouse, the dropping of the stomach as you read, these moments derail us because what we're doing and feeling is so concrete and immediate. We are clicking. We are reading. We are feeling our stomach drop. We are breathing more heavily than we did a moment earlier.

But all of these physical signs are triggered by the deep spiritual recognition of the moment. Of that sharp truth that is immanent and fast. Faster than we read the words, faster than the mind registers who, or wonders how, or why, the spirit surges to the truth.

I didn't know the boy well. I spoke with him in the hall a few times. I know his older brother better. In that small town "how's it going" way I spoke with him last Thursday afternoon, at the Farm Service. There he stopped me outside the store and we talked about where he was working now, and what he'd rather be doing. He would have talked longer to me, his last year's high school English teacher, but I said I had to go. So he walked to his truck and I rode off on my bike.

Was there any anticipation of today in those moments? Why was I blind to it? I was caught up in my physical world. In the new jacket I'd just bought. In getting home for supper. But he wanted to talk. Did that need have anything to do with today? Was he already in some way getting ready for today? If he was, what was I doing, wanting to drive home rather than stand and talk?

A day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day. It is all, in the light and dark of the eternal, just a blur. How can we live at the mercy of these drifting days, together and apart, separated by the rising and falling and turning around of the sun and moon? Really we are dumb and mute in the face of it all, the real movements of souls and spirits. Not until one of us is taken too soon, do we feel that motion, that reminder that there are earthquakes of all kinds.

Ride report

in: -6'C wind 25 ks NE

out: got a ride home from Franklin; we drank a toast to Dante

Communion

(words lifted from a single page of "Phase The Fifth," Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Hardy))

It suddenly occurred

with as much firmness as she could

summon

Taking him suggestively

her words

thrown into his dream

enter on a new phase

leading him to Heaven

away from the ruins

they reached the stream

they stood

quite bare chilled but

in no discomfort

She induced him

covered him

the noise of these

attentions secretly wished

but his mind

remained undisturbed

They met the next morning

she had been concerned

he had an inkling

truth had awakened

deep as annihilation

trying its strength

in expectancy he knew

in the light

stood one of pure reason

it was to be trusted

Thus in the pale morning

hot and indignant

standing in its

bones a skeleton no longer

hesitated

They were packing

his weariness from the night's effort

recommended viewing:

(excerpt)

at 1'11" Tekkonkinkreet

White: (about Black)

White is missing lots of screws.

I need screws for my heart.

God made me broken.

Black too.

He's missing screws too. For his heart.

I've got all the screws black needs. I got every one.

Ride report
in: 1'C wind 25 ks E

out: -2'C wind 30ks E

They're predicting snow on March 22

They found elevated levels of radiation in milk in Tokyo.

What is the world coming to?

They're flying bombing raids over Libya, and launching cruise missiles too.

Six of the jet fighters flying over Libya will be Canadian.

Teachers stayed up late on Sunday night to finish marking assignments and write comments for students.

There are demonstrations in Syria now too.

Some people have such a tough time with their reality that they have to call the police for help.

Sometimes the weather guys overstate the case.

The Canadian government will make a budget statement tomorrow, and some of the opposition with feign bravado and, with bombast oppose it, while others of the opposition will quietly nod their assent, and there will be no election in Canada this Spring.

A daughter will, on short notice, ask for and receive a quick edit of an essay from her dear old dad.

You can get breakfast for $5 at a high school in Altona tomorrow morning.

I've made a Lenten commitment, and just now I'm tipping up my end of the bargain - Cheers, Franklin.

The average grade of the Mt. Ventoux climb is 7.1%, and 11% at the steepest; the length of the climb is 22.7 ks; the fastest bicycle ascent of it was by Iban Mayo, in 55 mins and 51 secs - that's an average of about 20 km/h.

The New Yorker arrived today.

Will the madness never stop!

Ride report

in: 1'C wind NE 10 ks

out: 1'C wind NE 10 ks

Aliens? Martians?

The other night, around a table with friends, one of whom is a pastor at a local church, I said that I believed that over the next 20 years we would find, confirm, or be found by, life that is not from this planet. I said it specifically to the pastor. I was curious about his response. I was being a provocateur. I was being "controversial". But I kind of meant it. (Although the 20 years part just came out, and on reflection, that sounds a bit soon - it'll probably take a few more years than that.)

Anyway, there are bona fide scientists looking, through powerful telescopes, at far away star clusters for planetary systems that include planets like Earth in their orbital relationship to a star like the sun. They're excited about it. On the February 26th episode of Quirks and Quarks Dr. Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, talks about his work. He has a new book out, Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond our Solar System, which I probably won't read, but what's interesting to me is how serious and legitimate the whole endeavour has become.

All this brought to mind P.K. Dick's first published short story Beyond Lies the Wub, which explores what might come of our first interaction with "intelligent life" out there. Or at least, it illustrates how badly we might be misreading other living beings. It's a great story, especially for a first piece. If you don't like sci-fi you can take comfort in its brevity.

Ride report

in: -14'C wind N 10 ks

out: -8'C wind SE 10 ks

Why, Faustus?

‘The end of physic is our body’s health.’
Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain’d that end?
Is not thy common talk sound Aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
Whereby whole cities have escap’d the plague,
And thousand desperate maladies eas’d?
Yet art thou still Faustus and a man.
Wouldst thou make men to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again? (Marlowe, Dr Faustus, Scene 1)

We live in times when the signs of human hubris, the intimations of our Faustian bargains, abound. The consequences of the earthquake off the north coast of Japan conflagrates as a result of short-sighted, vulnerable placement of diesel generators for cooling pumps. In the name of cost-cutting and a “we’ll deal with it later” attitude, the latent question, “How much do we need?” doesn’t get asked in any serious way. We cut costs on necessities, in order to enjoy our comforts. This works, until “the man comes around.”

“Yet art thou still Faustus and a man.”

We have been mining the Earth for millennia for advantage, for power, to ease our troubled lives. Whether we cut down forests for fuel, drill for oil, dam rivers, erect windmills, or initiate nuclear reactions to turn turbines, we believe that we will always be able to make more, and we will be able to do this with impunity. This however, is not new. I would suggest that this is, at the core, the human condition. We are not simply moving toward a point of no return; we have been there from the start. This is in the nature of our genetic material. We are “made” this way.

The Christian story of the Fall is this story. The Faustian bargain is always already there too. What greater temptation can there be than to be asked if you want to be like God? To see like God? To know right from wrong? To be able to divine righteousness from horror. Of course we took it up! Who of us would not have taken what has been so freely offered?

The paradox of this divine and profane understanding of our condition is manifest in everything we do. We overreach, as a matter of course. We strive for greater income, a better car or bicycle, a better sexual experience, a better cup of coffee, a better high. It is what we do. Those who do not recognize this in themselves, who do not see the hubris in the simplest of their actions or ambitions will seek to raise us above it. They will campaign to save the lost souls, or to save the planet, but whatever their crusade, they are only making the point. The volume of their complaint, the force with which they make their warnings, only betrays their own ambition.

We are driven by purpose and progress. That is our nature. That is our damnation. That is what has made the human species work. And screw up. We are driven to improve, to better our state. We are damned to sabotage ourselves. And in that Faustus is always among us. We can move slowly or quickly. We may, as luck would have it, live in a time and place when the wheels of progress grind slow or, as seems to be our fate today, when they whirl at breakneck pace.

We know too, from our experience, that the devil will show up at some time to take his measure. We know that our time is limited. We are bound by this realization too, that we can see into the future that the bargain we have engaged will exact a price. Still we ante up and wait for the flop. Then hope for the turn. Finally we pray for the river.

Then there’s a nine-point quake and we remember where we placed the pumps.

Ride report
in: -3'C wind 15 ks SE
out: -8'C wind 30 ks NW

When the girls were strangling their Barbies

They were sitting on the front stoop with balls of yellow and blue acrylic yarn tying multiple knots around the necks of Malibu and Shopping Barbie. They'd already hammered away at them with pens and scissors, adding moustaches, inflicting puncture wounds, cutting out bald spots, and removing fingers. As I walked up and asked what they were doing, the dolls were already stripped and the girls had made a point of mutilating the naughty bits.

There was no response, such was their attention to the task. Once they'd managed to wind and knot the yarn around the Barbie necks they strung them up over the railing around the front step landing, one holding the yarn and the other tugging and swinging the stiff-legged arms akimbo doll. It didn't take them long to tire of this, so they moved out onto the front yard, each with a doll trailing behind.

Georgie figured out first that you could whirl the doll over your head like a helicopter, or like a David and Goliath slingshot, but she would have had no idea of that. Whatever, kids like to spin, and so she started to spin fast, and as she lifted her arms Barbie began to levitate and fly. Stephi caught on quick and they were, the two of them spinning and screeching around the yard with the Barbies flying around over their. They tried to smash one into the other, they released them and flung them to the sidewalk. Then they ran down the block shrieking and spinning. They bashed the dolls into trees and sidewalks and curbs.

The fun stopped when Stephi came back with her string and no Barbie, pouting. She hund it down the storm sewer and lost it there. Before she could string up another one Georgie ran back onto the yard yelling, "She's dead, she's dead! Let's bury her!"

I watched them run to the flower bed in the back. I watched them find Sharon's weeding and digging tools and excavate the grave. I watched them find cardboard and tape and make a coffin. I watched them and didn't say a word.

As far as they were concerned that man sitting on the deck reading his book and drinking his whisky was unconnected to their affairs. As far as they were concerned, killing Barbies was no business of mine. As far as they were concerned I didn't care.

For the most part they were right. Except that I could feel it then, when they were digging, then coffining, then shoving dirt on the bruised and bound plastic effigy. Then I felt that thumping darkness in my chest. Then I thought about running into the garage to pick up the tape and the spade. Then I thought: had I passed this on to the girls?

Ride report

in: -2'C wind 10 ks SE

out: 2'C wind 5 ks NW

Chocolate chips

In their purity - dark and semi-sweet - chocolate chips may be the perfect pick me up. Nestle's Toll House, Hershey's Chipits; these work just fine for me. In fact I finished a handful just now.

I considered giving them up for Lent, but thankfully I remembered moments just like this one, and I stopped that consideration. There are small pleasures that are worth maintaining.

Perhaps if I was in Japan, locked up in a house for fear of radiation, and wondering where the next week's food was going to come from, I wouldn't be too caught up with them. But I'm not.

So, for these small, brown, curly-cue pleasures, I am grateful.

Ride report

in: -1'C Wind WSW 30 ks

out: late meeting, caught a ride

Townes, the dog

Here's Townes (of the Van Zandt variety). We picked him up from Critter Sitters tonight. The friends that Townes lives with had been away for a week of holidays and they needed us to pick him up, because their flight was coming in too late.

So we did. The last time I saw Townes he was as young and silly as any young Chocolate Lab will be. And he swung his tail like a numchuk. That tail could damage low-lying plants and other nick-nacks you might leave lying around. I had concerns about his rambunctiousness and numchuky tail. Long gone are the days of "child"-proofing the house.

What a difference a couple of years makes! Townes was pretty cool. Pretty calm. Pretty quiet. You can come back again Townes. Any time. Although, fair warning, buddy. Dogs around here tend to meet cars at high speeds, or aggravate neighbours, which can also become lethal.

Have a good one, buddy!

Ride report

in: - 6'C wind SE 20 ks

out: - 2'C wind SSE 35 ks

Going after the story

I read The Things They Carried by O'Brien on a recommendation from someone whose recommendation I could not refuse (see author of the next book I'm reading). That book of stories was remarkable in its will to conflate and conflagrate (all in a good way) fiction and nonfiction. Both of these books are labelled as fiction, as they should be, but what they emphasize is that everything we write is a fiction. It's all the product of a re-imagining of what was, or what might have been. Even if I fully and completely imagine settings, a la PK Dick (I'm seriously thinking of adding a surname), those imaginings are coming from the same place that spawns my rememberings. We're all in this mess of what's real and what's not, and, I think, the sooner we just accept that it's all not real, and it's all real, at one and the same time, the sooner we'll be able to talk to one another without angst or anger. But I digress.

In The Things They Carried O'Brien goes so far, in some of the stories, as to use his own name and the names of "real" people (that he has named in his dedication - names that are conventionally accepted as "factual" people). He calls it fiction to cover his ass against libel. That's the cynical way of seeing it. I'd rather say that he calls it fiction because he's writing it from memory and imagination and he's reasonable enough, from his own experiences and observations, to recognize that "fact" is impossible. Especially in war.

Going After Cacciato begins and ends in Viet Nam, in the memories and reveries of Paul Berlin. What we read on the first page is a litany of the squad members who have died so far. Then, in a few pages we read that Cacciato, the innocent, stupid, map-savant has gone AWOL in an attempt to make it from the peninsula to Paris. The remainder of the squad has been assigned to find him and bring him back. So they go after Cacciato.

In literary reading there's some question over the understanding of the terms story and plot. As I understand it (and I'm actually not alone on this, but I'm sure there's not unanimous agreement either) the story is the real, factual, event after event, elusive thing that we're all trying to remember and retell. It's the thing that we love. It's the thing we want to grasp. It's the thing we want to hear. The plot is our often stultified, hackneyed, over-wrought, under-represented reconstruction of it. It is our artifice of story. It is the artificial story. It is contrived, sometimes wonderfully new, and sometimes horrifyingly stale. When we talk of the arc of a story, we have already reduced it to plot, for we are applying our own beginnings, middles, and ends. We're determining what's climactic and what's anti-climactic. We're recreating the story as if it has meaning. As if it can be understood. Comprehended. Codified.

Well if you've ever witnessed a memorable event along with a few friends, and then later listened as one of them retold it, you'll recognize the problem. We all end up making our own codes. Which isn't all that bad, as long as we're interesting! But heavens people, let's not get too worked up about finding the right code. That quest, is a fiction.

And that's the quest that O'Brien throws us on, along with Paul Berlin and the squad, in Going After Cacciato. On this quest we find a prisoner, lost in an underground complex of tunnels that wind for hundreds of miles, who tells us that we are now his prisoners too, because he cannot help us get out, only to be led to the light by a young girl. On this quest we end up on a train to India, where we stay for a few weeks in a hotel with a hard-drinking mistress. On this quest we lounge about on the streets of Tehran, stumble upon a legal beheading, only to be arrested and nearly beheaded ourselves. But we are saved by Cacciato who, somehow, knows where we are, even in our deepest distress. After our fortuitous breakout of the Iranian jail, we speed on to the coast, and board a ship bound for Athens. From Athens we catch a train, and finally, in "fact" end up in Paris. We do all of this wearing fatigues and helmets, and without passports.

The tale of this Quixotic journey, which alternates (roughly) with the tales of the deaths of the men listed at the front of the book, is the point. The telling itself is the point. If I'm to get all teacher on you. The point is that we can tell our stories. The point is that plot doesn't matter, but that we do. That characters do. The squad's first lieutenant, Sydney Martin, places mission (plot) ahead of all else, forcing the men to follow the rules slavishly - to crawl into tunnels that are potentially ambushes rather than rolling grenades into them - and men die because of it. The men find Sydney Martin's view to be untenable. They refuse to crawl into the tunnels, so Martin, a slave to his own plot, crawls in, and the men roll a grenade down after him, and they get a new lieutenant. They change the plot. Because they can. And so the plot, what there is of one, must serve the men, the characters, and the story that must needs be told.

O'Brien's plain diction belies the wondrous simplexity of his tale. It is a grand story. It is the story of humans at war, with themselves, with each other. It is the story of humans in love with living, with humour, with one another. It is the story of humans telling stories. It is the story of humans surviving because they can tell stories.

Sometimes the best you have to give ...

... really isn't that good.

Need I say more? The curling season ended tonight with a crushing 8th end, last rock, defeat to the venerable Jeri Friesen rink. If you're going to lose, lose to someone who can curl, I always say.

Here's the arc of the game:

We went ahead.

They went ahead.

They went further ahead.

Things stayed the same.

We caught up.

They went ahead again.

We caught up again.

They won.

Intense eh?

After the game we drank to our demise and their ascent. We discussed the Chara hit. We were split on whether the big galoot should actually have to be responsible for his big galootness. Or whether he should be able to just wander around the rink killing people with his sheer size and volume. We reached nothing that approximated a conclusion. I, on the other hand, being more than a foot shorter than Chara, and more than 100 pounds less massive than he, tended to argue that he's so damn big he should have to play without any equipment at all, just to keep things fair.

We were however, unanimous in our contempt for Air Canada, the prime minister, and the Montreal police. Lord save us from the goody goodies.

Ride report

in: - 11'C wind NE 10 ks

out: - 6'C wind S 35 ks

Lenten entertainment

Well today's the beginning of the end of one thing or another if you're a "practicing" so and so sort of Christian. 40 days of deprivation. 40 days of discipline. 40 days to wait for your next indulgence.

After the failure of your New Years resolution, you need to take another run at it. Don't you? I've given up coffee, chocolate, coffee again, and so on. It's always only been a blight on the year. I've returned to coffee and chocolate with a vengeance, feeling smug and entitled.

It's that coming down off (or up out) of the high place that I'm taking issue with this year. No, this year I'm going to add a vice, rather than remove one. This year after these 40 days are over, I will rise up into the remainder of the year to be more pure, rather then re-descend into sloth and appetite. This year with the support and collaboration of a trusted colleague, and with the discipline of a self-flagellist, in reverse, I will, at every 10:30 pm, descend to the earth to drink a toast - to my colleague (my fellow descender), to you, to the Lord, and to the whole world.

Let my Lenten discipline be a daily reminder of the fruits of the earth. A daily rebellion against contrived asceticism. Let my Lent be that moral sacrifice that requires repentence when the season ends. Rather than a haughty sniff, I propose a healthy snort!

Join me, right here, every night at 10:30 pm! Confess your daily pleasure! To Lent! Cheers!

Ride report

in: -13'C wind NNE 10 ks

out: -8'C wind NNE 13 ks

I can always find a way to make it worse

Someone once said "Honesty is the best policy." Someone did not include "all the time" in the statement. I believe Someone was right in this omission. It is not always best to be honest. Take the following two recent (oh so very recent) situations and help me judge how Someone would have implemented that sage advice:

Situation 1

Having completed a grand run of preparation and presentation of a great high school musical, we the directors sat together to write thank yous to our cast and crew. We would each write a paragraph or so. Our observations and thanks would complement one another. We would say good things. As I began to write in the second card I paused and turned to my colleague and said: "Should we be worried that they might share what we write to them, with the other cast and crew?" She responded that she hadn't thought about it till just then. She smiled and shrugged, and went back to writing. I took that as a firm "Good question, but I don't have a good answer." So I forgot my concern and went on writing. I was honest most times. Sometimes I was a bit enthusiastic, to be encouraging, but mostly I was honest. I felt good about the process as we handed out the cards.

Of course they compared notes! What was I thinking?! And in one case it turned into a good-natured, but potentially intense exchange (that turned out really well and I thank the good graces and maturity of the two people involved). Nevertheless, honesty, or even the appearance of honesty, doesn't always make things best. Unless we need to clarify how we understand "best" in this, and every other context, it's reasonable to say that there will be times when your honest opinion is going to make things harder for you, and may in fact be destructive to the recipient of your honest talk.

Situation 2

Sitting around a table with friends that we haven't sat around the table with for a long time. The conversation moves along nicely. We catch up. At some point one of those tickety books finds its way onto the table. You know, the ones that are raffles for one community cause or another, and one of you gets stuck with selling them, or just straight up buying the whole book yourself to avoid the social discomfort. (Does anyone actually enjoy selling these things? Who comes up with these plans to raise funds? Do they like to sell these things? Why do we do things like this that most (I think I could say "all," but I won't) of us really don't feel comfortable doing?) As I say, the booklet is on the table, with several tickets already purchased. I see it. I say to myself, I'm going to assume it's not there, until someone makes it clear that to me that the thing in fact exists.

For the first half of the evening this works. But at the halfway point, the intermission, the owner of the booklet does the deed. He even prefaces his pitch with a disclaimer. Something like, "Well here we are, and I won't take it the wrong way if you don't say yes, but ..." Then he launches into the spiel, and it becomes clear that, although the prize being raffled is not insignificant, it's nothing that I'm interested in, and the cause is too close and personal for the seller to have enough distance to actually mean "I won't take it the wrong way." He would. In so many ways. So I bought a ticket.

It cleaned out my wallet to buy that ticket. I'm no widow. I've got more mites in my bank account. It's not that big a deal, but you know that if honesty were the best policy I'd have called him on it right there and said, "What do you mean you won't take it the wrong way if I don't say yes?"

And what good would it have done? Of course if I wasn't feeling a bit strapped these days, the wallet-cleaning would not have been much of an issue. The issue is, I think, that mostly what's best, if you want to avoid discomfort, is to lie. I should have said I didn't have any cash on me. I should have assumed that anything written will be read. In fact I probably should not be writing this right now.

You've got my back right? True dat.

Ride report

in: -15'C wind NNE 10 ks

out: -8'C wind N 10 ks

Out of obligation

Or was it a sense of failure that made him write the letter? He dove into it anyway.

It went like this:

Dear friend,

I hear from friends of yours that you're still trying to get by. You're still in school. You're still doing all sorts of stuff that won't do you any good though, because you know it and I know it that there's not much point in being enrolled in a school if you're not actually interested in going to school.

I've seen your facebook page. Sure I'm your friend there. Who isn't? So I thought I had permission, you know, to look at your photos. Your wall. Your messages. Whatever I could. Some people call this creeping. That makes it sound so sad. So silly. But you should know that I'm doing this because I care. What's a friend if he doesn't care?

Do you understand that I can't read what you write there, on your wall, for every one of the 345 friends of us to see, without wondering "Why did she write that?" Without wondering whether it makes any sense at all? Without wondering if you thought about who might read and get the wrong impression?

The other day you wrote on your wall:

I'm sipping a mocha latte half caffe at the corner 2nd Cup on Edmonton missing u. They're playing 'Funeral' - Band of Horses. What to do? - posted from my Blackberry

I couldn't make it out. There's talk of hipsters. Blackberries and iPhones. Why do you say these things to all of us? Who is u? Why is the music selection the establishment's shuffle music machine has chosen significant? What if every 2nd Cup establishment in all of North America was on the same system? What if they were all playing "Funeral" by Band of Horses at the same time (taking into account the different time zones). What if some other depressed student is listening to "Funeral" at 3359 Mississauga Road North, in Mississauga (obviously), and texting the same dreary half dark, half white, half sweet version of their ennui? Or someone in the 48 Kenmount Road location, in St. Johns, Newfoundland?

What if it's everywhere? What if you're everywhere? You and your alienation. You and your tinny blue cry for attention on that painfully obviously named social network. You and your 345 friends.

I know I know, this isn't helping. It's not lifting you up. But what would do that for you? I've read your posts before. I've seen the photos of you on the deck of that cruise ship with your mom, all smiles and happiness, drink in hand and the sun's glare in your eyes - in the glint of your glasses. Is there only more to drink? Is there only one more holiday? Is there only the next trip to the doctor? Are you ever going to finish that paper? Will you ever actually try to adapt to the professor, rather than expecting her to change for you? Will you ever stand on your own?

Okay. Maybe that's taking things too far. Maybe ...

He had to stop for a moment. He scrolled up to the top of the letter. Reread a few lines. Winced on occasion. But mostly thought he was on the mark. He was hitting his stride. He would be heard, maybe even understood. So he went back at it.

... when you noted the song that was playing was "Funeral" you even knew the words. Some of us know the words too! Don't you think you're responsible for that? You asked us what to do? Well? Is this some kind of hint?

I'm coming up only to hold you under
I'm coming up only to show you wrong

Yeah, you're right. I'm taking this too seriously. It's really only my loss. I don't have to follow you like a friend. I don't have to care. Frankly, the way you keep throwing it around, I don't know what to care for? Do you see that? Do you see that by calling me a friend you've made me something I may not be able to be, when you give me such crappy information? Do you see that when you call me a friend, and then let 345 other versions of me see all the same photos and read all the same messages, that maybe that means that none of us are friends. You know. In that, Hey-how's-it-going-let's-sit-down-and-talk kind of way?

I'm assuming you were in that 2nd Cup alone when you posted from your Blackberry. Or if a real live person friend was there, then I assume you had to stop talking with him or her long enough to post that on your Blackberry. I hope he wasn't saying anything, you know, interesting, or important. I hope he didn't get the wrong impression when you stopped talking and used both your hands (thumbs a'flicking! above or below the table?) to tell the world about your misgivings. I hope they weren't singing that line about waiting for the funeral.

Nah, I didn't think so.

Yours truly,

Your Friend

He pushed away from the keyboard then, and scrolled up and down again. He read and reread. He saved the file under a name he would recognize later, in a new folder named "correspondence with friends". Would it be bravery to print it? To fold the paper in half, and then again into three panels, and fit it into a standard friendly letter envelope? Would it be courageous to stand in line at the post office behind the 80-year-olds who send and expect nothing less? Would it be extravagant to buy a stamp? To find the right mailing address? To drop it in the box? To wait?

Ride report

in: -26'C wind NNW 18 ks

out: -22'C wind NNW 13 ks

Liminal

What's the deal with the word "liminal" these days?

It's a stripped down version "subliminal?"

What is subliminal is just beneath the threshold of consciousness or awareness.

What is liminal is that which lies just above the threshold of what is conscious; that which is in between.

At work there's a colleague who's used it at least once a week.

I just read it in a critical piece on the Shinto motifs in Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

I feel liminal.

Who doesn't?

What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. (Hamlet 3.1)

I learned on Saturday, from someone who knows more about old cars than I do, that by the late 20s they did use keys to lock vehicles and to turn them on, even if they didn't have electric starter motors to turn the engines over. So my complaint in my last post about the '27 Henney Hearse is to be disregarded. This fact does not erase for me, however, the sense that Get Low lacked narrative coherence and was at times anachronistic in its sensibilities. But I'm feeling liminal about that issue now. That is I am just far enough above the threshold of caring to mention it, but that's about it.

Further, it's 11:32 PM and I'm about to cross the threshold from weekend to week - the liminal hour. Here we go.

Get Low

Some movies have all the promise in the world, but then you find that they let you down. They get lower than they should. They get let down by something. I'm going to say it's laziness or a lack of funds, and ignorance. Why else would waste the efforts of Robert Duvall and Bill Murray?

The movie's premise intrigues the viewer. There's a hermit with a gun yelling and shooting at kids who throw stones and break his windows. He catches one and the kid pukes. So he lets the kid go. Perfect. He's a scary dude, but he's not a bad dude. Obviously this scraggly-bearded hermit dude is tortured. Why else would he live alone? We guess that all this torture has to do with the opening scene of a house in the woods in flames, and someone escaping via a second-storey window, in flames themselves. They run away, still in flames. They run past us, the guys with the movie camera, still in flames. Cut to scene with kids throwing rocks through windows. Next hermit dude heads into town on his wagon, being towed by his mule, to figure some things out. We reckon that the scene is set in the 1920s. In the American mid-West. He goes to the church of course. The minister is courteous, but not interested in the hermit's proposal to have a funeral before he's dead. The hermit says he wants to hear the stories that people have about him. He says he wants to hear them while he's still alive. The minister thinks this is disingenuous. The hermit thinks the minister is full of, and proud of, his own shit. The hermit leaves. When he gets to his wagon and unhitches the mule, people watch and whisper. One town idiot with a big mouth yells out. Tells him the whole town knows all about him, and he throws a few stones at the hermit to make sure he gets his attention. The hermit dude says, "What?" and plays possum long enough for the idiot stone-thrower to walk over to the seeming frail old man, who sets about kicking the poor young idiot's ass with a stick he pulls out of the back of the wagon. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. There are cliches at work here. A lot of them. And Duvall makes them worth watching. And then when Bill Murray shows up as the desperate and moderately greedy undertaker willing to make the Felix the hermit's funeral wishes come true, the story takes yet another positive turn. But two positive turns do not put it in the right direction. You know that if you're shooting a rifle, you don't have to miss the mark by much to miss, period.

Can you write a nostalgic period piece morality play, if you don't care about the simple details enough to get them dead right? It's little things that set me off. That make me think that someone's not paying enough attention. For instance. The funeral director (the aging, jaded, Chicagoan) and his man (a young family man with a boy-child and a cute, but firm, wife) drive a 1927 Henney Hearse. Beautiful. At one point the man is going to set off to ameliorate the wily and miffed hermit. The man needs the hearse to drive there. He says so. The funeral tosses him the keys, just like Dad might toss the keys to his own boy, and the man drives off in the hearse. Except that keyed ignitions weren't common until 1949 when Chrysler made them common. I did not know that this was the history of keyed starters, but it just felt wrong when the old guy tosses the keys to the young guy. It felt like the director was trying to tell us something about the relationship, but he was using a language that wasn't in sync with the times. So it just didn't ring true to me.

When these sorts of minor misses occur, I get edgy about what big misses might be in the air too. I get edgy because the director (and maybe the writer too), in a period piece, needs to get it right, or he might be better off setting the story in a time he knows, and he will get it right. Why worry, you ask? Because sloppiness begets sloppiness. The plausibility of a whole community's inability to understand the cause of a 40 year self-exile - after a housefire in which said hermit's lover and husband die - seems far-fetched. In fact it borders on ridiculous that the dead-in-flames lover's sister (who was also a former lover of hermit Felix), Maddy, played by Sissy Spacek, greets her sister's former lover, the hermit Felix, with warm regard after 40 years of not knowing where he'd gone to. But this is all played straight, and we're to take it as likely that she would be cordial, even winsome, when she sees the old man again. It's inconsistent and, by the end, awkward and maudlin.

Duvall, however, is great to watch. The redemption of the film is that I can aspire to age and wear my stiffness like he does. He's proud and competent, and will not be undone by his body. Oh to grow old and have your mind be your strongest asset. For that hope, Duvall offers an inspired performance. Besides that, Get Low, doesn't quite get it right.

Ride report

in: -16'c wind NW 30ks

out: - 8 wind NW 25ks

Winning and other evils

What a night. What a night.

We exchange singles. Twice.

We take two in the fifth.

We give up two in the sixth.

We take five in the seventh!

It's over! 9 to 4 after the seventh end.

We go on to the next round.

We're in for another swing.

I was telling my therapist about it, and he downplayed it. He said, Don't take that winning too seriously or you'll get cocky and then you'll come down hard. He said, Don't let it get to your head. He said, You could as easily lose the next time, as win. He said, You're getting old man, you gotta take what comes, but don't take more than that.

I don't trust those therapist guys. They're like the Good Angel in Faustus's ear. They want to hold you back. They want what's "best" for you. What a load of hooey.

Dennis listens to his Good Angel, so he heads home to be with Ang. Seems reasonable I guess. Chris listens to his Good Angel too, and heads over to watch the Aces lose. I listen to my Evil Angel and stay in the club for two, but it's tough being a winner all alone. So I end up heading over to catch the last five minutes of the Aces season. Sorry boys.

Ride report

in: -16'C wind 10ks SE

out: -8'C wind 4ks SE

Sharpening

It was the kid's third comb this week. You know, one of those old style combs you might use to slick back your hair with brylcreem, back in the 50s. He loved those movies. Rebel without a Cause. American Graffiti. Giant. It was a comb with a long handle. It was a Goody comb. It was black, and now he stood, at the back of the room, at the pencil sharpener, sharpening that comb handle, while the other kids worked on their math.

He had a plan for the sharpened comb. The other two had been experiments. He'd stuck them into things until they broke. The first one he stuck into cardboard: one layer, then two, then three. It failed at five. It didn't break so much as bend and lose its strength. The shank of it showed the telltale whitening of structural stress. So the kid bought another one, and sharpened it, during English.

The second one the kid took home and stuck into his cat. He could do this because the kid's cat trusted him. Didn't think that betrayal was in the air. He could do this because he didn't really like the cat, but he was good at making the cat think he did, which said something about the kid's ability to act. The cat lived. The comb pierced its hide just below the rib cage because it sensed, too late, that something was up, and managed to take off before the plastic spear entered more than half an inch.

The kid got a feel for it though - what it felt like to stick something living. And that was enough. Now he would do it. Within the next three days. The kid could feel it. The question he asked himself was whether he could do it and not get caught, that is, make it seem innocent. An accident.

One thing the kid had going for him was that everyone thought he was honest. Honest and innocent. You see, the kid was small. Short, I mean. Which lent to his relative obscurity. When he sharpened the third comb during math class, the sharpener was a bit high for him and he had to stand on his toes to get enough leverage to get the handle going fast enough to make the tip sharp and to keep the plastic from fraying and fuzzing too much. For the kid wanted it sharp, he wanted it sturdy, and it needed to be sleek. He wanted it to keep sliding in when he pushed it.

The kid knew that when it happened it would happen so fast that the comb would have to be perfect. The kid also had two more in his pockets that were blunt. These were the decoys. This was part of the plan. He'd been combing his hair with the combs for the past few weeks. At first the other kids thought it was weird, and they told him so. Then some of them said it was cool too.

So by the time he stabbed Bobby Bueckert in the eye with it, everyone thought that Bobby just hadn't been watching. That the kid hadn't either. That he'd been combing his hair back with those crazy long handled combs he'd been using for the past few weeks, and somebody's eye socket got in the way. The sharpened comb never entered Bobby's brain, but they had to put a glass eye in his left socket before he came back to school.

That was the next school year though. By then the kid had moved on to pencils. He'd rub the eraser down to the metal and start sharpening that cylinder, on the desk legs, his zipper, anything that rasped.

Ride report

in: -26'C wind WNW 30ks (flatted on mile three; repaired it at June's)

out: -16'C wind SSE 25ks

127 Speeches

In both cases, the focus of 127 Hours and The King's Speech seemed to me, on the surface, uncinematic. I could imagine them on the stage - monologue heavy with interior moments and long digressions - but really doesn't stuff have to happen to make a movie work? To further complicate things, both films are biopics. They both make us believe the outcome could be tragic, but we already know better. One man loses his forearm but gains his life, the other loses his uncertainty and gains the crown. So why are they popular films? Why do these stories, fully spoiled by our real life knowledge of them, succeed in making us keep watching?

Is it vulnerability? Both Ralston and Bertie hide themselves when they look at you the first time. Whether it's the facade of careless youth, or the shield of temerity, they won't let us inside. When Ralston meets two female hikers and playfully shows them around the canyon, he appears impermeable to their sexuality, and one girl says to the other as he leaves (after they've invited him to their Scooby-Doo party back in town) that their time together probably won't even register as an event in his day. Similarly Bertie stomps out of the room when Logue, his prospective speech therapist presumes to speak to him as an equal, a friend.

What we are offered is the steady peeling away of mask and armour, but this does not happen easily. Fate works here, and if you call it providence then you believe in trial by fire. Whether you step on a rock that you thought was firm, or hope that a brother will step up when called upon, you should be prepared to be disappointed. And then you should be prepared to step up yourself.

I think we're nostalgic, in a strange way, for the kinds of uncompromising situations in which these two men find themselves. We watch them because we want to believe that if we were in those same situations, sawing at a forearm with a dull knock-off leatherman, or staring through a microphone at the English-speaking world on the brink of war, we too would do what was required. We would be measured well.

For we, today, studiously make a point of safety-zoning ourselves away from the very risks and challenges that might make us better, even great. So rather we settle for watching these men who, in fact, find themselves through the kinds of trials that we would either shirk, or regulate away. We will watch these movies. We will watch these men triumph. And we will do it as we sit on our couches, and eat chips. We may wish we were them but, we're not.

Snow day today! Big wind kicked up at about 4:30 AM and kept blowing snow around until just about noon. If there'd have been school I would have ridden in, I think ...