I made it. I made it. I made it.

Dearest Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I still can’t see but have served one half of my ten day penance for losing my glasses (read last week’s blog for an explanation). By the time you read this, I should be looking through rose colored glasses. I had so much fun riding in the Hilly Hundred last weekend. That ride marked the end of a year with three major organized bike rides. The first in May traveled 360 miles over the state of Indiana raising funds for Habitat for Humanity. I am very thankful to those who supported me and raised nearly $2,500 in the process. On my birthday, I rode 50 miles in the Flat Fifty through Amish country in north central Indiana. Unfortunately, it was the first hot day of the summer and I fell well short of my 100 mile goal due to cramping.

This past weekend, I rode 100 miles over two days in the Hilly Hundred. For two days, Mt Tabor lived rent free in my head. Mt Tabor is a legend among the Hilly Faithful. There are You tube videos dedicated to Mt Tabor fails. All Friday evening I heard; “Mt Tabor is a killer.”  “So many good cyclists have to walk up Mt Tabor.” Mt. Tabor, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Tabor; I was getting sick of it. However, every time my mind started to wander, Mt Tabor would loom up in front of me.

To make matters worse, the route actually took riders down Mt Tabor a day prior to its ascent. That made it a historic Hilly Hundred. For the first time, the day one route took everyone down Mt Tabor to give riders a feel for the 22 degree gradient. It did nothing for my confidence. Half way down, I had to apply my brakes to maintain control as the bike’s front tire skittered over pothole patches poorly applied by the Monroe County highway department. In all fairness, it is hard to apply asphalt to near vertical surfaces. I am guessing that all of those little tar covered pebbles would start rolling down the hill before that tar would find traction and hold on to the side of that hill.

Even with the Mt. Tabor ascent in front of me, it was a great ride. Saturday started a little rough. A steady light rain had settled in over night. The sky, gray and low, was a portent of November weather. According to the weather channel, it would be with us until around 1:00; at least three quarters of the ride. Rain with temperatures in the high 40’s does not make for a very enjoyable ride. However, there were 50 miles to ride and like a boy scout with a discover card, I was prepared. In fact, the last item, a pair of over the glasses motorcycle goggles to keep the rain out of your eyes, had been delivered by the UPS guy, that Santa in Brown, just two days before my departure for the Hilly.

I was prepared; over prepared in fact. It would appear that the third long sleeve biking jersey trapped too much of the heat generated on long climbs. 45 minutes into the ride, it was time to stop and, like a snake, shed one of my layers. That done, the next 45 minutes was spent shivering while the sweat generated from the first 45 minutes evaporated and my body temp came to a decent equilibrium. So Saturday was spent slogging along. One turn of the crank at a time, wondering what if I could make the climb up Mt. Tabor on Sunday.

Sunday arrived bright and sunny. The wooly worms were out in force trying to get warm on the pavement. You can imagine that any kind of circulation problem with that many feet would drive you to distraction and cause one to make decisions that were unwise in an effort to seek comfort. So out they came. I, being a kid at heart, proceeded to dart around the width of the road putting an end to their winter prophesying aspirations; making up limericks about the experiences.

Why limericks? The lovely Miss Beverly had been struck by inspiration in a dream on Friday night. While I was lying in bed listening to the rain drip from the eaves, she was reaching for the Ipad calling her Facebook nation to another limerick challenge. It was a perfect distraction from the cold damp weather and the times when Mt Tabor loomed too large. Over the two days, I wrote and posted 11 limericks. A hundred miles of pedaling up and down hills provides a lot of free time for the mind to roam. I do fear that the prodigious quantity of quality output from my two days of trekking may have scared challengers off. Don’t worry. I get pie from Miss Beverly all of the time. It is only right that someone else receives the blessing of a Miss Beverly pie. If you would like to participate in this challenge, send me a limerick in the comment of this blog, or a facebook message. We will get you in on the opportunity to win.

In between limerick construction and wooly splats, I was struck by the great difference in rider ability. You had some folks on old schwinn bikes. Others were riding the latest carbon fiber. This group was delineated even further by a small number who would ride to the top of a tall hill, and turn around to ride down for the chance to ride back up again. This difference in ability was vividly on display on the ascent of the first hill on Sunday morning. Right at the bottom of the first hill, Shwinn guy had already abandoned ship and was pushing his bike up. I was plugging along and the couple, on the tandem was powering their way up the steep incline.

Shwinn guy’s determination amazed me. On the very first hill, he was off and walking up. He had at least a dozen more to go, and there he was getting right after it. I had spent two and a half years riding, getting into some kind of shape to do what I could to get over each of those hills. After a fair amount of perseverance, road miles, and lost weight, I felt confident enough to give it a try. But Schwinn guy just jumped on his bike and took off, and tandem couple? I last saw them cresting the hill having a dialogue about the Hilly Hundred not being a beginner’s ride. It was too difficult for beginners.

The day proceeded and there it was. 92 miles into the 100 mile ride, Mt. Tabor rose up. The approach comes right after a bridge crossing a creek with a sweeping right hand turn and then a half mile ride along the valley floor. You get to look up the elevation the entire time. There were 5,000 people on the ride on Sunday. Consequently, there were no gaps in the stream of cyclists. Looking up at Mt Tabor, at all of those people, I was struck that they looked like salmon trying to lunge up stream and there was the bear, Mt Tabor, ready for a tasty morsel. Schwinn guy was off at the bottom of the hill happily pushing his way up the hill. He was joined by half of the intermediate cyclist’s not so happily pushing their bikes. The carbon stud cyclists were standing up merrily powering up the hill with some of them coming down to the left, grinning, ready to give it another run. The rest had heads bowed, backs bent, chains in the lowest gear, huffing and puffing, turning the crank just fast enough to keep the bike upright, scratching to make it to the top.

I chose to throw my lot in with this last group. These were my people. Scratching my way up, three images from the weekend swirled in my mind; the guy who crashed on Bean Blossom Hill when his chain broke (how do you break a bike chain?), the guy who crashed going around a curve on a decent who had the wide eyed look of “what the hell just happened” etched on his face, and the speed that I could unclip my cleats and get my foot down without falling over should I need to abandon ship.

While the entire hill is steep, there are differences in gradients. The worst is about 5/6 of the way up. You are already tired hoping for relief and it gets worse. When you hit that transition, you have no reserve. You just keep pedaling. The panic rises when you realize that your speed just fell below the pace where you can unclip and step off gracefully. You are either going to make it to the top or fall over still clipped to your bike, forcing your fellow salmon to fall as they struggle past the bear’s mouth.

Then, the grade shifts again. This stroke was a little easier than the last. The burn in your legs eases just a little. Slowly, your speed quickens. You could safely abandon ship and walk. Why would you want to do that? You are going to make it. The bear isn’t going to eat you this time. You are to the top and after every top there is a hill to coast down.

Happy coasting.

Take care,

Roger

As Plain as the Nose on Your Face?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. By the time you read this I will be completing the Hilly Hundred or as it is commonly referred to in the Assassin Deer community Pigs in Spandex  Family Extravaganza. I know that you must be wondering how can a person ride 100 miles and still type out these wonderful blogs. Does he tape his iPad to the handlebars and type as he pedals along? No that would be dangerous. I would have to take my fingers off of the triggers of my twin front fork mounted 50 caliber assassin deer deterrent machine guns. You have to stay focused and ever vigilant.  To do so, I have been training hard at the range recently. Training is vital. You don't want to be spraying bullets around indiscriminately while watching the fall colors in southern Indiana. People could get hurt.

In order to make sure that my judgment is keen and honed to a razors edge, I am practicing at a range that has set up one exercise where life sized cut outs of deer are interspersed with cutouts of  innocents.  The cutouts pop up  from behind trees and cars, forcing the shooter to make split second decisions as to the potential lethality represented by the targets. The training has helped sharpen my skills over the years. I must confess that the grandma in the party antlers and red clown nose often trips me up. I see those antlers and red nose and I think that I have hit the Rudolph jackpot. As I depress the trigger, it registers that no that is actually grandma walking home after a Christmas Eve party. I should have noticed the martini glass. Shoot!!!

There I go again getting distracted. The question “how can you ride 100 miles and still type out these wonderful blogs” goes unanswered.  Actually, I have taken my son Ben’s advice. I was whining to him that with the fall wood cutting season and target practice, I find it hard to have time to write the blog on the weekend. I was also finding that if I posted mid-week readership was down dramatically. It appears that a blog mid-week does not find you doing well. It finds you too busy to stop and read the ink. Ben, astute son that he is, suggested that I write the blog a little at a time during the week and then publish it on Sunday during prime readership time. So as I marshal my reserves to make it up the next hill, the marvels of technology will push this blog out to you.

Speaking of distraction, I had an epic senior moment last week. I lost my glasses. I have no idea where they are. I remember getting them out of the holder in the car. Then poof they had left the building. As I sit here typing this, I am wearing a 10 year old pre-bifocal pair of glasses. They are perched on the end of my nose. The laptop is sitting just below my knees. My fingers are extended to their full reach and my head is thrown back trying to find the sweet centimeter of distance that will bring the screen into focus.

Did I mention that these glasses are at least 10 years old. It appears that 10 years ago it was the fashion to put windshields on your face. These things are huge. A friend who is in the vision industry saw me Sunday morning. Her eyes got great big and she asked “do those come with wiper blades?” Did I mention that they are huge. It is a shock to have to wear these for the next 10 days. I hope that the optometrist under promised and will over deliver.

After 42 years of glasses wearing, I had finally found the glasses whose style fit my personality. I called them the evil deacon glasses; black frames, silver accents, medium size, and the bifocal line right across the middle. They are the glasses that one on the gruff old deacons wore in the church where I grew up. I love those glasses.

You may be asking yourself, “If you loved them so much Roger, how did you lose them?” I don’t know. That is where the frustration lies. I will admit that I am not a careful person. I have a propensity to utilize any horizontal surface for whatever I may have in my hands. I have temporarily misplaced 1000’s of things in my life and permanently misplaced millions. I have developed handy coping mechanisms. When I was farming, flashlights, utility knives, and pliers were the most important tools to keep the operation moving.  Being a person who eschewed pegboard with hooks and tool outlines, I found it hard to locate the needed hardware at a moments notice. I adapted. I changed. I made it my personal goal to have enough flashlights, utility knives and pliers that within a normal distribution around the farm, on any of its horizontal surfaces, I could find the needed implement within 30 seconds.

It worked great. I would need a tool. I would look around for 30 seconds. I would find the tool I needed. If something happened and it took a minute or two to get back to work, I would make a mental note and the next time at the store, I would buy another needed tool and disperse it to the universe.

As I wrote, I have lost millions of things in my life. I blogged about losing socks on my shoulder way back on March 13, 2011.  I am a prodigious loser of things. But I have never lost my glasses. I forgot them once running around packing for a family vacation and had to wear prescription sunglasses for a week. But I knew right where they were and upon arriving home went directly to my nightstand put them on my face and immediately had a brighter outlook on life.

But I had never lost them. I looked high and low for them. I looked in all of the usual places; the corner of the roll top desk, the night stand beside the bed, beside the sink in the utility room, the kitchen countertop, the kitchen island, the entry way table. I looked on all of those in a continuous loop and they were not there. The frustration continued to grow and I must admit; it grew so large that I did not enjoy my weekly bowl of ice cream and hot fudge. I went ahead and ate it. I just didn’t  enjoy it. The frustration grew so intense that on Sunday morning when the lovely Miss Beverly supportively mentioned that I never lost my glasses, I knew that she had hit the nail on the head. She had perfectly captured my  frustration and worry. I exploded with such a string of invective pointed at the universe of black holes for glasses that would have caused the evil deacon from my childhood would have blushed.

Well its over now or nearly so. I have paid the $215 uncareful tax. I am suffering through the humiliation of wearing glasses that look like the windshield off of a Pacer. Everyone under 40 will probably have to go to Wiki to find that one; type in AMC Pacer. I will make it through the next ten days of squinting, getting closer, or getting further away from the computer screen to try to see what I just typed. I will survive.

But I am still worried. It has crossed my mind that this could be the canary in the mine for Alzheimer’s. What if  this is just the first step to a life of misplacement, forgotten appointments and names? I also wonder if I want to find them now. What if I left them someplace really bizarre? I don’t know where.; no more bizarre from that. I am talking about National Enquirer bizarre. I am definitely hoping that I don’t find them now.

That is sad really; all that worry and anxiety about what it and what might be. Especially after last weeks blog where I waxed about the need to not worry about tomorrow; just let it come to you. Isn’t that the way with life? Just about the time you are confident about the secrets of life, just about the time things are as clear as the nose on your face, life changes. You do something or don’t do something and your vision is no longer clear. Things get all blurry and you spend the next 10 days getting things back into focus.

Take care.

Roger.

Predictions, Portents, and Probably?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. Last week, I wrote about the travails of caterpillars and their attacks on the unsuspecting and a bit naïve. I was trying to be kind; hoping that the reason the victims were in contact with these poisonous little buggers is that their parents had not raised them right. Parents who did not know better because they were not paying attention in high school biology or they did not have a jar to collect insects and then prematurely send lightning bugs to lightning bug heaven because no lightning bug ever survives no matter how much grass you put in the jar or how many holes you put in the lid with a 16 penny nail and hammer. So caterpillars are attacking the most vulnerable among us. Except for my fun and games playing splat at 16 mph, humanity seems to be doing very little to rid ourselves of the scourge of children’s allergic reaction pictures on Facebook.

I was sharing the vision of gut splatters on the road with a co-worker and they said “yeah, what do those blond caterpillars mean for how bad the winter is going to be?” I am thinking “pay attention here. The topic that I am talking about has nothing to do with winter weather severity and everything to do with vector analysis and practical story problem skills.” If a bike leaves the house 4 miles away travelling 16 mph and the caterpillar decides to cross the 20 foot country road going a foot a minute how far will the biker have to swerve from his usual track of 2 ft from the shoulder? Why are we more reliant on caterpillars for our winter weather forecasts rather than as excellent story problem references?

My co-worker went on to make a classic entomological mistake. “I have seen a lot of those blond wooly worms. Doesn’t blond mean that it will be a mild winter?” By misidentifying a regular old death deserving caterpillar as the sage winter prognosticating wooly worm, they had doomed themselves to a winter of discontent. Armed with poor information, their winter will be without the guideposts readily available to old timers through out the centuries. I was going to offer subtle correction; “what you saw was not the traditional wooly worm. They are brown and black in segments.” However, I could tell that their knowledge was so tightly held and my explaining skills so poor that frustration would ensue. It was time to cut my losses and go back to work on a spreadsheet. “Sure looks like a mild winter,” was all I could muster.

We do put a lot of faith in these signs of the future. We seem to be searching for any sign of what it coming; for the forecast. It doesn’t matter how good the prognosticator is at their craft. They could have never have gotten it correct and we will still give them credit and believe a least a little bit what they are predicting for our future. I am chief among suckers on this topic. I am holding fervently to the idea that the Super Bowl will be played in a blizzard in New York this next year after the Farmer’s Almanac made their bold prediction in September. It will serve those big city New Yorker fancy pants right.

I say bold because it was quite specific; a specific meteorological phenomena on a specific weekend in a specific spot. Most seers know to keep it vague and leave the results open to interpretation. Last year the wooly worm and the persimmon tree predicted a snowy early winter. Their advocates hung their hat on the brutal 3 inch blizzard on December 26. Yep, the wooly worm’s esteem catapulted based on the overreaction of the meteorological community and a panic prone public. The misappropriated attribution of accuracy has boosted his reputation to such an extent that people are rushing out and misidentifying our diminutive prophets and raising the status of your common blond caterpillar.

Insects and weather are not the only predictors in which we put our faith. This was made very clear to me while visiting my daughter and son-in-law earlier this fall. Being very smart people, they read a lot of books and in this case internet articles about books. They came across a book that makes personality and life success predictions based on your birthday. The article made it very clear that these predictions were NOT astrology which makes the same predictions based on . . . your birthday. No these predictions had the force of science behind it.

These scientists had culled the supermarket check out lane for stars of another type. Celebrities from all walks of life were included. From Einstein to Cher, they were all there. After star identification, these scientists categorized their personality traits and spewed forth that everyone born in the same 7 day period has the same traits. It strikes me that the sample would be a bit skewed towards nihilistic, narcissistic, nutcases. How are you going to overcome your obvious personality flaws if you were born this year on July 3^rd when you are following in the foot steps of Tom Cruise?  You are doomed; you poor cute little nutcase you.

As Ludicris (sorry all of you September 11 babies), as ludicrous as it may sound we do admire our stars. The ancients loved them in the sky and we, like the Greeks and Romans, look to them up on our Mt Olympus and read the oracles of their lives on the end cap in front of the checkout line. Now we worship at their feet in hopes that their good fortune and coping skills will reflect however dimly on our lives. I think that many of us are susceptible to this transference. I am. I read the article, looked at the Amazon description, read an excerpt. I was almost hooked by the part that predicts relationship compatibility based on the respective birthdays of the couple.

I am sorry to say that the Lovely Miss Beverly and I have been living a lie for the past 28 years. Our passion should have flamed out about 26 years ago if you believe people who have made it an academic pursuit to study the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Kardashian. Maybe we would be better off choosing a bit stronger foundation for predicting the future.

Or just not worry about it, and deal with it when we meet.
 

Take care,

Roger

You may not want to touch that, honey?

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I made my last deposit of seed into the ground over the weekend; a nice planting of greens that should adorn the table nicely for Thanksgiving with a little help of some row cover. I also wasted some carrot and beet seed. I am fairly certain that it is too late even with the help of row cover. However, hope springs eternal and we may catch a break and have a mild mid to late fall and I will have homegrown carrots and beets for the cornucopia that will be our Thanksgiving table.

Firewood cutting is proceeding a pace: five loads cut and six more to go. September, with its five weekends has certainly set a blistering pace. October will not be sustainable. There is the Hilly Hundred and some other extravaganza to occupy my time.

Speaking of the Hilly Hundred, I had a close encounter with the Assassin Deer from Hell on Tuesday night. It was nearly twilight and I was foolishly unaware of my surroundings; thinking diligently on a work problem in the caverns of my mind. Suddenly, there is movement to the left in the periphery of my vision. It startles me out of my reverie. By the time I focus, I see a 10 point buck racing out of the edge of a corn field, bound across the road 30 feet in front of me, cut across a newly cut bean field and race towards a small woods 400 yards to the east. In hopes that social media will activate an outraged hunting community, a 10 point buck resides in southern Madison County on CR 750 W about a quarter mile from CR 800 S. Have at it mighty hunters. X marks the spot and your quarry mocks your hunting skills. Hunters unite, bring your quivers full of arrows, your shotguns, and your muzzle loaders and put a smack down on Satan’s spawn.

I have found myself hunting much smaller game this fall. The back roads of my bike route have been covered with early fall caterpillars crossing the road. Why did the caterpillar cross the road? I have no idea as to the answer to that existential question. I can’t imagine what would possess the fuzzy creatures to take a 20 ft trek across hot asphalt with 76 bare feet just to get to another bean field on the other side. I do know that they make great sport on a bicycle. Trying to maneuver a bike with tires ¾ of an inch wide going 16 miles an hour to a target an inch long moving a foot every 30 seconds, is a challenge that I do not seem to tire of.

You may decry my sport as cruel, but have you been paying any attention to your Facebook feed the past three weeks. My constant diet of cute puppies and endearing cat pictures has been interrupted by pictures of children with hives and swollen limbs suffering from the effects of a caterpillar bite. The images of these poor, misshapen, suffering, children have hardened my heart against the cute cuddly harbingers of winter weather. It is a bit surprising that we have let our collective danger detectors become so miscalibrated that we allow our children to kiss bugs without warning. “Oh look Johnny is kissing the fuzzy little bug that masticates all plant life within a 3 foot diameter.”

Really? Come on people. Why weren’t you paying closer attention during biology class? Were you one of the deniers mocking Mr. Ashburn chanting “why should I pay attention? What do I need to know this stuff for? It won’t help me in my McDonald’s career.”? Maybe not but it might keep your offspring from being the poster child for the “You may not want to touch that honey” society.

If you won’t pay any attention in biology class, maybe you should focus for a minute or two on the lessons that nature shows us every day. If a caterpillar can defoliate all cover within in a three foot radius of his home, why don’t the birds look around and swoop in and dine on this big fat juicy future butterfly in these all you can eat clearings? It’s because Mr. Wooly is poisonous. We have the multi-segmented monsters crawling across a road with no cover, no camouflage them being light yellow on a black backdrop and no crows, or starlings, or cardinals or bluejays come cruising in for a quick bite. Nature knows. I don’t know how, but the birds must keep a "field guide of bad for you stuff" back in the nest. How ever it knows, nature knows and is trying to teach us something if we would just pay attention.

I blame Disney for our stupidity. Yes, I am a Disney decrier. Look at their track record; Bambi, that cute little caterpillar in Fox and the Hound, the hallucinogenic smoking blue dude caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus. Disney consistently misrepresents the dangers around us in cute deceptive packaging. Bambi’s iconic cultural status has made it much more difficult to warn people of the existence and nefarious motives of the Assassin Deer. The cute caterpillar from Fox and the Hound make it appear that the caterpillar population is running for its life from the avian hoard when they are actually poisonous time bombs waiting to bite our children. Britney’s and Miley’s transformations into bimbos from celluloid purity is voluminous and from this father’s perspective tragic. And the blue dude? He was just weird.

So come on people. Let’s gather our wits about us and pay attention in school. Let’s listen to our elders when they tell us “That is make believe and this is real life. So you may not want to touch that, honey.”

Take care,

Roger