Imaginary Pat 1--Society 0--11/3/2006

Disclaimer: The story you are about to read is 100% true—up to a certain point. This point in the story should be abundantly clear to anyone who knows me and how I generally interact with people. From that point on, I have created a fiction that keeps both the story and my image interesting.

Today, as is almost always the case when I begin a story, I was walking around Athletic Park—the only place in Newton where interesting things happen on a fairly regular basis. The temperature, according to the Weather Channel, was nice, so I decided I should get a little half-hearted exercise that would, if nothing else, get me away from the god-awful Technical Writing book that I am drawing a presentation from for my class next week.

It didn’t take me long to realize that, beyond the temperature, I should have taken a moment to see what the wind was like. While it was in the 50s and should have been light jacket weather, there was a stiff breeze in the 20-30 mph range, which made for some slightly chilly conditions, especially since I’d gone the light jacket route. The first half of my walk, aside from being breezy and chilly every time I wasn’t enjoying tree cover, was wildly uneventful. It was so uneventful, in fact, that I considered turning around out of sheer boredom.

This is, unfortunately for my physique, the way most of my exercise has been going lately. I get extra-special tired of doing it almost immediately after starting, quickly find some excuse—usually the weather since it’s never perfect in Kansas—and promptly turn around to find something more interesting to do. As always, I was wearing my headphones and trying to use music to keep me distracted.

After I finished my first lap of the park, I fought against the urge to call it a “better than nothing” effort and head home, and I pressed on. As I neared the tennis courts, I noticed a couple inside, tennis rackets in hand, having a rather heated argument about something or other.

Athletic Park’s tennis courts are interesting because they are almost 100% handicap inaccessible. An imposing, fifteen-foot-tall chain link fence completely surrounds the two tennis courts, and on two sides there is an “overlap gap” between the opening in the main fence wall and a second section that was placed about one and a half feet further outside the main fence and which extended about two feet beyond the break in the main fence. The effect is that an entrance to the courts is created that doesn’t leave any open holes for balls to fly through. As I said, however, the gap is only about one and a half feet wide, so it’s impossible to get into the tennis courts unless one is conveniently mobile—I say “conveniently” because people with other walking aids probably couldn’t pass easily through either. Some people, of course, will say, “Handicap people don’t NEED to get onto tennis courts anyway.” These people are probably jerks.

As I approached the squabblers, I inconspicuously scrolled the volume down on my fancy digitalated musiculator, which was in my pocket. According to my way of thinking, there are two types of people in the world. The first type of person will wear a piece of interesting, high-tech, or expensive technology in a very conspicuous place—on an arm, around the neck, on the forehead, somewhere people are bound to see it. The second type of person will do just the opposite, stashing the item in a pocket or somewhere equally hidden. Also according to my way of thinking, the characteristics that encourage people to treat their electronics this way are clearly indicative of other social tendencies.

The first group of people is the type who wants to be noticed. They are, as I like to call them, the Happen To people because they want things to happen to them. They will impose themselves on the world in such a way that it and its inhabitants have to react—positively or negatively really doesn’t matter, it’s the attention that matters, though positively would obviously be preferred. If the world fails to react, these people will come up with new and unusual ways to make an impression. Motivations for this urge are obviously widely varied but usually due to the fact that daddy didn’t love them properly.

The second group of people is the type who doesn’t want to be noticed—or the Happen Around people. These people also have their share of psychological problems (oddly, daddy didn’t love them properly either), and their motivations tend to vary from shyness to a preference to watch what’s going on in the world. For the latter, watching is actually more interesting than participating. Their rationale is simple. To’s will usually end up with stress induced ulcers or heart conditions or stab wounds. There is little to no danger of this happening to an Around. It might be somewhat less interesting, but it’s endlessly safer.

So, I stuck my hand in my pocket and lowered the volume on my electronic device, to better allow me to eavesdrop on the conversation.

The fact that they were out there to play tennis at all struck me as odd. Having taken up tennis this past summer for about ten trips to the courts, I was all too aware that outdoor tennis in Kansas is, at best, an optimist’s sport, and the wind today would have challenged even the most optimistic person’s outlook on playability. The couple were in their mid-40s, I guessed, and it took no more than five spoken words from them for me to discern the primary motivator behind their being there in the first place: alcohol. Since it was only 1:00 in the afternoon, I was pegging these people for a pair of To’s out trying to inflict themselves on the world.

“We should have brought him along,” the woman stated, firm in her tone if not entirely in her stance.

“Of course you think that. That’s what you always say! Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother,” said the man as he wobblingly stormed over to his side of the court.

I was instantly intrigued. Was this a pair of Alphas struggling to gain just one iota of dominance over the other? Was there another man involved and jealousy clouding the judgment and words of the arguing man? I felt as if I should slow my pace slightly to take in as much of the conversation as I could, but they didn’t seem that interested in continuing at the moment—possibly because there was no more to be said and possibly because their brains were working on inebriatime—so I continued on and, in fact, sped up slightly as I passed so I could make another loop that much quicker. They had to have just arrived shortly before I passed since I’d walked past the courts not ten minutes earlier and nobody was there, so surely they’d still be there when I came back around.

Just before I was out of earshot, I heard the woman add, at considerable volume, “Sometimes I wish you didn’t.” This, of course, infuriated me. Not because of the injustice of saying something so rude, but because I hadn’t heard if this was a much delayed response to the man’s earlier statement or a rebuke to some new assertion.

My mind raced with possible explanations for what they said and questions as to why they were there in the first place. What could possess a person to play drunk tennis in the middle of a chilly, windy afternoon? What kinds of weirdness were these people up to if they were available and in full possession of all the requirements for drunk tennis in the middle of a chilly, windy afternoon?

As I rounded the trees and the tennis courts became visible to me, I stopped for a moment to assess the situation. They were still there, and they weren’t even bothering to stay on each other’s end of the court anymore. They were face to face—in each other’s faces, in fact—on the man’s side of the court, carrying on their argument. I couldn’t see the man’s face yet because he was facing away from me, but, based on his physique (I was a little surprised that he’d been able to fit through the narrow opening to get into the courts in the first place), I was pretty sure it would be beet red and maybe there would be a few veins pulsing aneurismly.

I didn’t turn my music down because I’d been too distracted to turn it back up after I passed the first time. The wind was coming from their direction, so I was able to hear what they were saying slightly better than I would have otherwise. I walked slowly and tried to figure out what they were arguing about.

“I think I do love him more than you!” she said accusingly. This was, indeed, looking very juicy.

“Fine. You can have him then. I don’t need either of you!” the man retorted. I could almost see his face now. The back of his neck, at least, was definitely beet red. I wondered if I was going to finally get to see my first exploding fat man head.

“I will. It’s not like you’ll miss us. And you won’t have to make the monthly trip to the vet anymore either. Won’t you just love that.”

Ah. Hell. It was about a dog. Goddamn dogs. Instantly, the conversation became not only disinteresting to me, it became repugnant. These people were inflicting their loud, stupid argument about bringing a dog to the tennis courts on me and everyone else in the park (there were no other people in the park that I had seen, except two or three cars driving through to who knows where).

My attention temporarily diverted from the couple by my immense disappointment, I noticed a sign on the side of the tennis courts that I hadn’t seen before, which prompted me to walk up to the edge of the cage.

“Excuse me,” I said. They both turned to me with an incredulous look in their eyes, as if I had just walked up to one of them, backed my butt up and farted against his or her thigh.

This is, I think, one of the most curious and extraordinary aspects of human nature—the notion that “privacy” should be afforded people who are doing very private things in very public ways in very public places. Obviously, these two thought I should be minding my own business, even though their volume—and, admittedly, my own curiosity and busybodiness—had done everything it could to make this impossible. This spurred me on even further.

“What the fiddlesticks do you want?” he asked. Obviously, he didn’t say “fiddlesticks,” but I firmly stand by my belief that strong curse words just don’t belong in humorous stories unless their use is, in itself, amusing. And he certainly wasn’t amusing, at least not intentionally. “Mind your own fiddlesticking business,” he urged, spit bubbles forming quickly on the corners of his mouth and just as quickly detaching and slicking up the chain-link fence between us.

“The courts are for playing tennis only,” I replied lightly. I pointed to the sign, which he couldn’t read because it was on the outside of the fence, to help clear things up.

To this the man flew into a rage. Well, not exactly “flew,” more like “rumbled.” It was like seeing a snow-capped mountain motivating itself to erupt molten death on the nearby towns. You knew it could cause a great deal of damage, but there was no hurry, really, to get out of its way. He flowed his way to the edge of the fence, and I saw that I was correct in assuming that his face would be red. In fact, it only further established and served to extend my earlier metaphor in my mind. I wasn’t too worried. Not only did I have a fence and a narrow exit between us, there was always a chance that his head-sized heart would explode from the exertion. He let forth a slightly intimidating little growl, which could have been gas build-up.

“I was only trying to help,” I said. “They fine for that type of thing, you know.” I backed slowly away from the courts, trying to keep an eye on him in the off chance that I’d have to make a run for it. I knew, even if he freed himself from his cage, I’d still be able to outrun him (even in my current shape).

As I crossed the street and returned to the path, he did, in fact, free himself from his cage, but he saw the lead I had on him and quickly resigned himself to the fact that I was out of his catching distance. He compensated the only way he could, he threw his tennis racket at me.

The racket had some pretty impressive velocity, but a combination of bad aim and the wind veered it well off course and it splashed harmlessly in the river behind me. This elicited a fresh batch of curses involving words like “freckle” and “shasta” and “coconut” and “poo.” I picked up my pace, but as soon as I was out of view of the courts I rounded back, figuring the cover of the trees in the park was among the safer places to be when a maniac behind the wheel of a car is looking for you.

I couldn’t resist sneaking back around to get another view of the courts, to see what the aftermath of my encounter had been, and I was a little pleased to see the couple hugging in the middle of the court. Apparently, the introduction of a common enemy had rekindled some kinship between them. Then they began to fondle each other and I knew that I had seen quite enough private acts for the day.

As I rejoined the path a block or so away and headed home, I stuck my hands back in my pockets and turned the volume back up on my music. I could feel the warm glow of a job well-done beginning in my stomach. I had succeeded in doing my good deed for the day, or at least that’s what I could tell myself since nobody’s heart or head exploded.

Nature 3 1/2--Pat 3 1/2--4/24/2007

Isn’t it exciting? This is the first full point award given or received in my ongoing struggle in a very long time! You should all be equally excited to see that I’ve finally broken even (which, theoretically, should mean that Nature will call off the battle as unwinnable and you won’t have to suffer through anymore of my emails). I also am holding out hope for a truce as it means that I, personally, won’t have to endure any more of the pre-email suffering (and this time there was a bit more than usual).

First, let me preface this by saying that I was out for a morning walk when it happened. I know. I’m pretty much a one-trick pony when it comes to framing for my mostly-non-fiction, and this fact dawned on me before I sat down to write this. I almost considered not writing anything at all, just to keep you guys from typecasting me, but this was just too good to pass up. So, at the risk of letting you all down with my lack of imagination, I will press on with my standard-fare opening.

It was nice and somewhat comfortable this morning—cloudy and a little balmy, but not hot—and, even though we’re under a tornado watch, it didn’t look like any significant weather was moving in any time soon. I also had an hour or so to kill before needing to leave for my morning class in McPherson, so I decided to spend it not sitting in front of the TV or computer for a change. Thus, the walk.

I had actually decided to avoid the park, just to try and avoid any potential problems, which brought me, in a roundabout way, to the roads west of the park. Sadly, since this is not my normal neighborhood, I ended up getting a little lost and walking on some unpaved gravel and dirt roads. Since it was starting to sprinkle and I didn’t have much desire to get all muddy, I headed for the only place that I knew had paved roads—back to 1^st Street. For those unfamiliar with Newton’s geography, 1^st runs along the south side of Athletic Park, where bad things always happen. And so it was that, despite my best efforts, I still ended up back at the park, and, since it was starting to drizzle, I figured I should take the bike path home since it’s the shortest route.

My first step into the corner of the park’s property boded ill for my chances of getting out of there without something weird happening. I saw a forty-something man being interrogated and then cuffed-and-stuffed by five cops (with three vehicles and, as far as I could see, none of the assault rifles that I naturally associate our town’s police force since their kind removal of the coyote from our yard a few years back). Obviously, my first thought was how I could turn this into a story. Was this loveable hippie being harassed by The Man in my own backyard? Were his rights being quashed? I eyed the goings-on carefully, watching for something interesting to happen.

Sadly, nothing really did. And, upon closer inspection, I saw that the guy wasn’t a hippie. I didn’t KNOW this, of course, since I never spoke with him and he certainly wasn’t wearing a shirt that said “Where’s My Bong?” Still, I feel pretty safe in my assumption that no self-respecting free-lover would wear a mullet and a worn out hair-band t-shirt. That might be an unfair stereotype on my part, but it’s mine and I’m going to run with it. So, this wasn’t a case of The Man harassing some innocent type, it was a case of some drunk or violent or stupid or all of the above hillbilly getting busted for doing something illegal.

Slightly disappointed, I continued on my way to the path and started for home. Before I was able to leave the park, though, I saw a somewhat odd site. Down along the bank, I saw a male mallard poking his beak and something white. At first I thought it was a Wal-Mart bag that had blown into the water, but a closer look revealed it to be a dead domesticated duck. Those of you not currently looking up “domesticated duck” on Wikipedia, as I am, might not know that these usually white (around here at least) ducks are actually descendents of the mallard. Which makes them species-compatible and the hypothesis that I am about to propose all the more plausible.

Thus, what I was seeing was, quite probably, a tender moment between a male mallard and his racially diverse mate. I’m not sure if there is an offensive, duck-equivalent to a “jungle fever” reference that I could make at this point, so I guess I will just let that one slide by. I’m also not sure if the white duck was a female. Also, all evidence that I’ve seen of duck culture suggests that the concept of monogamy is quite foreign to them. In fact, they tend to be more into the gang-bang scene. Still, I assumed what I assumed based on my wanting to feel that it was a tender moment that could, hopefully, help me heal my numerous, duck-related psychological scars. A lofty hope, I’m sure, but I’m willing to put things behind me and move on if possible. And, based on the near total lack of duck molestings of my person over the last year or so, I figured it was time to take a step in the right direction.

Finding solace in this notion of moving on, I continued home, distracted by feelings of inner peace and tranquility. It was at about this point, around one hundred yards behind my house, that I saw some “mating” evidence that almost certainly disproved my earlier theory. A female mallard was rapidly swimming away from one of the Chucks (and two other male mallards, though they are mostly inconsequential to the story, except to prove that my other gang-bang misgivings are still relevant) that we have in our creek. A chuck, for those of you who have never seen them, are an unholy union of a chicken and a duck. They are vaguely shaped like a duck, though usually bigger, but they have facial and feather colorings similar to a chicken. They also walk like a chicken, bobbing their heads forward as they walk. Actually, their heads look more like vultures, but Vuck doesn’t have the same ring to it. At any rate, they are quite unattractive, but still part of the mating cycle out here, it seems.

The female, obviously in denial about her species’ mating habits, was resisting all advances as best she could in the creek, but soon found it necessary to take flight. She cruised up over the houses further down the path and flew out of my sight towards the north.

Still, I wasn’t going to let this little piece of crushing evidence dissuade me from my desire to make peace with the duck world. I strolled on down the path to where it meets up with Elm Street (the access point to the path closest to my house). All along the path-side edge of the property that separates our yard from the path, there are numerous shrubs and trees, which effectively creates a blind corner between the path and Elm.

As I rounded the corner, a surprising thing happened. I was ballisticked (this isn’t a word, I know, or wasn’t until just then, but I can’t think of any other way of saying that something ballistic smashed into me without getting out my dictionary) by the chuck. The female, somehow or other, barely dodged me, but the chuck, probably caught up with the piece of tail that was only a few short feet in front of him, was not so lucky. As I turned the corner and made like a duck-proof wall, the chuck tried to swerve out of the way. Possibly, chucks fly like they walk, with their heads bobbing and swerving to compensate for any other body movement. Whatever the reason, as the chuck turned, his head and neck really did not, and he crashed right into my right arm.

What followed was an impressive display of metaphor come to life. In football, there is a term for a pass that is thrown without grace and/or skill. It is an unsteady, end-over-end wobbler that is referred to as a wounded duck. Until today, I had no visual reference to equate with this type of failed pass. Suffice it to say, however, that it is 100% accurate in the visual image that it should draw in the mind of its viewer. The struck chuck careened and veered off me in a most indelicate way until it splashed down into the creek where it lay motionless.

For my part, I’m happy to report that my heart must still be strong and my sphincter control is not lacking because I neither had a heart attack nor dropped a load in my drawers. I did, however, nearly pass out from the adrenaline rush. My body, thanks to my low-key lifestyle choices, is not the least bit used to surges of adrenaline, and this one was a doozy. Though my arm still hurts some.

I walked over to the path and peered in. The chuck was lying motionless about ten feet in, bobbing uncertainly. The female duck, unlike the affectionate and caring male duck I saw earlier, pining over the loss of his mate, immediately started coyly “avoiding” the other two male suitors that were not far behind. There’s probably a lesson there about life and gender differences in general, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.

I wanted to stick around a little longer and see if the chuck was dead or just grievously stunned, but I had to get back to the house to prepare for class, so I had to leave after only a few seconds of watching. I also wanted desperately to take a picture of my arm for posterity’s sake (since, for a change, there was actually a little proof of what I said happened). I did not, however, have any luck getting that picture as proof. Libby, it turns out, took our digital camera to work with her and didn’t bring it back. And, sadly, I do not bruise easily. I’m guessing there should be some sort of scientific equation wherein the force necessary to kill a duck is equal to or less than the force necessary for a blunt object to contuse the side of my right arm, but I’ve never been very good with the maths, so someone else will have to prove that theorem.

I had also briefly considered including a picture of some malformed or injured arm that I could substitute, but all of the ones I found on the internets were either too boring or too grotesque. Sadly, there is no middle ground on Google. There was a nice red mark on my arm for about an hour, though, and it still aches dully. If it does bruise some, I will be sure to share the picture. Hopefully that will do for everyone.

I’m just sad to know that, despite my efforts to make peace (and the fact that the score is finally even again), my enemy has escalated aggression, and now I’m actually taking battle damage. At least maybe now something interesting will happen to me somewhere other than while I’m walking or cycling around the park.

Pat vs. the Iditarod--4/1/2007

Hi all! I had some big news that I wanted to share with everyone and I'm just now getting the chance to sit down at my email to send it out to everyone.

Long story short (because I know many of you don't or won't read most of my emails because they are too long), after months of strange happenings (and a few bumps in the right direction from Providence, I think), Libby and I have decided to become Mormons so that I can take another wife. Libby especially is looking forward to this since she will get to be "first wife" and have many of her household responsibilities relieved. I am looking forward to it because it finally allows me to legally (in the eyes of God at least) seriously look into the prospects of making my Asian concubine an official part of our family.

It all started two months ago. One day, as I was sitting on the can not reading a book because I had forgotten to replace the one I had recently finished, I had a figurative Come to Jesus. My life was beginning to stagnate. I was in a sort of rut. Everything I did mattered little or not at all, but I was still doing those things EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE. I mean, come on. How can not-really-teaching a bunch of adults to write formal essays do much of anything to change the world. Hell, most of the time, once they've gone through my class, I'm not even sure if I can say I've changed the way they write, much less anything else about them. Pretty depressing stuff, really.

So I decided to run the Iditarod.

As you all know, I'm sure, the Iditarod begins on the first Saturday of March. My porcelain epiphany came on January 29th (Kansas Day, for those of you who don't have it marked on your calendars and engraved in your minds as I do), which left me precious little time to prepare, especially considering that I: 1) had no experience, 2) dislike dogs (still do, in fact, but considerably more so now), 3) wasn't sure where the Iditarod took place except up North, and 4) had none of the necessary apparatus skill-sets to accomplish my goal. So, I went where everyone goes in times of self-exploration and troubled thoughts, the YMCA.

Strangely, the YMCA in Wichita had little to no information available on dogsled racing in general, much less specific information and guidance for gathering a sled team and the skills necessary to guide it across the Great White North, eh. I did, however, meet Guan "Klondike Stan" Ping, a one-time champion and underground legend in the dog sledding field. Actually, he found me. Apparently, though there is little interest in this fascinating sport on the surface in the Wichita area, there is a considerable sledding sub-culture that lives and works on the fringes of society.

The intricate inner workings of their culture and the social microcosm that they have created would take volumes for me to explain (fortunately, for the sake of my adventure, I'm a fast learner), but the long and short of it included, among other things, the removal my left testicle before I could be inducted into their complicated hierarchy. At my height of involvement, even after much personal sacrifice (besides the testicle they also claimed 1/3 of my pancreas, which was transplanted into a Red Panda--a hopelessly cute creature, which I was happy to share a portion of a vital organ with), I was still only ranked as Dog Herder, which may sound impressive, but is actually only slightly higher than the lowest man on their totem pole (which they actually have), the Sled Waxer.

Klondike Stan had heard through his formidable channels that there was a new, not-so-young interloper asking the wrong kind of questions and poking his nose where it didn't belong. So he took a personal interest. And, not surprisingly, he found me one afternoon while I was walking in Athletic Park, where everything surreal and strange happens to me.

"You want to run Iditarod?" he asked. He was obviously of Asian origin. I could tell not only by his strikingly eastern features but by the way he glaringly omitted the article "the" from the question he asked me. He would go on to omit most of his articles and some of his helping verbs in a most stereotypical kind of way.

Before I could answer, he pushed me to the ground using a cunning and under-appreciated form of martial arts known now as the Puffy Dog Style--it's a sort of unholy combination of kickboxing and the motions made to milk a yak (not surprisingly, these go hand-in-hand much of the time, which those of you in the yak-milking industry are well aware of).

“You not GOOD enough for Iditarod!” he shouted into my face while he held me prone with one sandal-clad foot to the throat.

This was no news to me. I knew well enough that I lacked pretty much everything that I needed to successfully participate in, much less win, the race.

Then he did something surprising. He reached out a deceptively delicate but heavily calloused hand to me and said, “But with my help, you WILL be.”

And there my journey began. Far too much happened in the next few weeks for me to go into great detail, but we were fortunate enough to have nearly a full month of snow cover here for me to practice and hone my skills. At the end of it, I became more dog-sledding machine than man. I ate and drank dog sledding. I lived and breathed dog sledding, literally at times. It was a little disgusting.

Then came the first Saturday of March. Unbeknownst to me, Klondike Stan had taken care of all of the entry fees and figured out all of the logistics of the thing for me while I was busy training.

“Why are you doing this for me, Stan?” I asked while we shared the ride up north in his ancient Dodge Dart. As far as I could tell, I still wasn’t anything special. Surely there were more qualified racers in the Society that he could have thrown his considerable energies and resources behind.

“I see in you kindred spirit, Pat-san,” he said. That was his nickname for me, even though I had told him several times that that sort of stereotypical wordplay, like a Native American friend calling a companion “Kemosabe,” was just a little too over the top for me. Still, he persisted, claiming that it was not, in fact, stereotypical if he, an Asian man, used the term. It would only be stereotypical if a white person, like me, represented an Asian man saying it. This made me feel a little better, but I still asked that he refrain from using the pet name in mixed circles.

“But I don’t think I’m good enough yet,” I insisted, laying it all on the line perhaps a little too late to do any good.

And then he reached across the front of the car and grabbed me by the shirt while keeping his eyes on the road. Drawing on muscle reserves that I knew he had but which he kept well concealed in his baggy, Buddhist-monk-style civara robes, he smashed my face into the car’s dashboard.

“You good enough,” he said. “You better be.”

And with those ominous words still ringing in my head, I went through my pre-race preparations once we arrived and mentally embiggened myself in a most cromulent way for the race.

So there I was, decked out in full-on winter regalia, astride a rickety and suspect bamboo sled (Stan had built it himself—and, though he was a brilliant theoretical dog-sled teacher, his sled-crafting skills, I was soon to find out, were not quite up to snuff) packed with everything that I would need for the next leg of the race. As the starting gun sounded, I cracked my bullwhip (which I need to thank my dad for picking up for me on one of his trips to Brazil) and my team of would-be champions leapt to life, nearly unseating me (figuratively speaking since I was standing) from the back of my sled.

If you’ve never blasted through sub-arctic temperatures in a raging blizzard behind the jolting and jostling of a team of expertly-bred sled dogs, then all I can say is that you’ve never truly lived. I highly recommend it—though, as you’ll soon see, I would recommend going through more traditional methods of placement behind said team.

No more than a quarter mile from the starting point, with me soundly in last place already, the right skid on my sled began to give out. Within two minutes of the first hints of trouble, my sled, quite literally, disintegrated beneath me. Still, unwilling to give up, I clung to the reigns for another fifty yards, letting the dogs drag me wherever they wanted to go (by that point steering was simply not an option), bound and determined to see this thing to the bitter end. And bitter end it was as my dogs tore me through some rocky terrain where I brained myself quite completely on an outcropping of glacier trash.

I came to almost a week later, lying on my back on a mat on the floor of what looked to be a temple (it was, in fact, not a temple, just a pagoda, which usually look suspiciously like temples even when they aren’t). A young Asian girl named Ming (the Merciless, I often called her, quite cleverly, during my weeks of rehabilitation), was rebinding my wounds.

“Good,” she said. “You’re finally awake. We must leave immediately before Ping can find you!” She sounded quite frantic and I found her command of the English language to be quite appreciatively non-stereotypical.

“What the . . .” I began, needlessly ellipsising my sentence because I had recently sustained a nearly fatal head wound. I still find myself ellipsising with some . . . .

“It’s Ping! Klondike Stan! He’s part of the Yakusa, and he bet nearly a million dollars on you to win the race! Since you were such an underdog (I still managed to smile inwardly at this reference, considering what I had been doing just a week earlier—get it? You’re pretty stupid if you don’t), he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on you, even if you only placed! Since you destroyed his sled, he assumes that you did it on purpose, and he’s been trying to track you down and kill you ever since!”

“I don’t . . .” I began again, then my brain started to clear up a little and I tried my hand at whole sentence construction. “But I thought Stan was from southern China. Aren’t the Yakusa Japanese?”

“Shut up with your details! I heard that he arrived in town this morning and he will kill you no matter where he’s from!” She was, I soon found, quite fond of the exclamation point. But it’s something of an endearing quality, I think.

From there a quite entertaining adventure took place that involved much kung-fu kicking and high flying action as Klondike Stan, my one-time mentor and undeniably abusive friend, chased Ming and I across northern China, Mongolia, and, for some reason, Andorra. How we got to these places would take a fortnight for me to explain, so just believe that it happened. At any rate, it was quite an experience. If you’ve never run for your very existence from a real-life Yakusa assassin and his scores of ninja minions, then all I can say is that you’ve never truly lived—or seen a real ninja, I’d wager. They are quite like they are depicted in docu-dramas like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, except shorter.

Needless to say, during our encounters, Ming and I grew quite close, which made things a little awkward once we finally cornered and killed Stan in an old west style shootout in Tempe, Arizona, and I was able to return home to Libby.

“Let’s just keep her as a concubine,” Libby suggested quite eagerly. “I’ve always wanted you to have an Asian concubine.” She's a real trooper, my wife. And we did, too, though it was a little weird since Ming insisted on sleeping in our closet and helping out with the chores around the house—useful, of course, to have an extra set of hands, but still a little weird. She says the closet reminds her of her childhood. So far, I’m afraid to ask what that means.

But we respect her endlessly, and really want to show how much we appreciate her as a person, not just a sexy-hot concubine, and make her a more permanent part of our family.

And that, my friends and family, is why we’ve decided to become Mormon. I haven’t really done much research so far on the religion or what it stands for, but it can’t be ALL bad if it lets men take multiple wives, right? I’ve put out a few feelers in the Mormon community in the Wichita area (which, strangely, is something of a sub-culture also and seems to have a multi-tiered membership system that I’m afraid I’ll have to donate body parts to gain access to—I just hope they let me keep my spleen, it’s seen me through some really tough times). Hopefully something will come of all this soon, but we’ll be sure to keep you posted either way!

Have a happy spring, everyone.

Nature 3 1/2--Pat 2 1/2--5/22/06

Sigh. I should have known something would happen today. It’s muggy and should have been raining, but guilt drove me out for a bike ride early this morning (while it was still cool and when it looked like I had forty-five minutes or so between rain storms). I hadn’t been out but once in the last two months, so I should have known that something would be waiting for me.

And here I’m going to swear that I will never repeat an event in writing to everyone if it happens to me more than once. This is, admittedly, getting ridiculous. I wouldn’t believe that all this crap happens to me, if I were you, but I swear I am a weird magnet when I’m on my bike. On foot, not so much. But, because this stuff keeps happening, and I keep “sharing” with you guys all the time with basically the same story frame, I figured I should at least swear that I won’t repeat myself with the major story parts. At least that way you will know that something new and horrible has happened to me. Rest assured, though, this is, I think, the most uncomfortable story yet. So please read on.

I’ll skip the setting set-up, since you all know where I was and what I was doing by now.

At a little before 8:40 (only about 10 minutes into my ride), I decided I better have a bit of a stretch and use the public facilities there since my morning glass of water was obviously working its way through. I’ve always been told that stretching is vital when exercising, but I’ve never been much for it. Not surprisingly, I’m about as limber as a six-hour-dead soccer coach. Every once in awhile, though, my muscles demand that I give them a little attention, and this was one of those times. And I figured I should probably make the pit stop while I was there so I wouldn’t have to in another fifteen minutes (insert tragically small bladder jokes here, “friends”). The bathrooms at the park are actually not that bad. The floors are always wet for some probably-not-disgusting-but-I’ll-assume-it-is-anyway reason, but they have actual running water, which is more than I would have expected. Why I knew it was a little before 8:40 is important and I’ll get to it in a bit.

Anyway, I pulled my bike onto the sidewalk next to a picnic table close to the bigger of the two bathrooms. “Close” is a relative concept. I was still a good 20 yards or so away from the bathroom, but I needed the table to stretch my legs on. While my leg was propped up and I was doing awkward and poorly conceived looking but pleasant feeling leans from side to side and front and back, I took a moment to notice all of the people in the park. There were several regulars—oldies with their dogs and canes and chit chat—and a few new faces. One guy, I noticed, was sort of hovering around the bathroom area, looking distracted. He was pacing around the sidewalks, crossing the street and standing, inspecting the parking lot, and generally looking like he was waiting for someone. I continued with my stretching for a minute or so, and walked around, pushing on trees and doing more leaning from side to side to try and keep my legs from freezing up.

After finishing with that, I started walking, in a meandering, still trying to stretch my calves kind of way, to the bathroom. To an observant person, I might too have looked like I was distracted and trying to look "normal" or “casual.” I walked into the bathroom, stepped into the stall and did my business. I wrapped that up, figuratively speaking, and turned around to see the waiting guy standing at the door of the stall, looking at me. He looked . . . expectant. I’m not sure I can describe the look on my face. I’ve never been much for “emoting,” so probably I just looked mildly confused and maybe a little annoyed (I’m told I often look annoyed, I can’t imagine why).

“You here for the special?” he asked, perhaps trying to break the ice, as it were, with an awkward quip.

“Huh?” I responded. And he pointed to some writing on the wall.

“8:40—5/22,” it said.

“Oh,” I replied.

“Well, drop ‘em,” he suggested, looking down at my crotch.

At this point, of course, I became flustered. I am no slouch at coming up with witty retorts and should-have-saids, two hours after the fact, but I am horrible on the spot. I pretty much freeze up and my mouth and my brain refuse to cooperate properly—partly because my brain actually locks up and refuses to work while my mouth starts working independently. I suspect I might not be good in a crisis. At least not if conversation is involved.

“Oh,” I said again.

As I saw it, I had two choices. One, I could drop my pants and see where this course of action took me. Two, I could come up with some excuse about herpes and move on. Well, probably there were more choices, but these were the only two that were presenting themselves to me at the time.

The first option, while probably full of merit, didn’t seem like much of an option. Even if I swung that way, which I'm pretty sure I don't, this guy would not have been my type. I’m no trophy, but I am reasonably sure that I could do better than a 45-50 year old, overweight, bald, repressed-accountant-looking guy. Possibly not MUCH better, but SOME better. I could probably take one of those negative attributes and make it the positive version, at least. Get the fit, bald, accountant-looking or the overweight, bald, archaeologist-looking (hmm, I’m not sure what career-looking would be attractive on a guy, actually, I guess I lean towards the Indiana Jones archetype in my generalizations of male attraction).

“Well?” he encouraged.

“Oh,” I said. “No. I have . . .” I continued, looking down and making “don’t go there” hand gestures in front of my crotch. “. . . Problems,” I finished. And I left it at that, figuring, sometimes, less is more.

He gave me a doubtful look but didn’t move. It took me the last hour or so of thinking about it to figure out why he didn’t just get out of my way and let me leave, but I think I’ve got it. On the one hand, I hadn’t just said there was some misunderstanding, as there obviously was and I obviously should have explained to him. Which, to him, meant that I had known about the meeting time written on the wall, but just wasn’t interested in him, so I was making excuses to leave—specifically, to leave him.

Upon closer reflection, this was quite mean of me. Here’s this strange man offering possibly stranger men the love that dare not speak its name in a public restroom because he is probably not having much luck dating otherwise, and I basically shot him down with an excuse that is the back alley equivalent of “I need to wash my hair.” I was the type of guy who would show up for a lascivious, morning-time fling in a public restroom, but at the same time I was a fickle bitch who was too good for the person who was making the date. I suppose that’s some bad karma for me there.

Needless to say, I cut my bike ride short. I don’t think I could have faced him if I’d made another trip around. And I suppose that was for the best, because that would have added insult to injury. I have gone ahead and given both Nature and Pat ½ point in my ongoing struggle because, frankly, I don’t know who won out there. I figure Nature drove us together, in some weird sort of way (this is the second time I’ve been propositioned by a man in an unusual place; thankfully, Libby and I think Ben were there the first time at the McDonalds in Pratt—and I should probably mention that this is more times than I’ve been propositioned by strange women in public places by, I believe, two), so Nature gets a ½ point. And I resisted an obvious if somewhat disturbing temptation, so Pat gets ½ point too. There were no clear winners here, so that seems fair.

And, now, I think I might go finish up my bike ride. And I’m going to be using the bathroom before I leave.

Nature 3--Pat 1 1/2--8/12/05

Sorry this one is out of order. I noticed after posting the last one that my point total was off by 1/2 point, so I went back and tried to find the other story I was missing. It took me about an hour, but I finally found it, tucked away in one of my school files for some reason. Anyway, here it is.

This one will be brief, I promise. So I got home this evening from a walk with Cameron. Because we’re both not terribly motivated people, we’ve found it helps when we walk together. At least that way we can jaw on about pointless things like television shows and the students we’re teaching (yes, I called them pointless, prove otherwise), which makes the time go by more quickly.

I was walking up my driveway when I saw what I thought was a dog across the yard, near our creek (which, really, is a drainage creek that spends most of its time stagnating since it takes a good two inches of rain to get its water moving). The dog was standing there, looking innocent enough, so I paid it little attention and went into the house. We have about four neighbor dogs that get out and routinely wander through our yard, looking for tasty bunnies and squirrels, of which we have an abundance, to devour. Mostly they keep to themselves, so we leave them be, though there is an annoying beagle that comes into our yard and starts baying like Jesus Christ himself has returned to earth with the world’s largest dog whistle and two score of shock collars (which, if I’m remembering my catechism correctly, is exactly how he’s meant to return). This dog I would probably strangle if I ever had the chance, but he only comes in the middle of the night when we’re sound asleep and the rabid howling of a small dog can do the most psychological damage to us, and by the time we’re up and in the yard, he’s long gone since his job for the night is already done.

Figuring it was one of these dogs, I didn’t even bother to investigate further. Once inside, I found Libby in the office working on the computer and we started talking about something, probably how our days were or something else equally engaging since I don’t even remember the topic.

Then, quite out of nowhere, we heard a loud BANG.

“Um,” I managed.

“What the hell was that?” Libby asked. She was, of course, not wearing a shirt or bra because I demand that she is always topless when she’s home (for obvious health reasons). She got up and went into the bathroom to put a shirt on and I grabbed my freshly removed shoes and started lacing them back up.

We went outside to find two police cars pulled up to the side of the road by our yard. Outside the cars were two police officers, one of them holding some sort of assault rifle. And I’m not exaggerating here. It was an assault rifle of some sort. Granted, I don’t know enough about assault rifles to identify exact models on sight, but I know a regular rifle and a shotgun when I see them, and I have watched enough history channel and played enough video games to know that assault rifles, on the whole, do not look like either of these. Why on earth they NEEDED an assault rifle to shoot whatever it was that they shot was quite beyond me. Probably, they HAD the assault rifles somewhere back at base and were just waiting with baited breath for the day when they would get a call that would allow them to use them. And this, apparently, was one of those calls.

I surveyed the area and saw, in the exact spot where I’d seen the “dog” from earlier, a smallish heap of death curled up. It hadn’t been a dog at all, it had been a coyote.

Our neighbor Shelly came into our yard and said, “I saw him standing there earlier and he wasn’t moving at all. He looked like he was sick or something so I called the police.”

Very astute, I’m sure. Granted, it was a wild animal in our yard and I should have been more worried about it pouncing on one of us unawares and tearing out our jugulars, but I had grown up around coyotes and they really didn’t intimidate me very much. Sure they ate a few dozen of our cats in my lifetime, and we could always hear them off in the distance sounding like they wanted to rumble, but they invariably kept their distance and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case of a person who didn’t deserve it being attacked by one. If it had been sick, obviously that might have changed things, but, since the only evidence against it was that it was “standing there” not moving, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about someone coming onto my lawn and killing the wildlife, especially when it’s probably just an excuse to use a big gun.

Anyway, about then Libby came out and said, “What’s going on?”

“Go inside and take your shirt back off,” I said, flexing my pectorals. “This is man business.” I flexed again for good measure.

To which she punched me in the gonads.

“Urgh,” I replied casually as I crumpled to the ground. “Coyote,” I then added, motioning to the heap on the ground with my head, since both of my hands were busy clasping my roughed up jumblies.

And then one of the officers picked the dead coyote up by the tail and dropped it into a trash bag. He tied the bag off, went over to his car, popped the trunk and dropped the bag inside. End of story. Both officers got back into their cars and they drove off. Never once did either of them say a word to any of us.

After that, we stood in our yard—Libby stood, I remained curled up on the ground—and talked with the neighbors for a few minutes. Kurt and Shelly, though we’ve lived by them for five years now, are still relative strangers to us. We’ve shared a few casual conversations and we wave to one another when we meet on the street, but that’s about it. This time we talked about a number of things—I’m unclear on most of the conversation because of the throbbing pain in my groinal area—but eventually it came to pass that they offered to give us an old soft-tub hot tub of theirs. It had been unused for two or three years but, apparently. it still worked. This sounded like great news for my aching junk especially.

And so, I’ve decided to award myself ½ point for the night’s adventure. Granted, I didn’t have anything DIRECTLY to do with the destruction of Nature, but it did happen on my property and I did receive a free hot tub out of the deal. If that doesn’t earn me a half a point, then I don’t know what will.

Nature 3 ½--Pat 2 (Social Mores 1—Nature 0)--1/25/06

So I was out riding my bike today. Yes, I know, this introductory device for opening my little stories is getting predictably tired, but how can I be blamed if interesting things only seem to happen to me when I’m on my bike? I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that my life has reached such a non-interesting point that getting out on my bike is about the only time that life can broadside me, but I think it goes beyond that. I am in the process of formulating a new hypothesis (my earlier hypothesis that I am invisible has, in fact, become a Law now as I have been nearly run over far too many times—and only when I do not have a clearly visible partner with me—for it to be a coincidence. So deal with that, physics!). This hypothesis involves me being a foci for unusual events as soon as I start to pedal my bike—that, somehow, a nexus of weird follows me around, wherever I go. But I’ll better develop that once I’ve had some time to observe it more closely, now that I know what I’m looking for.

Doubtless some of you are realizing that it is the end of January, and there should be no way I’d be out on a bike when it should be below freezing every day of the week this time of year. However, I have been out a half dozen times already this month. We had our ten days of winter in the middle of December, and that is apparently all we are having this year. This is, of course, no evidence of a “global warming” trend. I know this because very important people have told me (not personally, of course, what self-respecting very important person would talk to me personally?) that this is true, and very important people wouldn’t tell me such things if they weren’t true.

Before I advance this story any further, I should warn everyone that this story receives an R rating. Usually my stories rate PG-13 (Mild Language, Wordy Adult Themes), so I don’t have to give warnings. But today’s story, I think, deserves an R (Wordy Adult Themes, Clearly Sexual Situations, Implied Partial But Lower Body Nudity) rating, so go ahead and delete this if you’re feeling easily offended today.

For a little over two years now, I have been making regular trips to Athletic Park here in Newton. It isn’t so much that I want to be boring and painfully routine, it’s just that repeated near death experiences have forced me off all but the most remote city streets, and the drive around the park offers me the best chance to avoid traffic because it is one-way (though, even then I had a car—driven by a very inattentive young Republican, I’m sure—that swerved into the parking stalls just last week to avoid hitting me). As such, I have some pretty set routines that I follow when I’m biking. I know how long it takes to make a round (4ish minutes if the wind isn’t blowing), where the best place to stand up on my pedals to stretch my legs is (the north side because there are trees on both sides and the least amount of wind), and where I’m most likely to be killed (where the one-way curves through the spot where the two-way street ends and all drivers always assume they have the right-of-way). As such, I tend to pedal through my bike time on auto-pilot, letting habit guide me while my mind wanders on clearly more important things.

It was while my mind was thus preoccupied that I very nearly failed to notice what was going on in the blue, mid 90s Chevy Lumina that was pulled into one of the adjacent parking stalls on the north side of the park’s drive. In fact, on my first pass, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was seeing, as I only caught it out of the corner of my eye before I had passed out of clear visibility range. It could have been someone sleeping face down on a reclined passenger seat. But it could have been something, er, other as well.

So I sped up to make my pass around the park a little quicker. There was, after all, a chance that the person in the passenger seat had suffered some terrible trauma and I might need to save a life. And how would I feel if my leisurely pace around the park got someone killed? Pretty miserable, I was sure.

On my second pass, I discovered that, in fact, there was a young man lying face down in the passenger seat, which was fully reclined. What I hadn’t caught on the first pass was the young lady who was supinely positioned under him. They were diligently exploring the inside of each other’s faces (how’s that for a mood killing image? But it is, basically, accurate).

“Huh,” I thought to myself. “Ain’t that a thing.”

I was a little disappointed that there would be no life saving opportunities, but somewhat intrigued by the brazen way these two were completely indifferent to what was going on in the world around them. After passing them by, and quite unrelated to what was going on in the car behind me, I decided to speed up my cycling pace again. In the name of better cardiovascular activity, of course.

As I swung around the north bend again, I slowed down somewhat as I stood up on my pedals to stretch my legs. I know what you all are thinking: “Pervert!” But not so! It is mere coincidence that this was also the side of the park that the couple were doing their business on. I am, as I said before, a creature of habit when I’m on my bike and the north side is where I do my stretching. I clearly stated that before, which, I think everyone will agree, makes it indisputable fact.

As I stretched my legs and slowly crept past the car in a not-at-all creepy way, I took the time to notice a few more things about the situation. The most notable of which was the very distinct, well, motion of the gentleman in the car. At this point it became clear that something altogether reproductive might be going on in the car and that it was not just a simple make out session.

As I finished my stretch and picked up speed again, I started to ponder the ramifications of this scene.

First, it was obvious that I would have to write a story about this. This was due to the an interesting aspect of this situation—that this couple, despite generations of social breeding to the contrary, was doing something distinctly private in a distinctly not private environment. This, of course, piqued my scientific curiosity. How could thousands of years of social structuring be so easily disregarded by some people? How would the other people in the park respond? What kind of car were they in so that I could be accurate when I wrote this all out? All of these questions and more raced through my mind as I instinctively sped up well past my normal pace to get back around sooner for further now-scientific study. I needed to find out more about this couple. I wanted to find out what made them tick. What was motivating them? What was their story?

Of course, these questions were going to be impossible to answer without actually talking to the couple, and there was absolutely no chance of that happening. So I would have to learn everything I could through simple, and wholly impartial and scientific, observation.

And, so, I made several more laps around the park. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to decipher a logical reason for the couple’s blatantly exhibitionist behavior—at least I wasn’t able to come up with any publishable findings. But here is what else I noted of interest during my trips around the track. On my fourth round, the couple switched positions so they were both lying on their sides. On my sixth round they switched positions again and the woman was on top. This seemed noteworthy to me because, obviously, the depth of their depravity was such that simple public acts were not enough to do the trick, extra positions were also necessary. I also noticed that, quite against all reason, this couple never looked up from their business. And the park was actually quite busy. It was about noon and many people, especially older people, like to go to the park over the lunch hour. Most of them sit in their cars and do crossword puzzles or doze.

At this point it seems worth mentioning that Newton has an infestation of old people. No, that’s not the right word. Infestation suggests that, with enough chemicals and elbow grease, the problem could be exterminated. Newton has an epidemic, no, a plague of old people. They are simply everywhere—driving fifteen miles an hour under the speed limit, in the wrong lane, and being just generally old all the time. And the park is one of their favorite places to be old in when the weather is nice and their rheumatism or gyp or hemorrhoids or whatever isn’t acting up. And old people are, of course, notoriously unsupportive of naughtiness. So I was fully expecting to see some sort of scene involving irate old people and coitus interuptus-ed young people on one of my trips around.

(Now, of course, I’m expecting to hear from many people who are offended by my crude joke at the expense of old people in the last paragraph. I also expect someone to point out that, now that I’m over thirty, I am officially old myself. To this I simply say, “Get over yourselves, I’m just joking.”)

But by this point I had been riding, mostly at twice my normal speed, for about forty minutes. My legs were beginning to burn and I was afraid that, if I made more than another round or two, I would be forced to get off my bike and use it like a walker to get my sad, old self back to my house.

Those of you who exercise are doubtless laughing at my patheticness—forty minutes isn’t that long, after all. And those of you who are out of shape like me and have tried exercising again after being inactive for awhile are likely feeling my pain. And, then, the rest of you are either not interested in exercising (and, thus, couldn’t care less and are only reading this now because you don’t have the guts to skip ahead to the next paragraph) or not interested in anything that I’ve written so far (and I can say what I like about you because you’ve never been paying attention in the first place, loser jerk that you are). And, thus, I have become all things to all people at this point! Well, at least as far as my options go for how people might respond to my exercising capacities. Still, it’s quite a feeling of accomplishment for me.

Anyway, I hated to leave the story without closure, but I was finding myself with few other options. If they kept at it like the marathon love-makers that they must have been (and, of course, I still couldn’t prove there was anything, er, penetrative going on at this point, I could never actually see anything but suggestive movement), then I was going to collapse into a heap and, quite possibly, die before he, she or they finished.

I decided to push on for one more round, and boy am I glad I did. As I predicted earlier, someone must have been offended because, when I came around for my last round, I saw something that made me laugh inside (though I kept my composure as I passed by). Parked alongside the Lumina was a police cruiser. An officer had interrupted the couple. The gentleman was already dressed—he was wearing a pair of jeans so it didn’t take much. The girl was straightening her easy access skirt. And that was all the proof I needed that something entirely natural was going on in that car. They both looked awfully embarrassed and the cop seemed visibly uncomfortable as well. Which I suppose was also appropriate.

And, thus my scoring adjustment for this little encounter. I gave both Nature and myself ½ point. I figure I get the half point for getting to witness something that I shouldn’t have witnessed. I deserve some credit for sticking to my exercise routine until something worthwhile finally happened. Nature I gave the half point because, as is well known, the procreative drive is second only to human nature’s desire to create order from chaos so that institutions of order can create their own special brand of chaos. So Nature got a half point for drawing those two out of their home or homes in the first place.

Then I decided that it was time to track another competition entirely, since I saw the results myself. Social Mores got the point this time since some cantankerous old person had called up the cops to put a stop to what was basically harmless fun (sure it might be a bit inappropriate, but nobody could actually see anything but smooching).

Of course, I’m just hoping that my earlier hypothesis holds true and strange things like this keep happening to me when I take my bike out. If it does, maybe I won’t mind nearly killing myself for forty minutes a few times every week.

Always Wear a Helmet (No Nature v. Pat Points Awarded)--11/8/2205

I've decided to start this email installment of Pat v. Nature by turning my traditional parable style (and, yes, I think that's the style that these stories would best fall into as I learned a few weeks ago in the Children's Lit. class I'm teaching that parables aren't just for you religious types, so don't start harking for the church to declare anathema on me) on its ear by starting with my moral: Always wear a helmet, or Don't let your children enjoy too much science fiction.

It all began, as usual, with my bike ride this morning. The weather has been freakishly warm here so far this fall, so I've been trying my best to make the most of it and muster (which, in my effort to spell things correctly so that my dear family won't spend ALL of their time doing it for me, I learned is also the name for a group of peacocks) the initiative to get some exercise. Just to set the stage a little, let me explain the equipment that I was using because it will be important here in a minute for visual effect.

I own a mountain bike. There are, obviously, no mountains and barely any hills in this area, but mountain bikes are much cooler looking than street bikes. Street bikes, I've always thought, are for athletes or posers. Mountain bikes are also for posers (like me), but at least they (the bikes themselves) are also pretending to be something far cooler than they really are. They are the SUV of the bike world, being not quite equipped to handle what they are supposedly intended for (rough terrain biking--ask anyone who's hit a small pothole or railroad track while on a mountain bike and they will agree with me completely) while at the same time being less well-equipped to handle even normal biking tasks (they are built to, again, supposedly withstand shock, so they take that much more effort to propel their extra girth). Mountain bikes--at least the ones that I've seen, and I am in no way an expert--have a secondary set of handles that stick up at a forward forty degree angle from the ends of the standard handles. This little detail is also important later on. At any rate, I am sure I look very cool riding around on my bike, especially when I wear what I was wearing today.

Because I have a notoriously short attention span, I need entertainment even while exercising or I almost immediately lose interest. For the past two years, I've relied on my own brain and a short repertoire of seven memorized songs, which I always sing in a certain order to myself. Because I am also panting between each lyrical phrase, this set of seven songs usually takes me almost exactly as long to sing as I want to be exercising. Recently, however, I found a portable CD player designed for use during exercise. It came with a case complete with a Velcro strap that is too small to wrap around ANY body part for security--so I strap it to the bar on my bike--and a set of wrap around ear pieces, meaning they wrap around the back of the ear, holding the earphones in place. This is great because they still allow me to wear my helmet. I always wear my helmet because I am a naturally cautious person and because I am somewhat paranoid for the following reasons: A) Certain special interest groups or political parties are trying to kill me; 2) Nature is trying to kill me; and %) I am clumsy and fully expect to plummet head first into a ravine at the first possible opportunity. To top this all off, I was also wearing my sunglasses because my largely indoor lifestyle has made the harsh rays of the sun unacceptable to my sensitive eyes.

Again, I looked cool.

So there I was, singing along to my slow jamz (spell check suggests that I mean “logjams”), pedaling into gusts of up to 30 mph. Growing up, I vividly remember that I wore a dubiously named jean style called Husky. These were, since there is no need to pull punches, for the chubby kids. They had elastic waists to accommodate a “growing child.” And kids KNEW that these jeans were meant for fatties, which meant near constant teasing on the playground (“Hey, hey, hey! It’s Paaaaaat Albers!” they yelled. Give me a name that can’t help but be confused with the morbidly obese Bill Cosby cartoon character and put me in Husky jeans and you have a recipe for body image issues. Excuse me while I weep a few bitter tears and then get over myself).

Despite a few years in high school when I think I was borderline anorexic, I’ve managed to maintain my “husky” stature throughout my life. Usually this doesn’t affect me that greatly. I am well-built for moving heavy objects, which means that I usually get to be on the most unwieldy end of the washing machine when someone is moving (unless Jon is around and I can big brother him into doing the hard work for me, since he is also one of nature’s heavy lifters), but that’s about it, unless I’m riding my bike, and especially in a brisk wind. Then, being built like a mainsail has its drawbacks.

To compensate for my broadness, and because it is too uncomfortable to lean forward on a mountain bike to make myself moderately aerodynamic, I have adapted a tacking method of bike riding—moving subtly back and forth as I head into the wind, I am able to reduce the wind resistance slightly, thus wearing myself out almost exactly as much as I would if I pedaled straight into the wind thanks to the extra work that I’m creating. Not the most brilliant method, I’m sure, but it’s what I do.

It was while swerving to and fro this morning that I noticed all of the leaves on the ground. Thanks to the aforementioned freakish weather, Fall has been dragging on forever here. The upswing is that we’re getting some truly spectacular colors from leaves that usually turn brown and die, or die and turn brown, however that works. The, um, downswing is that the leaves may never stop falling this year and completely covering the terrain. And the road around the park this morning was littered with tree trash despite the relatively high winds. If I weren’t using all of my extra brain cells to remember things like the theme song to Small Wonder (“She’s fantastic, made of plastic, microchips here and there.”) and who sang “Lady in Red” (Chris de Burgh), I might be able to remember some specific tree names to better fill in my Setting information here. I’m sure there were plenty of cottonwood leaves—I know that one because we have a cottonwood tree next to our house whose roots have tapped, if not the fires, then surely the disposition of Hell. I’m sure there are some leaves from plywood trees and gnarlybarks or whatever out there too. Who knows. Well, lots of people probably, just not me.

As I meandered back and forth, I started to play a game, seeing if I could swing around as many leaves as I could. Eventually, I came to picture the image of myself doing this from a third person perspective, wearing my glasses, helmet and earphones. I was obviously a space pilot of some sort, careening through a dangerous asteroid field. All I was missing was a microphone to speak into, but I didn’t have any trouble imagining that was there too.

Of course then I grabbed onto the side handles, since they would make for ideal flight steering. I could even put my thumbs on top of the handles to make like I was firing some sort of weapon. From here I added sound effects—“whoosh”ing occasionally as I veered around a leaf and “pew, pew”ing as I blasted some unsuspecting ne’er do well who thought he (or she, space is a very equal opportunity employer, we’ve learned) was going to do me a grievous disservice.

I even began to create a character for myself. I haven’t come up with a name, but it will probably be a tough sounding, single syllable first name followed by a surprisingly sensitive sounding last name—like Spif Sparkle or Rock Kittenfluff. I volunteered for service because the galaxy was at war and every able-bodied person was expected to serve. I was one of the best pilots out there, but I had a real chip on my shoulder—possibly because my parents were forced to work in mines or I was an orphan or something like that—and had a real problem with authority. Pretty stereotypical, of course, but this was developed over the course of about twenty minutes worth of bike riding, so what can you do.

Then I came up on an entire squadron of enemy fighters. They were sitting, unawares, on the road ahead of me. This squadron of about a hundred blackbirds—and possibly a few other birds mixed in to fill specialized field tasks—was filling the road in front of me. I’ve actually come to think of blackbirds as traveling in squadrons instead of flocks over the past few years because, during the month or so they are migrating through our area, they constantly strafe and bombard everything around our house with their seedy ordinance. But I suspect that the squadrons in our area have also recruited a few specialist dive-bombers, perhaps barn swallows. I’ve seen swallows fly down and peck a passing cat just for the fun of it before, but I’ve never seen a blackbird swoop down and try to hit anything squarely. They are precision instruments in that respect, designed to do a delicate task that they perform without flaw (at least that I had seen, probably there were scores of brain damaged swallows out there who had tried, unsuccessfully, to hone their dive-bombing skills). And, today, something was definitely in a swooping mood in the group of birds that was in front of me.

As I dodged the last few leaves and entered into the clearing, I set my sites on the squadron ahead and opened fire. As I grew closer, they scattered, obviously afraid of my terrible, lasery wrath. Or so I thought. After they took off, most appeared to flutter away, allowing my mind to stop paying attention to them and shift its focus to the fact that I was still exercising and was starting to wear out, thus distracting me for a few moments. A few of them must have decided to circle back to watch for just such a distraction on my part, because a few moments later I felt a “thunk” on the top of my helmet. Startled, I looked around, wondering if someone had thrown a rock at me and saw the tale end of a bird darting back towards a small group that had lighted in a neighboring tree. With that, I pedaled my uneasy butt right out of there before a Hitchcockian moment could occur, and I never looked back.

After some consideration, I decided that neither side in Pat v. Nature deserved any points for this round. Granted, Nature did take an actual, physical stab at removing part of my scalp, but only after I had caught them resting on their laurels and destroyed no fewer than a dozen of them in my head. I decided to call it a draw, at least until a technology exists that will allow me to mount working laser cannons on the front of my bike. Then those suckers better watch out.