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.