The Animate-Inanimate or Evidence of Time Travel

Do you ever get the feeling that inanimate objects have a life of their own but that they're really good at covering up their tracks? Well, I might have evidence of not only inanimate-animation, but time travel as well. Either that or all of that UFO activity in this region back in the 50s wasn't so far-fetched after all.

Yesterday I rode my bike out to Oracle. I stopped at the market at Oracle Junction and my bike computer put the trip at twenty-five and a couple of tenths miles. I went into the market and got something to eat and drink, caught my breath, and went back out to my bike. I filled the water bottles up with the drinks I had bought, put my pack back on, my helmet, gloves, sunglasses, and I was ready to go. I looked down and my odometer was at 67 miles.

I kept switching through the screens to see if I was looking at it wrong, but no, while I was in the store my bike traveled forty-two miles—and quickly, too: I probably averaged thirteen miles per hour on the way out but the average speed had popped up to an average of twenty-eight miles per hour! I kept track all the way home and everything was back to normal—distance, speed, cadence, all were accurate. Now, unless this market is actually a government secret installation doing some really whacked out things with electronic signals, and if you don't come up with ridiculously ludicrous explanations like the magnet was lined up with the sensor in such a way that even though at rest it registered movement, the only reasonable explanation is that my bike took off without me.

Okay, I'm a realist. I don't go for much mumbo jumbo or outlandish "phenomena." I'm willing to admit that maybe the bike didn't just go off on its own, travel a round trip distance of forty-two miles and then slip through a time-wrinkle to get back to the market before I missed the bike and simply forgetting to reset its computer to where I had left it. I can concede this. I suppose it is possible that a person from the future came along, borrowed the bike, took it for a spin, and then brought it back to a time before he or she took it. And maybe he or she forgot to set the computer. This is actually a more likely and far more plausible explanation because there's no way that I know of to deduct miles from a bike computer without completely resetting the distance. If the bike did this on its own, then I'm sure there would be a way for the animate-inanimate to do such a thing, since they'd be in cohoots. But if some being with the ability to time travel came along and borrowed and then returned the bike, then he or she would not realistically be able to reset the computer to where I had it. The only way to do that would be to keep track of his or her own distance and then reset the computer to zero when he or she was twenty-five and change from the market.

Of course, I suppose it is completely reasonable to realize that just because you can travel through time it doesn't mean you're going to be smart enough to remember every last detail. Occasionally you're going to slip up and leave a little piece of evidence behind. I think we should all start compiling the evidence. We need to catch these bastards before they wear all our stuff out!

El Tour is Coming! (AKA, Kill Me Now!)

 

Today was Stephy's baby shower and, since I was being turned out of my house like a common wastrel, I figured it was a great time to get in a good long bike ride. I've only done two long rides this year, El Tour de Phoenix, and Tour of the Tucson Mountains—both about 70 manageable miles. I thought I'd head out and do about 60 miles today, out to Oracle and back around.

I'll tell you right now, I only did 51. It was windy as it has been in a long time. Most of the way out (which is uphill) it was fortunately at my back. That helped. Still, by the time I got to the Biosphere 2 site (okay, Biosphere 2 is about 22 miles north of Tucson—do you know where Biosphere 1 is?) I was ready to stop for a rest. My weird little heart/chest thing acted up and I hadn't been drinking enough. That was probably the biggest cause, too. What didn't help was my hydration preparation. I took two water bottles and full hydration pack. Unfortunately, I completely froze the hydration pack, one of the bottles, and a quarter or so of the third. The pack never melted so I basically hauled it around on my back the whole time. The fully frozen bottle was still half-frozen when I hit my halfway mark. The first bottle still had a nice chunk of ice in it as well. There's no way I was able to drink enough at that point. Fortunately, my turnaround point was a small market just beyond the Oracle turnoff. Of course, their card reader was not working and they could only take cash. Luckily, I had a five dollar bill and was able to get a Nature Valley peanut better granola bar (delicious), a small Gatorade (not a big fan), and a "green tea" flavored Sobe drink (Foul—have these people never tasted green tea? I think it was high fructose corn syrup flavored!). I ate the bar and took a few sips of the Sobe and then poured the drinks into my water bottles, drinking what didn't fit (ice takes room, you know).

It was so windy coming back that there were several spots where I was almost literally blown off the road. Kind of scary, really. There was a ride a few years ago where I was just a bit north of that very spot and my bike was actually blown out from under me. This time was close, but I never lost control of the bike. Today's high was 93 degrees, but it definitely did not feel like it most of the time. The wind really kept things feeling cooler. In fact, any time I stopped the wind wicked away any sweat and made it down right chilly. It took a lot longer coming home than I had planned. It's almost all downhill coming home, but even pedaling downhill I was often only going twelve or thirteen miles per hour. I'm slow, but I'm not that slow! Not downhill, anyway.

I can definitely say, though, that I can't claim to be ready for El Tour. If I had to ride El Tour today, I might have finished it—I'm masochistic that way—but it would have taken a lot longer than ever before. That's probably going to be true when it actually comes around, unfortunately.

Democratic Debate #264,002

I'm watching the latest round of Democratic debates and I have to say that Hillary is the best Republican running in the Democratic Party. She's really into the "we don't have the votes so we can't do anything" rant: Too many of Hillary's statements reek of the status quo. I still like Joe Biden, but he's an also-ran who hasn't done well in the past. But he's pretty good on the environment and other domestic issues that have been too long abused and ignored. I like Gravel's and Kucinich's flat out dedication to peace and diplomacy. Dennis Kucinich is probably the best American of the bunch, along with Mike Gravel; however, the likelihood of people voting for an elf and a cranky old bastard are pretty slim, especially after eight years of buffoonery, but you never know. We've gotten pretty used to having an ass-clown in the White House so maybe it's not too much of a stretch to think we might make the transition from clown to elf. If only he was a bit more handsome an elf he might be more palatable to the general public.

Burn, Burn, Burn, Said the Greenie…

I like to think of myself as being conscious of my impact on the environment. I like to work toward reducing that impact. That said, I have to admit that this weekend I spent about an hour doing something so decidedly anti-environment it surprised even me. And I did it on purpose. And I enjoyed it. I paid good money to do it, too. I bought a weed burner.

A weed burner is a magic wand that hooks up to a small propane tank, ignites, and shoots a flame out the end. The idea is to burn weeds between the cracks of your sidewalk and other similar places. I burned damned near my whole yard.

With the rains of this monsoon season we had so many weeds my gravel-covered yard looked almost like a pasture. I was able to kill most of them with a simple vinegar spray. This works pretty well without dumping poisons into the groundwater and leaving poisonous residues behind to poison your pets and small children. But, as with even the best weed killers and herbicides, the weeds might be dead, but they don't magically disappear. However, if you have a magic wand, you can at least convert your dead weeds into a black patch of ash that will generally wash away with the next rain. Of course, in the process, you not only add to your carbon footprint by burning propane, but you also create a foul smelling, carbon-spewing smoke from burning weeds.

It would have taken half a lifetime to attempt to pull these things and many of them are so strongly rooted it would have been all but impossible. I weighed the options and went with destruction and mayhem, slash and burn, and burned, burned, burned my way through the yard. And, to no one's surprise, I'm sure, I did this right after taking a shower and putting on clean clothes—so I had to take another (water wasting) shower, do laundry, and wash my now ash-blackened shoes.

Anyone got a match? My front yard is starting to look like a jungle....

The Origins of Me

I am a second generation American. I am a child of the children of the Depression. I am Slovak, Gypsy, English, Scotch, Cherokee. I am the son of an orphan. I am a hillbilly, a Michigander, an Arizonan. I come from Baptists and heathens. I come from science and literature, nature and education. I am a Baby Boomer. I am a child of the generation that walked on the moon, fought for civil rights, rediscovered the voice of protest, and fought for the environment. I am the American melting pot. I am all of these things and none of these things. I originate from many places and cultures, yet no one of them quite defines me.

So who am I? What defines my culture? I come from a family of six children from two different fathers; I am both the middle child and the eldest child. We have not traditionally been a particularly close family. I hope that changes with my children and their children. I hope we are always close. I have no desire to ever be distant from them, physically or otherwise. I want to be connected by knowing where they are, that they are healthy, to help them when I can, to be there one day when they realize I always meant well.

I hope my children believe they come from a culture of fairness and equity, of social responsibility, and a sense that doing right and choosing well are the most important things they can do for themselves and the world around them. I hope they have a sense that it is important to preserve the natural world around them and to protect species that cannot protect themselves. I want them to know that none of us is perfect. We all make mistakes and none of us manages to skate through without ever compromising. Sometimes we even have to compromise on those things we don't think should ever be compromised; sometimes we are weak.

Do my desires, thoughts, and opinions originate in some distant past? Are my origins the blueprint of my now and my future? I don't know. None of us knows. True or not, I choose to think we are not locked in to our behaviors. Our history is unchangeable, learning from it is optional, but never does it mandate acquiescence to a predetermined future. Changing our habits and our behaviors is never easy, but it is possible. Whatever my origins, I hope my future simply reflects those things I want for my family and the world that looms before me.

Um, American Express what?

Imagine an attention span so short that you open a window to post an entry on your "blog" and then...well...and then go so completely blank you have no idea whatsoever of what you intended to write about. Hello! That's me. I'm watching TV thinking it must have been sparked by some idiotic commercial, but who knows.

I did just see a commercial for the new Halloween movie, directed by Rob Zombie. Joan and I think we should write a Broadway play: Halloween--The Musical. "Jason's got a problem with his self-esteem/Has to wear a mask to make the good girls scream." I think it would be a runaway hit.

Oh, yeah. Just remembered. Kind of anti-climactic, I suppose, after all that lead up, but all I was going to say is I think I'm going to go out and get an American Express card and then go buy an outrageous number of something completely insane. Then, of course, dispute the charge when they call me to confirm it:

"Mr. Kmotorka, did you recently purchase 12 gross of schraeder valve caps?"

"12 gross of what? Shraeder what? NO! No, I didn't. I don't even know what the hell one of those things is!"

And "poof!" the charge is gone.

Anyone need a schraeder valve cap?

Asmanex?

As someone with asthma (fortunately very mild), I at least listen to commercials for asthma medications. I keep seeing one for Asmanex. Someone explain this to me: The commercial features a woman who claims that she felt she was using her inhaler too much--as much as twice a week! Twice a week is excessive? Whatever. The interesting part is that this "excessive" inhaler use has driven her to her doctor in search of Asmanex--an inhaler she can use every single day in addition to the regular inhaler she has been hellishly attached to up to twice a week. How does that follow?

Salmon Enchiladas with Mesquite Tortillas

Joan and I were out shopping at the Oro Valley farmer's market and someone was selling mesquite tortillas. Of course, I had to have them. Joan and I came up with this incredible recipe and decided it must be shared with the world. OK. Let's be honest. Joan pretty much came up with the recipe, but I did help make it!

I know finding mesquite tortillas will be an all but impossible task for some of you, but damn were they incredible!!! I'm sure other tortillas (flavored or otherwise) would be good, but in many ways I think the tortilla really made this recipe. They have a slightly sweet, smoky, nutty flavor that's really unique. Whole wheat tortillas might be the next closest thing. Not sure.

Anyway, I highly recommend this recipe. It was that good. And pretty simple.

SALMON ENCHILADAS

6 Mesquite Tortillas

10oz Salmon

3 roasted Poblano chiles (diced)

1 bulb roasted garlic

1 diced mango

1 cup organic whole black beans

1.5 cups low-fat mild cheddar

160z jar 505 Southwestern Organic Green Chile Sauce

2 TBLS Cotija cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray pan with cooking spray and cook salmon. Combine flaked cooked salmon with diced mango, Poblano chiles, garlic, beans, one cup of the cheddar cheese and approximately 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the green chile sauce. Divide into six equal portions. Fill and roll tortillas with the mixture.

Spread approximately 1/2 cup of the chile sauce into the bottom of a 9" x 12" baking dish. Arrange rolled and filled tortillas evenly in the bottom of the baking dish. Cover with remaining chile sauce. Sprinkle remaining cheddar cheese on top.

Cover baking dish with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an addition 5 - 7 minutes until hot and bubbly. Remove from oven and sprinkle Cotija cheese on top. Let sit for approximately 5 - 7 minutes.

Serve with corn cake and green salad and enjoy! Great with a cold Corona with lime.

Cadillacs

I've always said Cadillac has been consistent in one thing--they've always been able to make one of the ugliest vehicles on the road. These flamboyant vehicles are invariably driven by the garish or the senile. Well, yesterday I saw what may have to top the list of Silliest Damned Things I've Ever Seen. Maybe it wasn't, but it was certainly stupid looking: A two -toned ElDevilleDorado with low profile tires and rims that looked like shiny old-fashioned silver sheriff badges. Who the hell would drive something like that?

Microsoft Educational Pricing

I've decided to buy the new Microsoft Office 2007. More and more of my students are using it and I figured it's time to get up-to-date. Besides, it'll take care of the questionable "legitimacy" of my current Office Suite.

Being part time faculty at Pima Community College, I figured I'd take advantage of the educational pricing that Microsoft offers on their products. In order to do so I needed a faculty ID. I was told to go to the cashier's office and they'd fix me up. Great. I went down and all I had to do was write down my name and what I teach. They told me to stand on the "X" and they took my picture (no one told me I was supposed to be pretty for this thing!). A minute later I had an ID with my photo on it and a barcode and all that good stuff. As I was leaving I asked the girl, "How do you know I am who I said I am? Shouldn't you have asked me for a photo ID or something?" She giggled and that was that. But seriously, shouldn't she have?

Anyway, I ended up trying to order the software over the phone because I didn't know how they'd handle proof of ID and all of that. Turns out you copy your ID and FAX or email it to them. As I was having one of the guys in our prepress department scan my ID, one of the other guys asked me why I needed it. I told him. He asked how much it was. I told him. He wondered why I didn't just order it online. Of course, I explained to him that Microsoft, being mindful of how difficult it is for a student to afford these things, offers great educational pricing. He popped up the OfficeMax web site who had it for $20 less.

Instead of confirming my ID and ordering, I of course canceled the order and told them why. Then, out of curiosity, I checked a few more sites and found it at Amazon.com for $30 less, no tax, and free shipping. In the end, by buying my software from Amazon.com instead of through the college/educational system I saved myself $60! Sixty bucks!

So, my question is this--who the hell is coming up with this "educational" pricing? Dick Cheney? It's a shame when companies take advantage of students or anyone else by advertising "special" pricing. It's special all right--no child left behind special!

Rules of Nature

An oft overlooked law of nature is this: If you believe you are about to run out of something and buy more, what you had will last forever. If you don't buy it, you'll run out tomorrow.

Cannibals

Human shall not kill human. It seems simple enough. But if not each other, whom? Or what? Certainly we've been anything but discretionary when it comes to killing, but nothing has quite compared to the special thrill of killing one of our own. We have evolved with a genetic predisposition toward eliminating those who are different than ourselves and have been blessed or cursed with an uniquely refined ability to find differences everywhere. We're just giddy with the desire to kill everything. In the beginning it was a way to ensure the survival of the species. We shared the land with several hominid species. One of us had to come out on top. At least one supposes that to be the case. We certainly believed it and did a bang up job of it. The last of the bunch to most closely resemble ourselves, the Neanderthals, have been gone for about 25,000 years now. Maybe we didn't kill them off. But I bet if we didn't, we gave it the old college try. Since then, of course, we've moved on to those who aren't quite so similar and, in the absence of those other great apes, those who are so similar as to actually not be like us, but are us. We've about done away with the chimps and the gorillas. We'll finish off the orangutan, too. But they're second thoughts these days. A done deal and therefore less interesting. We've gotten the taste for ourselves and will attempt to work our way around the wheel on that one in due course.

For some, it is easy. There are people aplenty who are so obviously different that hatred and vitriol are easily directed. Whites target Blacks, or anyone who comes in a shade of brown. Blacks may target Whites, or anyone who's less brown than they are. Everyone hates the Arabs. This one hates that one, on and on. Wherever there is an easily identified difference, there is hatred. But we don't stop there. We seek out differences. If there is no difference in appearance, we find one of belief. Religion is among the greatest of these imagined differences. Muslims hate Jews. Christians hate everyone else, and even each other. Buddhists, well, okay, I don't think the Buddhists hate anyone--but I'm sure they are hated by many. More death and persecution has been done at the hand of religion than any other. Shia and Sunni, Protestant and Catholic, Christian and Muslim, this tribe versus that tribe, on and on ad infinitum. Some of us, of course, have evolved even further. We have gone beyond the need to destroy others and have moved on to the evolutionary pinnacle of self-destruction. Americans are especially good at this.

What drives a species to a level of such self-loathing that it seeks to take down all life around it in a blind drive to conquer differences and spread the cancer of homogeneity? We see it everywhere. We travel to the world and expect everywhere we go to be exactly like the place we have just left. We move from the Midwest to the Southwest and the Southeast Northwest because we see something beautiful and so different from everything we've known. We then work diligently to replace native plants with those we left behind. We grade the earth around us in order to pave and build up everything in a cheap and tawdry imitation of the last place we lived. Within a few decades the only difference is the weather. But we're working on that one, too.

We no longer want our food to be regional and distinct--we strive to replace everything with the same flavorless, characterless meal options throughout the world so that we never have to deal with surprise or anything different than that which we are comfortably familiar. We like the security of knowing that we can travel anywhere in the world and walk in to the same sterile fluorescent-lit boxes and order the same meals-by-number that we can order at home. Anything less might taste of cultural acceptance, or strangeness, or difference and these are all flavors we cannot abide.

Our food has become tasteless, but by god it all looks the same. Walk into the produce department of the nearest nameless chain grocery and you will find hundreds of apples that look exactly alike. All of the potatoes and onions and tomatoes and heads of lettuce are identical. Our orchards might as well have the Photoshop logo on them. Take someone on a walk in the woods sometime and hand them a wild blackberry or raspberry and watch their reaction. Once you manage to convince them that it is indeed edible, they'll try it and their eyes will pop and they'll wonder what's in it that makes it taste so good. Oh, it must be the fresh air and being outdoors. No. It's called flavor. We've bred it out of our food in favor of uniformity. Wild fruits are ugly and different. Take the same person who loved that wild berry into a grocery store and put them between two bins of fruit, one wild and the other the product of selective farming. Which fruit will he or she pick? The bin where all the fruit is big and shiny and identical. Unless, of course, the wild version is inordinately expensive--then it might be bought as a luxury item. But that's a whole other issue.

What's to be done? Anything? Will our driving urge to eliminate all that is different--everything being us versus them--lead to our own extinction, the penultimate evolutionary end? Or is there a way out? There are pockets of hope, small voices in the wilderness calling for acceptance and restraint, diversity and change. But those voices have always been there and they have always been beaten back and held at bay by the stronger voice of human nature. But there are new tools out there that are making the world a much smaller place and allowing those small voices a chance to be heard. Like the song says, "It's a small world after all," but is it small enough to change?

Portland Twilight Criterium

Health Net sponsors the Health Net Portland Twilight Criterium every year (they have offices there). We've been wanting to go for a few years now so decided to go this year. Then it worked out that Joan had to go there for some meetings while we were going to be there so her trip got paid for--sweet! There were really only a handful of pros in the criterium. A guy from Jelly Belly (I think), Jittery Joes, BMC, a Navigator, a few others. Most of the guys were Cat1 and Cat2 racers (there was also an amateur race before the "real" one).

It was amazing how fast some of these guys just got blown out of the field. I mean, these guys were absolutely flying around the course. It was about a half mile course and they were averaging about 32 mph the whole race (one hour). In the initial 45 minutes the idea is to get in as many laps as possible. If you get lapped, you are out of the race. Probably half the field (the Cat2s?) just got shelled. Then they probably halved the field again by the last fifteen minutes. For the last bit they calculate the average speeds and determine a number of laps. In this case it was 15.

Now, if you get lapped, you're supposed to be out, but for some reason they did not bump the guys who got lapped on the last 15--which probably would have been another half. The guy who won, John Murphy, just kept increasing his lead. He had a good 20 seconds on the field and lapped quite a few guys (as did many of the guys behind him). Before the race the guys came into our little VIP reception for a meet and greet and I immediately commented to Joan, "Holy shit. Look at that guy's thighs!" He's the guy who won.

So, the HN riders took 1st (John Murphy), 2nd (Doug Ollerenshaw--who's from Portland), 4th (Kirk O'bee), and 10th (Roman Kilun). The guy who took 4th, Kirk O'bee, got his pedal clipped on the final turn by the guy who took 3rd. In a pro race the other guy would have been penalized for cutting like he did on that turn, but they ignored it. O'bee would have had 3rd otherwise. O'bee had just won the National Criterium championship. So he's in good company--the three national jerseys are...can you tell me? Road: George Hincapie; Time Trial: Dave Z.; Criterium: Kirk O'bee! They came in afterward and shot the shit for a while and had a few beers. It's kind of cool getting to hobnob with them.

I almost forgot, Joan got to go on the team bus! I was walking by (I had gone to the bathroom) but didn't hear them knocking on the bus window--so Joan got off the bus and we wandered off. And THEN she told me she had been on the bus!

Introductions, please....

Who knows how often this will get updated? I certainly don't. This could very well turn into that stayathomegrampa.com thing we were kidding about! In the meantime, check in now and again for updates and ranting. I'll try to offend you as often as possible.