i am indisposed

I dropped my tire off at the shop in a place called Tonopah and walked to the bar where the kid told me to meet him. Along the way I noticed that almost all of the cars in town were from another state. The plates came from California, and Utah and Oregon, and those plates that were from Nevada were old pickups like the one I’d ridden in on. I walked down the street like I was one of them, though I wore Polarflece and street shoes not Wranglers and cowboy boots. Since I spent the morning at a ranch house with a rancher’s mother, or grandmother, compared to those out-of-staters heading to McDonalds and on to Reno or Vegas, if only in the near-term,, I belonged, in a slightly less transitory way.

I killed some time in a café in one of the casinos. Strange little place. It was the biggest building in town, it looked like, but inside it was tight and foggy like they’d meant it to feel vaguely uncomfortable unless you were moving around. When you’re standing you think things will thin out if you sit down. Least that’s what I thought. It didn’t. Only got closer and tighter like a dream where you can never get out.

I took a seat at a stool in the café. It was the only place that didn’t smell like smoke or puke-choked alcohol. The woman took my order, just coffee. Brought me back something in a starbux cup, but it still tasted blank and chalky like diner coffee should. Must not have given me the good stuff. I reached behind the counter and grabbed a mug from a stack and poured the coffee into it when the waitress left. Hid the starbux cup on the floor so it wouldn’t spoil the scene.

Very red, it was. A little yellow, but if you squint when your there, in real life, you can see what the memory will look like later, when the past is a far preferable place. Real life is always in the present. Things are toughest when they’re neither to be anticipated, nor recollected yet.

I sipped the coffee and looked at the wall and the sink behind the counter and the door with five large double hinges as the ashy busman pulled the cart back there. The trays of clean cups and the sink full of ice. A stack, pyramid, of syrup carafes, some menus, ketchup bottles. The particulate matter of the diner world spread about in a consistent layer like sand nicks in a windshield. Things you have to work to notice.

Either way, time is wasted, dead or alive. I strolled out of the café after a refill or two, barely an hour later, and walked down to the bar to meet the kid. What do you think about in a place like that. If you stop thinking about the immediate future, you end up caught in the distant past. If it’s the 90’s or the 60’s it hardly matters, the now is less important even than the time just ahead. And the truth behind useless observations is rarely seen until it’s too late, if at all.

The kid was there behind the bar. I nodded to him and took a seat in a booth. He followed and sat down across from me. I said I’d buy him dinner, “I owe you bro,” I said. And he took off his hat for the second time since I’d known him, which doesn’t mean much since it hadn’t been 12 hours yet, but that still sounds like a cool thing to say. He pinched the point and put his hands on the brim and then set it down.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Not at all.”

The waitress took our order. Burgers, rare. As if there was another option. Two girls came in and Horace got nervous. They watched us and played pool while we ate. The kid stole glances at them and didn’t ask me any questions. I didn’t ask him any either, just noticed the way he ate and kept track of those girls. Focusing on a task he knew well and one he barely understood. They laughed, and I wished I was somewhere else. And the place I usually wish for is a place I had left heading for somewhere else. Funny how shit works that way.

No, I’m not going to say any more about that.

It’s hard to say when it all began. Things grade into each other like biscuits rising on a pan that’s too small. Some adaptations aren’t nearly perfect. It may have started when I fell off the ladder.

But you could say that climbing the ladder was the beginning, or when my ladder left the factory with too few rivets securing the little rubber feet that are supposed to keep the whole thing from crashing down upon you. But that may have been years ago and continents away from the little patch of dirt in my yard toward which I was just beginning to fall.

I had climbed the ladder to remove the old semi attached and rusting antenna. There was nothing on the main channels anyway, and only the buzz and apparition of something, but probably nothing, on channel two, which never comes in that well anyway.
So I decided to get rid of it all more or less; take down the whole damn thing and rip off the wire that dangled down the roof line and poked in a cracked window. It was all an eyesore. What can you do? I could tell how it was going to end, that much was clear.
The bucket I was carrying was heavy and full of tools and tar. To keep them from hitting me when I landed I let them pull me down to the dirt where I’d be injured for sure. How bad was the only thing up in the air. But the antenna at least was gone. All the channels I could already tell were the same, only static and gray noise. Every color but one. The color of dirt and the smell of roofing tar.

-M

I don’t know any of the girls at the bar, nor am I one of the pretty-boys with spit shined shoes and well coordinated pant-shoe-belt combinations. Rather than drinking alone or going up to a hottie who happens for the moment to be sitting alone at the bar I go to the bathroom or the payphone thinking that if I always look like I just got here and am scopeing out a target it’s better than sipping a beer or a cocktail alone. But people keep coming and going in a place like this. Every half hour or so there’s a whole new crowd, so it’s not like you can miss anything.

But I’m not stupid, none of those girls in the spaghetti straps out there are in love with the guys in the collarless shirts, who run from one to the other asking if their father is rich cause they’ve been running through his mind all night, or some other perfunctorily discharged pickup line. (more…)

Saw the Transformers Yesterday. Got to say it was pretty impressive. The original cartoon movie never did anything for me. And I never cared that it was all a big scheme to get me to buy toys. I love toys. I love watching movies about toys.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1_6D9QS9Y]

Still, I don’t know where this clip came from, but if I’d have heard Optimus Prime drop an F-Bomb when I was ten it would have rocked my little candy coated world. Maybe this is Cocktimus Prime.

-M

Victory Brew

Originally uploaded by i am indisposed

Here’s a picture of me drinking a beer in Ely last Saturday. This does not qualify as breach of my Monthly Challenge for the following reasons.

1) I was so tired I couldn’t taste it.
2) It was purely medicinal.
3) I had just finished riding Squaw Peak, which you see behind me, and descending same, being the only rider at the Tears Fears and Beers Ely Enduro willing to do so.
4) As a result of #3 I won said race.
5) It was White Pine Brewing Co. beer and the only beer I consumed that weekend after spending tons of time in bars and restaurants.
6) What I really wanted was another Gatoraide and a bag of Chewy Chips Ahoy!

-M

This is the last day of May and the last day of the Bike to Work Month Challenge. Mr. Rambler, whom I met for pints of Guinness the other day at Ceol (my favorite new bar with it’s no smoking, no gaming and friendly owner, Ron) rode over 500 miles on his cross town commute. I rode significantly less than that, but did ride every day and only bought groceries once by car and that was for P-Quad.

I got to thinking the other day about the idea of making a challenge a monthly feature of my life. Something to make me think about why I do the things I do. So with that I present the June Challenge:

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“The bad idea had now become an ill advised plan.”
Fitz Cahall

Just listened to The Dirtbag Diaries, which I learned about on The Cleanest Line. This is something you’ll enjoy.

It reminded me of a silly adventure of my own I embarked on the summer after high school when a friend and I floated the Kern River from Heart Park to CSUB through the metropolis of Bakersfield, CA on semi inflated sno-tubes. It involved a bit of walking around dams and sections too low to float, sometimes barefoot sometimes with one sandal because Jerry forgot his.

What we saw was a whole different Bako. Not any better though.

-M

When I was a kid and had to spend time in the “Nursery” at the 1st Church Of Christ Scientists in Bakersfield, California we did whatever we could do to pass the time. there were various wholesome toys and books and games, most of which featured inspiring, insipid bible stories, or morally righteous, farm animals.

Surprisingly the favorite toy was the relatively secular Ronald McDonald doll we found one Wednesday evening in the bottom of the toy chest, while the elderly sitter of the evening was lamenting her long lost youth and cuddling an infant. This particular Ronald Doll, pictured above on the right. Had a hollow cavity in his chest, which I learned was used to pneumatically power a whistle, which we never found.

This particular Ronald had rather horrific oral hygiene habits and had something really wrong going on in his lungs. Think a cancerous, sewer rat with infected tongue sores roasted in vinegar with a poached turd in it’s mouth.

We would squeeze the tummy and sniff the vaporous waft. Then roll on the floor wheezing with laughter and disgust. Only to sit back up and sniff it again.

While our parents were in the chapel convening on the meaning of metaphysics and sharing yarns about DIY deism, we were huffing the devil funk from the friendly man in yellow.

And we solemnly promise to watch and prey for whatever the fuck is wrong with Ronald to stay the hell away from our children.

-M

I’ve become a fan, if not of Franklin Mint Dolls, certainly of the conversations those wierdos have with each other.

I got the strangest one yet today. It took me a while but I came up with a response.

Wish I had a picture to post. Perhapse one of the zero fans of this blog could photoshop something for me…

-M