The Rebirth of Enron

Encyclopedia Britannica describes the events of Monday, April 17, 1961 as the "unlikely, simultaneous occurrence of two unrelated but equally significant events in American history". Both events started small but soon snowballed into catastrophes that took on lives of their own, seemingly rolling downhill, faster and faster, extracting the requisite pound of flesh from those unlucky enough to be standing too close, laying waste to friend and foe alike, pitting brother against brother, family against family and country against country.

The first event, and the better known of those two events started when the US backed Cuban Exile Brigade invaded Cuba to promote a revolution against Castro and his revolutionary government. Today, we call it 'The Bay of Pigs'. That aptly named day started a chain of events that culminated in a standoff between superpowers and nearly ended in thermonuclear war. It didn't, but not because we didn't try. Basically, we got lucky.

The other event of note that happened on that day is they began construction of my house. It started small, but snowballed into a cataclysmic disaster for all owners of my house, past and present. This house is a nightmare from a safety point of view, a fecal pile from an aesthetic point of view and Enron reborn, from a financial point of view. Nobody who lives in this house emerges unscathed.  An entire banking conglomerate was put out of business just by reading over my loan application.

Last July fourth, the deck stairs finally buckled, the rotten supports giving way, the only injury was to my son, who found himself freefalling to doom, only saving his own life by an act of superhuman strength and agility. Well, not really.  Basically, he got lucky.

A friend of a friend came to my house yesterday to give us a bid on a remodel job. We showed him around, we told him we want this done, we want that done, don't fix this thing but we have to get that thing fixed etc. It took two hours and ten minutes from the time he pulled his car into the driveway until he left.  I timed him. It took ten minutes to show him what we wanted fixed, and then he stole two hours of my life telling stories about other remodel jobs he did over the years.  I had to listen to inane stories about his childhood, which was bad enough, but then he amped up the pain with an un-amusing anecdote about his ex-wife and her strange affinity for Robert Goulet music and baby oil. I was at the end of my rope. How  long do I have to listen to this yap yap garbage? It went on forever. I finally showed him to the door and told him we didn't have any money to pay him. He left pretty quickly after that. That's how I get rid of salesmen. I admit I have no money. You know what they say; “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Speaking of the truth, it's time I faced my own truth. My foot isn't getting any better. In fact, its worse. Everyday, from the time I get up until about noon, I limp like a leper, then from noon to three, I limp a bit less, then after three I limp like an actor on 'The Walking Dead'. The pain wanders up and down the Richter scale like an oil well pumping up and down in the drylands of West Texas. I think I need to pull the plug and participate in the Lake Stevens Ironman from the bleachers. If I don't, I think I might have my own Bay of Pigs right here. My house can't take any more trouble.

Lost

Ironman participants or triathlon participants have been observed to be an odd group. By odd, I don't mean the opposite of even, as in “I was riding on an even number of tires, then I ran over a broken beer bottle and got a flat and then I was on an odd number of tires.” What I mean by odd is “He is so odd. If he keeps doing that, I think he will break at least one leg.” That is what I mean by odd. Triathletes are odd. Another description of triathletes is that we are Flagellants. Wikipedia describes Flagellants as:

Flagellants  Flagellants are practitioners of an extreme form of mortification of their own flesh by whipping it with various instruments.

So there.  That's good to know.

I am not going to bore you with a ride report from yesterday, although I could. Lots of stuff happened. And, I am not going to give you a blow by blow of the truck and twenty four foot boat combo that tried to run my daughter and I off the road, although I could. It was pretty exciting. What I am going to tell you about is getting lost. I got lost at least three times yesterday. My daughter was riding with me so technically she was lost too, but if you asked her at the time, she would have said “I'm not lost, I'm with Dad.” It's hard to find a flaw in that logic train.

Anyway, I had a map and I got lost and I sort of feel bad about it. What kind of an idiot gets lost with a map? Guilty. 

In case you didn't know, getting lost isn't a binary solution set, with the 'lost' or 'not lost' attribute potentially applied accurately based on your location. It isn't that at all. Getting lost or being lost is really just a shade of gray in how we perceive ourselves. Getting lost is an emotion. Getting lost is a state of mind.

One end of the getting lost gray-scale goes like this: You are in the middle of a bad dream where a talking bear asks you where you are and you say “I don't know” because you are trapped in a windowless box and you don't know where you are or how you got there. That happens to me a lot and trust me, that is as lost as you can get. I hate bears.

The other end of the lost gray-scale is this: The realization that getting lost is a state of mind. Everybody has been lost, or claims they have been lost, but I submit for your consideration that if you are reading this, then at some point after you declared yourself 'lost' you must have become 'unlost', thereby proving that your claim of being 'lost' was a temporary state of mind. Becoming 'unlost' proves you weren't really 'lost' at all, you just thought you were.

Yesterday, I think I was dead-smack in the middle of the lost gray-scale. Three times. One time, I had to ride up and down a two mile long climb to become unlost.

I want to thank the young lady who ran the SAG wagon for yesterdays ride. She is a true angel of mercy, offering sustenance to those in need. Hey, what does SAG stand for?  I asked a couple people yesterday, nobody knew.   

I was going to run a couple miles after yesterdays ride, but my foot has abandoned my triathlon dream of victory, so I went to the “Chicken Drive-Inn” and got a milkshake after the ride. I swear, I didn't make that name up. The Chicken Drive-Inn has good milkshakes, although their pricing structure is baffling.

I asked the gal at the Chicken Drive-Inn ordering counter what SAG stands for.  She stared at me, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and asked what I wanted. I said “I want a plain strawberry milkshake please” and I handed over some money. She took my money, counted it and held her hand out for more money.  “Do you want real strawberries in your strawberry milkshake?” 

I thought it was sort of understood that when you order a six dollar strawberry milkshake, you get some ice cream, milk and strawberries all mixed up, and I said so.  “For six bucks, I want real strawberries.”

Apparently, she didn't like my counter-productive attitude. “Real strawberries make it a premium. You want a premium milkshake. Those are two dollars extra.” I was going to argue with her, but I really wanted that milkshake, so I dug through my loose change and gave her the money while I mumbled that this was still America and real strawberries should be part of the price of milkshake.

Then she hit me with the zinger. “You are so odd. Are you a triathlete?”

How do you spell Podiater, Podriatrist, Podiatrcianer ...Foot Doctor?

History books have entire chapters filled with nothing but lists of noteworthy men and women, each line defining in short summary the contributions of those individuals, some small or large thing they had done, each event leading the human race to a brighter future, each act blazing a path for rest of us to follow. Some were scientists, some were artists and some wrote works of literature. As a small gesture to honor a true American, a poet, a leader among leaders, a tremendous individual, here is a quote from the towering visionary himself;

Lookit here son, I say son, did ya see that hawk after those hens? He scared 'em! That Rhode Island Red turned white. Then blue. Rhode Island. Red, white, and blue. That's a joke, son. A flag waver. You're built too low. The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. I almost had a gag, son. Joke, that is. 

Of course, you recognize those famous words, spoken over a half century ago by the great Foghorn Leghorn. I think a moment of silence is in order.

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Last week, I was trying to get a bit of training in that didn't involve running, so I decided to knock out some core work. I really need core work, but its kind of uncomfortable so I generally skip the core workout in favor of a couple cookies. Unfortunately, I was out of cookies because I ate them all the day before, so I was stuck with the core workout.

Instead of crunches and planks and the other crap that hurts, I got the standup paddleboard out for my core workout. I put the paddleboard in the lake, stood on the edge of the bulkhead, then I made a poor decision. I make few decisions in my life. If you don't make a decision, then you can't be wrong; That's my motto. I think Foghorn Leghorn would like that. Refuse to decide. I am pretty sure he would agree with that logic. Anyway, I made a decision and it almost worked out.

The thing is, when you go paddleboarding, you have to get on the thing, so you follow the mounting process, as agreed to and published by the International Association of Standup Paddleboard Association. This process should be your first choice and is in fact the most common choice to mount a Paddleboard. Basically, you get in the water next to the paddleboard, flop your belly up on the paddleboard, grunt out loud, wiggle up until you have your weight balanced in the middle of the paddleboard, grunt again, then you get on your knees, then stand up. That's what most people do and it involves a minimum of two grunts. If the aesthetic of that procedure eludes you, know this; You are not alone. I find that method dissatisfying from both a visual perspective and from an efficiency perspective.  And, I find it repugnant due to the severe lack of originality. So, I engineered the 'new and improved' method.

This new and improved method, now referred to by most professional paddleboarders as the 'Terminator' is quite simple. You position the paddleboard in the lake, six inches from the bulkhead, hold your paddle in one hand, then jump aboard. The lure of 'The Terminator' is the simplicity, the elegance, the massively improved athletic grace involved in getting on a paddleboard. Admittedly, it's just a shade more difficult to pull off.

My dog must have moved the paddleboard between the time I jumped and when I landed. I think that is the case because right after I deployed my 'Terminator', my left shoulder hit the dog when I fell. He must have been a bit groggy from when I landed on him because he didn't recognize me for about ten seconds. I mean, why else would he bite me? That dog loves me. My shoulder where I landed on the dog only hurt for a while. Maybe a couple days, tops. Not a big deal. The bleeding from the dog bite stopped right away, so that worked out too.

See, when you are training for a triathlon, something always hurts. Some of the pain is superficial and you need to ignore it. It's not a big deal. It's the other stuff that causes the most trouble. The real injuries are a concern and need a little attention. In this case, the bigger problem was my left foot. Its been four days and the foot is a dark blue color, sort of the same color as the LA Lakers away jerseys. The Lakers home jerseys are yellow. My foot is definitely an away jersey color.

Now, I can barely walk without whining like a schoolgirl. I don't know what happened, but the left foot must have been caught under a rock or something between the time when I fell on the dog and he bit me. I don't want to go to a doctor because that would lead to a full leg cast, which might slow me down in Ironman Lake Stevens, fifteen days hence.

If the human imperative is the first and best purpose of our lives, what ancillary function do our our other pursuits serve? What value do we realize by training for a triathlon? Notice, I didn't say 'competing' in a triathlon. The numerical probability of me participating in Lake Stevens is in the single digits right now. Yesterday, I think I was somewhere around a six percent chance of hearing the starters cannon. Today, maybe eight percent, but that extra two percent isn't due to a great improvement in my podiatrianic health. I watched an Ironman training video so I will feel guilty if I don't show up.

It sucks. It Sucks Bigtime. I don't face my troubles. I never have. Ignore them and half of them just fade away. I am hoping I can walk sometime in the next two weeks.