just the facts, ma'am.

i was going to wait until i had some kind of cohesive thoughts to put together, but really what i have is a bunch of bits that are unrelated except that they are part of the general narrative.

friday i went in for ECT and after dr. r. got me all hooked up for the EEG and ran the test strip, he rolled up the strip and put it in my pocket. so here's what it looked like: "blink your eyes three times and then hold them tight shut".

and then afterward my mom took me home so i could sleep and of course i couldn't drive, so mrs. crashco came to pick me up in the afternoon when i woke and we went to perellie's for a buffalo chicken pizza and a little light dessert.

then we went to rumblestrip's concert, which we liked quite well. i was familiar with much of the music on the progam, which puts me at liberty to be attentive to the performance instead of having to wrap my brain around new material as well.

i got to see some people i hadn't seen in ages, and the crashcos and i got to marvel at the level all this rain has brought the floodwaters to. the crashcos brought me home and it was interesting to see where my road was more washed-out than it had been earlier, and we speculated on how long the road would remain open.

my plan was to wake in the morning and go to the geocaching event in barre, but as the night wore on with less and less sleep i became less inclined to go. i'll spare you the details about the night horrors, but i will tell you that it really sucks to wake up choking back vomit.

i finally got to sleep sometime after the sun came up, but then around the ten o'clock hour the phone calls started coming in.

my friends are bulldogs and will not let go. they promised to harrass me until i agreed to get in my car and come down. and happily rumblestrip, who had already decided not to go, came with me for company.

we were both on some sort of schedule; rumplestrip had another concert at which to be, and because i had a bike race in the morning i needed to find a place to attend a saturday afternoon service. i have not missed a week since i started going to church, and although i prefer my home congregation, i have been among congregations spread pretty wide across new hampshire, vermont, and new york. people of God are pretty easy to find if you're looking for them, and all i wanted was to go and be among those gathered for worship. call me a radical or call me sloppy, but i do not believe bob is all that fussy as to which day of the week you show up.

bob's time is now and ever, eternal.

anyway, on saturday afternoon there aren't that many choices. and in addition, crashco and i needed to go inspect and preride the racecourse and this church is nearby and Mass is at 5:30. so i got into some presentable clothes, bike clothes on underneath.

and i went. i wonder how badly i stuck out as non-catholic?

and then crashco and i went to have a look at the course. all you really need to understand about it is that it has been raining for twelve days and that the ground is wet. where the trail is usually packed, it is loose. where the trail is usually loose, it is like pudding. places that usually sport hardpack and grass still had grass, but there was a lot of standing water. all the exposed rock was slippery.

lovely conditions if what you like is hub-deep quiver-sucking mud and spongelike waterlogged turf. i don't run very well on these conditions anymore, so it was not enjoyable for me. i say "anymore", because when i started out it was a very rainy summer and i learned to ride in that nonsense; i was a mudder.

but no more.

so. i managed to get some sleep and i managed to get to the starting line in time to go. it was close, but i was there. and i finished the course. i had to; i'm the defending champion and although i harbored no illusion about the likelihood of actually winning, i knew that finisher's points will go a long way toward defending my championship.

and it IS my championshp to defend.

i will not trouble you with all the details, but i will tell you that it was a difficult afternoon. i came in DFL (= "dead last") by such a large margin that by the time i came up the chute, the awards ceremony had concluded and the last of the cars was pulling out of the parking lot.

i've been DFL in a lot of races. some of them are my proudest moments. so don't try to pin what happened next on my placement:

i came home with a crushing, heaving depression. i came home wanting to give up completely. "i'm done", i said to no one in particular. but i was ok with it. it's ground on which i'm familiar.

but later on when rumblestrip called, it clipped me off at the knees. i could not stop crying.

so now i'm hung up on The Great Ambivalence. people say that the ECT is helping, but i don't see it. and i hate the treatments. a sense of dread is accumulating in my soul and the sorrow is visceral.

some days i remember some of what happened; today i can't remember anything. and i still feel weird, like i'm still partly drugged. there's probably a good reason why they don't like you to drive on days when you have treatment.