arrr, matey.

who would have thought there were so many open networks all around? if i'd have known they were all over down here, i wouldn't have put my game on hold. i'm playing ikariam, but that's another story.you can look for me on the iota server if you've a mind to.

right now i'm just waiting for my haircut appointment. the great thing about that is that i won't have to wash my hair myself later, and that on subsequent days it will take a lot less shampoo.

after i get my hair done i'll go find some geocaches, i think. the weather is clearing. this morning i went to worship at the east arlington federated church they're UMC and UCC, so i'm right at home. i was among them one sunday a couple of years ago when i was camping up on kelly's stand and i promised them i would visit again. so they're why i stayed up there last night, instead of a different campsite not as scenic but with better amenities.


last night it was pretty chilly on the mountain, and although i forgot to bring the comforter that goes over the whole mess of other bedding, i was still warm enough. it rained pretty hard in the night, and the sound of the rain is soothing to me. the campstie itself is a place where to mountain streams converge and it's so beautiful you almost don't know what to do with it.

i don't know where i'll end up tonight, but i at least know where i can stop to rest, and maybe have a pizza besides.

in the old days i used to cache more frenetically, but this living on the road which used to be a means to an end is now the end in itself. it is a concentrated way to live, out of my car.

today at church i was talking to a gentleman who heard me say i was staying in my car and made sure to ask me if i needed help, to tell me that there would be help for me and that i need not be ashamed to ask.

very sweet of him and i hope i would behave similarly in the same position, but i assured him that although i am presently living in my car, i do have a home of my own to which i can return when i'm done traveling. and i do have a church home to which i will return as well.

they told e again as they told me last time to come back and visit. i promise i will.

peregrine

thursday i took off on the road. it's not anything like roughing it and in fact i won't be really roughing it ever, i guess. it's pretty posh living in the back of my car, which i'm not doing yet even.

so far i've been staying with the flyingfishers, which is familiar and good. flyingfisher makes a very good turkey soup. yesterday i actually went caching with flyingfisher, my first caching in a looong time.

on the way to one cache we came across a vernal pool where there was a huge -and i mean huge- mass of frog eggs, in two clumps and the tadpoles, very, very teeny, were just emerging from the eggs. and then we saw other movement in the pool and we happened to catch newts mating.

of course we aren't -or weren't- up-to-speed on the particulars of that act, at least as it applies to newts, so when we got home of course we had to go look it up.

you can go look it up if you want. what was interesting was that we weren't exactly sure of what-all the steps were, and which players were which. we speculated as to the behaviors and the mechanics of this species' fertilization, and whether those were additional males and whether they would compete for mating rights.

turns out that after some courtship (which may or may not occur, depending on the laziness of the male and the receptiveness of the female), the male drops a packet which the female picks up (or doesn't) and manages for herself.

there are some available articles about this arrangement and how since the female not only has total control, but that she typically will accept packets from three males, there isn't any significant competition among males for mating rights.

as for diet, we learned that these guys will eat anything that's living and mouth-sized, which explains why the whole thing took place amount the hatching frog eggs.

who among us hasn't ever been toasty for a snack afterwards?

so everything we saw down at the pool was explained for us very nicely and flyingfisher got some good pictures and i got a few seconds of video.



and we had a lovely dinner of take out indian food.

i slept too late in the morning, but it's rainy and i'm not in a very big hurry to get to my campsite down south.

even so, it's time for me to get on the road, maybe get a haircut and find a place to go to church in the morning.

where have you been?

well, it's been a while.

and i cut most of you out of the loop, but i wasn't writing anyway.

a lot of stuff happened.

there were some hospital stays, and i lost my job, and Barbara has left our church.
that's all pretty fresh and i'll probably have some things to say about it, but not just yet.

tomorrow i'm hitting the road and going on peregrination, which david says is a lot like pilgrimage, except with no fixed destination.

i have some waypoints loaded and i'll probably spend some time in the ADKs and central NY, maybe going as far south as NJ. we'll see.

small slice

i know it's been a long time since the last time i wrote. an awful lot of stuff was going on over here and a lot of it cut too close to center, if you can imagine that. i didn't want to talk about the depression, which was bad. i didn't want to talk about the very bad thing that happened, nor the prophetic dream, nor the worse thing that happened, nor the couple of weeks in the hospital.

i don't think i'll ever talk about the very, very bad thing. i'm still having a hard time getting over it.

but with all this stuff i didn't want to talk about, you can perhaps imagine how it was that i had a hard time getting started writing about the things i was willing to talk about.

so i think i just want to tell you about a small sliver, about an hour and a half from this afternoon.

i don't know what the weather was like today at your house, but here the sky was clear and bright blue and it was chilly out until the sun warmed up the places where the sun was shining. so a walk down the road was warm and cool and warm and cool and so on.

i have gone on at length elsewhere in this blog about the fact that i live in west bolton, a place i have loved with all my heart ever since i was sixteen. downtown west bolton isn't much more than a four-way stop. nashville road (halfway down the road are four houses and an intersection with a dead end. this is nashville. it says so on the map.) anyway, nashville road is the main approach from more populated areas. it's mostly straight and mostly flat and it approaches our downtown from the west. to the south (i'm heading counter-clockwise, or widdershins if you prefer) - to the south is stage road, the only alternative that isn't a dead end.

i live up stage road.

the eastern arm of the intersection is short and steep and it would go right up the mountain, but it stops pretty early on, but there used to be mills up there. to the north is cemetery road, which used to go all the way through to underhill (although they have a different name for it on their side) only now its cut off just past the cemetery by the giant NO TRESPASSING signs. actually, it's kind of weird coming up cemetery road because for most of the way there are tall fences and barbed wire and no trespassing signs on both sides, all the way up to the cemetery.

i set out from my house in the early afternoon, tossing not-my-cat (more about her some other day) out onto the porch. while i was in the hospital i developed the habit of going for walks as often as i could. my shoulder hurts a lot and i don't want to ride. but it was very pleasant, all the way to what we call downtown.

we're not being funny, calling that one intersection downtown; in the last years of the nineteenth century it was a boom town. there were mills and stores and smithies and farms and granaries and houses. lots of them. but in the early years of the twentieth century the government bought some of the land west of cemetery road and north of nashville road. at the beginning of world war I the army bought more of the land and used it for a training encampment.

then it kind of waned for a while, but eventually the government decided to make it more of a permanent training facility. they use it for a firing range for both small arms and large artillery. it has world-class nordic skiing trails. it is one of the nation's foremost training grounds for cold weather rescue and law-enforcement officers from all over the US come in winter.

all through the twenties and thirties the government acquired most of the farms and buildings. there was much talk later on that the government had forced out the residents, but the truth is that it was all hardscrabble farming and it was the depression and the government was paying a little more than market value.

the buildings were bulldozed and the debris cleared. everything along one side of the road was now firing range. except for this one long corridor up to the cemetery, which is still active.

when you get to downtown, the millbrook (once again, not just a fancy name. if you walk along it, you will see the ruins of some of the mills.) anyway, the millbrook is just a little bit down cemetery road. a narrow bridge goes over it. i went down the little path to the water, and i thought i'd look for a holed stone to give to Barbara. it's supposed to be lucky to find a holed stone, and lucky to receive one as a gift.

i found four.

and there's this collection of big rocks under the bridge. well, not really huge, but big enough to sit or lie down on, and i like these rocks very much on their own merit, but i also like them because they remind me of a day when i came here with Flyingfisher and Tharagleb. my favorite picture of Flyingfisher is one in which she's standing in the sunlight against the bridge abutment.

i want to get over to those rocks, but i have to go up and over the road. there's a little red eft sitting very still on the top of one of the rocks, but he has this bug on him and i think it will do him a favor to take it off.

but the eft falls into the water, in a place that has to be the rough equivalent of me falling off of niagara falls. he's teeny, and in comparison this little part of the rapids looks HUGE. i'm so saddened, but there's nothing i can do, i think, having considered plunging into the water to try to save him. and i'm just sitting on the rock when the miracle happens: i see him swim up to a crack in the rock and once he surfaces it takes him a while to climb out and he doesn't seem worse for wear.

the miracle, of course, is not that he swims to safety; that's what they do. they swim. the miracle is that i was there to see it.

i lie back on the rock for a while, staring up. my favorite color is that particular green of leaves against a blue sky. then i sit up for a while, looking upstream at the swimming hole and the falls above it. i listen, maybe for God's voice, maybe for something else. i've been struggling with bitterness in my soul and the chatter of it is overwhelming a lot of days.

quietly, i come up from the streambed and keep walking up the road. in a few minutes i am at the ruins of the baptist church. i stay there for a few moments, facing the center of the church, where some of the larger trees are larger around than i could reach.

i get up to the cemetery. there's a blue car parked up there, but i don't see anybody. i open the gate and go in. it's an active cemetery, although there are many graves from the early nineteenth century. the veterans all have fresh flags on their graves, except for richard bacon. usually he gets a fresh flag, but for some reason not this year. maybe someone forgot? he is unusual for a vermont hill cemetery because although he was a civil war veteran, he served with the confederate army. they give him a confederate flag.

i walk around and pay my respects and i notice with some alarm that they seem to be running out of space there at the back of the cemetery. i want to be buried here, i think. i'd better get jumping.

but then i go an lie down in the shade of a tree, near some of the union veterans and i hear gunshot, whic would not be unusual, since this is a firing range, except i thing this is illegal firing -probably just target shooting- because it's coming from the wrong direction.

huh, i think. good thing i'm on the ground.

so i keep my head down and i'm enjoying the relative peace and i hear the boys come out of the woods and they're talking about stuff, getting ready to go and i know they can't see me and they don't know i'm there, which scares me a little when they squeeze off a couple more shots and then the really startling thing happens: from the OPPOSITE side someone shouts "HALT AND CEASE FIRE!"

and the boys peel out down the road and i'm standing there wondering what will happen if the guard comes my way.

they don't. i assume that they hear the departure of the car and turn back.

i figure it's as good a time as any to brush the moss off of me and head for home.

snow

my neighborhood kids have all gone to ground. in the wake of the valentine's day blizzard they've dug holes in all the snowbanks and when you drive by, heads pop up out of the holes, kind of like prairie dogs. so far the children have stayed clear of my snow fort. one day last week a kid started to cross over in front of my house and i had the urge to go out and tell him to get out of my snowbank.

terrific. i'm forty-two years old and i'm ready to become that cliché old guy, shaking a fist.

i have a valentine on the wall over my desk. a handmade valentine on pink paper, and covered with glitter. all the writing is in the scrawl of a young child. the artist has her locker near my classroom this year, on the senior hallway. the valentine is from very long ago.

when the kids give me artwork, i save it in a file and when they graduate i give it back. sometimes in the intervening years i take it out and look at it.

dave melted down today. the work he was looking at seemed unmanageable to him and he couldn't cope. "you're important to me", i told him. "i want you to trust that i'll help you break it down into pieces you can handle." we moved on. i checked his work. we went to lunch.

"you hate me", he said.
"i think only one of us gets to decide that."

i have learned that "you hate me" is what he says just before he's ready to let it go. hey, whatever helps.

there's this other kid. "when it's time for you to ask for recommendations for your college applications, please remember me", i told him. i'm pretty good with a recommendation letter, and sometimes my letter tips the balance. mostly i think it's because the letters i write are usually for kids for whom i volunteered to write.

i kind of had to explain to this kid what goes into a college application, but he looked up at me and said "wow. that means a lot to me."

you kind of have to know this kid to understand, but he is smart and funny and thoughtful. he cares about the way people behave. he is resilient. people have told him he'd make a good priest, a good teacher, a good businessman. the truth is that he will be good at whatever he sets his hand to. he knows what it's like to have life knock you around a bit, and someday i think he'll come out on the top of the pile.

glad you didn't

i laugh a lot at work. middle school kids are riotously funny, and not in the unintentional way that little kids are. they're at an age where they're beginning to develop adult personalities. they're starting to really get irony. they have a terrific sense of the absurd, of the weird.

of course they're also testing boundaries. it's their job to push limits. it's our job to keep them safe. i have to step in frequently and quash inappropriate language and sometimes subject. i'm pretty inflexible on that point. the kids are always shocked to learn that i have music on my ipod that would not be suitable for class. the classroom, i keep telling them, is a polite environment.

one day a long time ago a bunch of eight grade boys were talking in a corner and i heard one say "well, that's a lot of titties first thing in the morning." and i was about to step in when i saw another boy lean in. "yeah," he said, "but how many of them are milkin' head?"

welcome to dairy country.

about the same time we had this one eighth grade kid who was having trouble with the standard middle school discipline. he got up in the mornings and did a man's work, went to school and then in the afternoons he went home and did a man's work at a man's wages. he was having some trouble with being treated during the day like a boy.

and because he was making a man's wages but had no housing costs, he was making buckets of money. i asked him what he planned to do with it all. "i'm going to put it away and buy myself a house and a car", he said. i said i thought it was admirable. "a lot of young guys can't see past beer and pizza", i said.

"oh, don't make fun of them things", he said. "us men, we like beer and pizza."

sweet kid. i wonder where he is now; i hope he's well. i hope he has that house and that car. i hope he's happy.

heroes

i loved fred rogers. when i was a kid i used to rush home after school to watch him and if i hurried and got the timing just right i could catch he light at the corner and beat the schoolbusses onto the street. if it sounds to you like i was driving, that's because i was. i was never interested in mr. rogers when i belonged to the target audience, but i loved him at seventeen.

why? because everything else on television in the afternoons was at the very least fun at somone else's expense, and there was fred, promoting kindness and decency.

i'll tell you something: i was at home sick the day anwar sadat was assassinated. they got the footage of the assassination in and put it right on the air, without editing it. there was blood spurting from arteries, body parts strewn about. the carnage was filmed up close. in all the subsequent airings, the worst of it was cut out, but it was still pretty horrific.

because i was sick, i felt too bad to change the channel. i was already dizzy and nauseated. and when the wave passed and i could get up, channel after channel (pre-remote) featured violence of some kind.

except for fred.

i was so happy to see him that i cried.



and a long time ago i was at a high school soccer game and a young woman on my team scored an own goal. a thing like that would have killed me, but she kept her head and kept going, scoring two goals to answer, thereby becoming the MVP for both sides. i think of her sometimes, when i've made a mistake and i have to make it better and continue on. she was to me the very picture of composure under such a situation.



and there's this kid i know who is aggressive and loud in his response to stupid stinking racism wherever he finds it. i think he actually goes out of his way to find it sometimes. he is a young man of courage and determination. i hope to be like him in that regard. he is going to stand tall and cast a long shadow.

hotel new hampshire

well, i'm over here in durham. i came for a school visit at oyster river middle school. i'm unaccustomed to travel for work; usually the farthest i travel is the cafeteria. it's a pretty long drive from home and farther from work, so i'm staying. i might could go that far tonight, but it's safer for me to stay over and rest.

maybe this is all kind of gee-whiz-look-at-that, but breakfast is pretty good and they drop a newspaper at your door in the morning. makes me feel almost like a grownup.

this aftenoon after school there was still some good light, so i went for a little light geocaching. you ust KNEW geocaching would turn up somewhere, didn't you? the snow and rain earlier this week coated durham pretty bulletproof. it was impossible most places to kick in, even with tough boots. at one place i had to buttslide down a little hill and it was a scary, bumpy ride.

at the bottom i found a recently dead squirrel. i know it was fresh because it wasn't frozen solid yet. no apparent wounds; it looked sleek and healthy, except for the part about being dead.

last night i had dinner with the Flyingfishers. she made a really good stew with chicken and sweet potato. some kind of mexican dish, i think. and monty was pretty cranky. i'd be cranky too, if i had to wear a cone on my head. he had a mystery wound. pretty nasty looking. and he looks so sad about the cone. i felt tlike i wanted my head scratched, just looking at it.

and me, i'm having a rough week. i have no idea what happened, but monday after lunch i started to feel kinda bad. i didn't know what was going to happen, but i called rumblestrip to tell her i didn't feel good. then i went to the gym and worked out like usual. all through my workout it was all i could do to keep from crying. by the time i got home, i'd had it. i was done and i didn't care. i cried for a while, but then i got my stuff together and i was heading out the door when the phone rang.

rumblestrip, of course.

"i'm coming over", she said.

and i let her do it. i'm not sure why. but she sat with me until it was time for bed. in the morning i got up and went to work. it was a hard day; it's no small thing to work a full day after a thing like that.

and darn. sitting here right now, i just felt my heart rate race. it's a problem i've been having a lot. last couple of sets of bloodwork i've had, i came back with elevated thyroid function, which is kind of surprising because i'm taking lithium, which will depress thyroid function.

come to think of it, a thing like monday could have been partly caused by thyroid problems. maybe it's worth considering.

i'll let you know how it goes. i've got to go find some dinner.

trick question

so today this kid comes into my classroom and pursuant to another conversation, he says "i have a sister in 6th grade", and he names the feminine equivalent of his brother's name.

"so", i said, putting down my book and taking my feet off of my desk, "think carefully. this is a trick question: is that meant to insult your brother, or women in general?"

"my brother", he says.

"think again. use your logic. if calling him a girl is meant to be an insult, the implication is that girls are inherently inferior, which is kind of an insult to every woman on the planet, and we don't like it."

he listens, but does not give any indication if he hears or not. at any rate, it is the kind of thing i can say to him, because i've known him a long time and i have much respect and affection for him, which i think is mutual.

the conversation moves on to basketball, which is what he'd rather talk about, anyway.

and i stepped back and had a good look at him. i remember when he was a teeny little boy, but today he is tall and handsome. he looks for a moment like a real man, which he'll be soon enough.

i fell in love once in the produce aisle of the supermarket, over the tomatoes. the man had blue eyes and hands that were lithe and graceful. he smiled at me and we exchanged a few words and in those few seconds in my head i had already married him and borne him children.

yes, it was a surprise.

i don't know why i did not offer him my number. i kept going back all summer to see if he would return. i spent a lot of time in the produce aisle, different days, different hours. an eggplant groupie.

and then last week i was in traffic and the guy in the car behind me caught my eye. he had red hair, a red beard, red moustache. i'm partial to redheads. i was originally a redhead myself.

well, truthfully, i was bald until i was almost three, but eventually i became a redhead.

but he was kind of fretting in traffic; maybe tired, maybe late.

i love you, i thought. and it was true. i don't know where he went; i lost track of him after he got on 289. but i loved him. hoped for the best for him, sent my heart out to him.

i don't know why.

but the light turned green. i lost him. wherever he is tonight, i hope he's well.

little match girl

it was the last night of the year.

it isn't yet, but it's pretty close and tonight i was thinking of deebs, who even as a grownup used to cry if you said that first sentence. fortunately, the older sister wasn't usually present to deliver the torment and for some reason i was too kind although kindness isn't really my thing.

i think i may never be warm again; i started being realy cold somewhere around two o'clock this afternoon and even though i've had a hot shower, i'm not really caught up. maybe tomorrow i'll have a sauna.

i'm home from the party, even though the party will be gong on until monday around noon. i considered staying, but i have church in the morning and plans on monday. besides, i've had some insomniac nights and i need the rest.

i don't know if you've ever suffered chronic insomnia, but when you go enough nights without any restful sleep you become desperate. it is a special kind of hell to lie quietly awake and watch the hours tick by until at last it is late enough that you know painfully well that even if you fell asleep now and stayed that way until morning you still won't have enough rest to get up and go to work.

but you get up and do it anyway.

so.

it's time for bed. wish me luck.

catch and release

for reasons known only to me and maybe rumblestrip, that's the title of today's entry. never you mind why.

anyway, i realize it's been a while since i wrote and you know something? when you keep putting it off the project gets bigger and bigger. i decided this morning that i don't want to have blown off the entire month of december.

it's really nice out and although i am tempted by a new cache that hasn't been logged (online) yet, i am not outside. it is the first real winter day we've had yet; it is about twenty degrees and sunny. the topography here at my house is like this: ___________^

i live about five miles down a dirt road that goes across a long, low wetland and then you turn right downtown

(we actually call it that: downtown, even though all that's left of a once busy town center is an old silo and a four way stop. i may have said it here before, but it used to be that you could stand on the steps of the baptist church and look all the way through the notch.

you can still stand on the steps of the baptist church, but there's nothing else left of the church and the cellar hole is all treed in.)

anyway, you turn right downtown (your only choice except for the dead ends) and follow stage road , which is the boundary between the wetland on one side and bolton mountain on the other. i can't quite describe to you how dramatic this demarcation is. around here these days the sun comes up after nine in the morning because we're right up against the mountain and it takes that long for the sun to clear oxbow ridge.

in the late afternoon it's very pretty, though. from my livingroom couch i have a view of mount mansfield, and here at my desk i look out on the two ridges, one in front of the other. the near one, not as high, isn't frosted over, so that makes the far one that much more dramatic in the afternoon sunlight. brown. white. blue. and blue and blue.

besides the fact that i'm trying to catch up on some things at my desk, there's a big roving geocaching party taking shape for the entire honkin' weekend, but i only have tonight and tomorrow available so i'm also charging up my devices, installing new software, and otherwise getting packed to go.

last time i wrote it was thanksgiving week, which was mostly uneventful except for that somewhere out there i lost two things: my wallet and a coin. you can replace the contents of a wallet, but rumblestrip gave me that coin last winter and ever since it has either been in my pocket or in my hand.

courage, it says on it. rumblestrip wishes me to have courage. sometimes it comes in handy to be reminded.

two things happened to me the week after i got back. 'member that turkey breast that i bought on the wednesday before thanksgiving? well, i drove around with it in the back of my car for a week, and then thought to bring it inside and put it in the refrigerator and in the night i woke up with a hunger headache and pulled off a hunk and stuffed it in my mouth.

i wouldn't have bothered to think of it except that tha following day i went out caching with Tharagleb and i felt plenty queasy in the car, even though i was in the front seat. it took a day or two to settle out, but in the end everything was ok.

but the other thing was that i got busted for speeding on route 128 in westford. 67 in a 50. one hundred and forty-four dollars worth of busted. the ironic thing is that i habitually DO NOT SPEED on route 128. on the interstate it's como un pipistrello d'all' inferno but on 128 i do not generally speed.

so in the morning i'm coming over a hill into westford and i pick up too much speed and i think to myself "jumpin' jiminy! i am going way too fast." and i hit the brakes and that's when i saw the officer and i think he might not have noticed me had it not been for my sudden application of the brakes.

and of course i had neither license nor registration (see wallet, above), so that was fun.


so i called school to say i'd be late, only sally knows my first class is at ten and nobody was overly alarmed, except it's wednesday, when my first class is at eight-thirty, so that's a significant difference and nobody caught the error until the principal walks in and my class is there, but i'm not.

it took a couple of hours to get it all straightened out and everybody was sorry i'd gotten ripped a new one, but i was just so relieved it wasn't my fault that i didn't care.

--

dave said the greatest thing to me a couple of weeks ago: "we used to think you were mean", he said, "but now we understand you're just trying to teach us."

cool.

we've been working on this project about the circle of fifths (the governing principles of key signature) and the idea was to have the kids sound out the scales and then figure out the patterns. this one kid comes up with a set of simple rules completely unlike any other interpretaton i've ever seen and it looks improbable to me, but i get out my pencil and paper and darned if it doesn't work.

best original thinking i've seen in a long time.

but it is a hard project and i flit about the room, prodding, cajoling, and giving hints. some of the children do not have patience and are frustrated. i keep telling them, over and over: "i will not let you fail. i will not let you fail."

and i'm repeating it to myself over and over as i drive along nashville road and my voice fades into bob's voice and i know i'm being Spoken To.

i will not let you fail.

--

the coin showed up at the way bottom of one of my bags, and when i called rumblestrip to tell her the good news, she assumed at first i was talking about the wallet. "no", i said, "better than that."

it turned out that i was a missing person for a while. if you're going to be a missing person, as far as i can tell, it is much better if you remain blissfully unaware that you are missing.

when i am out caching, my wallet sits in a deep breast pocket. normally it would not fall out.

but i was in stanley park in westfield MA

(the first time i was in stanley park it was summertime and i was in love. stanley park is beautiful and even though it's been over a year and a half since the breakup, being at the park is kind of bittersweet.

someday if i have time i'll tell you about that breakup. the whole thing took about seven minutes. it started with "honey, what time are you leaving for connecticut in the morning?" and ended with "i'll have my stuff out in a month."

the lesson?

when you mean to say "i am angry that you did not jump at the chance to go to my father's retirement party when you found out you unexpectedly had the day free" you should not say "i think we ought to break up".

likewise, when you mean to say "i think we should talk about this but i don't want to talk about it right now just before i go to work", you should not say "i don't think there's anything to talk about".)

uh, anyway. the ground was kind of spongy and slippery, and it was covered with about four inches of fallen leaves, so on the rougher terrain i kept falling in such a fashion as to be head down.

i don't remember being down by the riverwalk in westfield, but it's plausible enough and that's where my wallet was found.

the guy turned it in to the police, who treated me as a missing person until the nice detective found a current post online and discovered that i was alive. due to the general circumstances of my life and my answering machine, i was slow to catch up to the story and did not get my wallet back until Christmas day in the afternoon.

i have a childhood friend who lives near westfield and who was coming up to see her mom.

the wallet still had the cash in it.

sometimes life is amazing.

and thngs would be just about perfect if i was sleeping nights, which i'm not, because i lay there awake with a heart rate of about 120. the topic comes up for conversation with dr. novas, who is kind of concerned because my last set of bloodwork came back with hyper thyroid indicators, which in and of itself wouldn't be terribly worrying except that i'm taking lithium, which will depress thyroid function.

so the general idea is that primarily i need to be getting sleep, becuase failure to sleep is for me much deadlier than an overactive thyroid.

my engine's running too fast, i need a haircut, and i have a bazillion things to do this afternoon before finally i get on the road to Flyingfisher's, from whence we will stage tomorrow's outing.

i got ta go.

truck lane 500 feet

that's what it says on the sign in front of me; i'm pulled over to the side of VT route 9. i stopped to check my map and fix the zipper on my ski pants and i noticed that my computer had connected to someone's network.

i left Flyingfisher's house later than planned; i slept kinda late and there was breakfast and we kind of sat around talking a little.

even so, i managed to find ten caches (nine?), the last two in the dark.

i've had my very luxuriant dinner; i bought a hot turkey breast. and i had a fruit smoothie, a couple of little corn muffins, some cheese, and a very fine cream cheese brownie.

i also did a little light shopping and bought a roll of paper towels and a pair of sharpies. i don't understand what happened to my sharpies, but i had a surplus of them when i left work monday afternoon and all of a sudden i can't find any.

maybe it has something to do with the way my gear gets packed in the car. because i live in here, i have to be very precise in where things go. everythign has a bag; glove bag, raingear bag, cache stuff bag, cache pack...

anyway, if a thing gets put in the wrong bag or falls onto the floor, chances are pretty good that i won't find it until i get home.

well.

it's about 1900h and i'd better get going, or i won't get all my water heated up and stuff ready for bed.

hope you're all having a good week.

way past odd

hey, it's only a few days later and i'm writing again! i'm almost caught up in my geocaching logs; i might be able to finish them tonight, if i get lucky and/or ambitious.

i've seen dave a couple of times since i last wrote. he's doing really well. it's hard to get him to start his work, but with some gentle prodding and much patience and good humor, he gets to it.

i used to have a kid in class who, when i said to him "you are an odd child.", he answered with "i am way past odd."

i loved this kid. every day he had something new and fresh to say. quirky sense of humor.

he graduated, went off to college, came back home.

he waited on me at the hardware store today. he is tall and handsome, polite and competent. he has a wife and child. he's a fireman. i have never forgotten him. i still love him. i've wondered sometimes where he is, what he's up to.

now i know.

open letter to "dave"

hey, dave?

it wasn't so bad today, was it? i know you melted down last time i saw you, so you weren't sure how to make your re-entry. you insisted that i hate you.

"i think only one of us gets to decide whether or not i hate you", i said.

you sat beside me, making editorial comments, quietly returning to that one point. you took it as evidence that i wasn't calling you up to talk to me earlier in the order. and just as quietly, firmly, patiently i kept explaining to you that i was calling whoever's name was on top of my stack.

you kept up with the comments, but as time went on i felt that you meant it less. you were uncoiling some. the truth is that i love you. you don't feel it and i don't think you'd believe it, but i hope that in time you'll come to know it as surely as you know anything.

and i'm sorry about your meltdown. i know now that it was a case of misplaced anger; it wasn't originally me you were angry at, but then when you tried to tell me about it, i didn't really hear you.

my fault. i realize that i was on my lunch break, trying to eat and get back to class, but ultimately my allegiance has to be to you and not to my own lunch. i failed you in that moment and i'm sorry. we both paid for it later. maybe i'll learn something from this. maybe i'll get some insight about how to talk to you, how to make you feel welcome and loved, safe and enfolded.

so. i'll see you again in a day or two. i'll try really hard to be patient and meet you where you are.

believe.

time flies

all right, so i blew off the entire month of october. i'm sorry. i got caught up in some other stuff.

for a couple of days i was kind of weirded out by the effect you get when people with whom you are not actually that intimate kind of assume that level of friendship from reading your blog. and to a lesser degree, when you are standing there having a conversation with a live person and you KNOW you didn't tell them that one thing, but they pick up the conversation there anyway.

i knew what i was getting into when i started writing all this; it's a brand of performance art. i used to work as a storyteller. for a while i told children's stories, but then i started telling true stories. reaction was mixed. it was harder to get gigs, but the audiences had a stronger bond to the material.

so that probably only put me off for a few days.

and there was this thing about work; it takes a LOT of energy to be back doing the job i love. i have either been working at this job or preparing to work at it since about 1976, so it's kind of important to me.

and a lot has been happening there, a lot worth writing about, but due to the nature of the job, there's very little i can tell you about.

there was one thing, which is pretty much in the realm of public knowledge and old news to boot by this time:

one of our boys died last monday.

he had been in a car wreck sunday night and they kept him alive through about half the morning on monday. harvested a lot of organs, so maybe, just MAYBE some good can come out of this stupid, stupid horrible senseless thing.

one thing that maybe you should know about me is that i'm not anybody's mother, nor am i likely to be. so these children, the ones i work with, are my own precious children. they take that level of importance in my heart. and it just about kills me every time we have to bury one of them.

last fall a boy looked over at me and asked "if i died, would you cry?"

yes, i would.

a lot.

i don't know exactly why he asked; sometimes kids are just trying to put things in perspective, trying to understand.

everybody just wear your freakin' seatbelts, ok?


and besides all that, i'm pretty famous in the geocaching world for my complete failure to be up-to-date on my geocache logs. basically it's a lot like this, except the narration is broken up and spread out over the geocaches i visit. same activity, different venue. and i got over seventy logs behind largely because instead of writing my logs, i was keeping a blog.

so i kind of wanted to get caught up in the logs before i came back here and on top of it all, i've been spending time on the road.

maybe next time i write i'll have something interesting to say.

who are ya?

ok, so i've been busy. you know, going to work.

and last weekend i went to montreal with the crashcos and rumblestrip. it is the first time we have brought rumblestrip with us, but otherwise a lot of it is kind of like habit. we like our traditions.

of course it is important to go to the loblaw's in delson as usual, and to buy various groceries: picnic foods and cookies and beer. i don't buy the beer, but crashco likes some of the canadian beers and we all like the cookies and chocolate.

you may not know this, but there are rules in canada regarding cocoa content in even regular candies that we get in the states, where the standards are much more lax. when you buy a kitkat in canada, you are getting much better chocolate than when you buy a kitkat in the states. we also find a bar of 99% dark chocolate. you really have to like it dark for that.

and we saw a box of "cerises de terre", which we had no idea what they were, so of course we bought them. they looked a lot like tomatillos, only they seemed to be passing themselves off as something fruity tasting. we decide that they must belong to the nightshade family on the basis of the appearance of the fruit and the seeds. i'll save you the trouble of looking it up and supply you with the link.

we missed galaad this year; we knew last year that she was kind of shepherding us around, but you never really notice how much you're being helped until your guide is no longer there.

we went back to that peruvian restaurant, and even with our weak french and weaker spanish we managed to get dinner just fine. when the food started coming to the table, we had a hard time remembering what we had each ordered, except for mrs. crashco, who had the chicken.

it rained during the night and it was raining in the morning, and by some amazing coincidence (no, probably not coincidence), rumblestrip managed to find a pretty decent place for us to go to church in the morning.

we did not fare so well at tim hortons, where we had some difficulty ordering. more specifically, i had some difficulty ordering my lunch. how hard can it be to order "combo #2"?

well, anyway. we went off to find some caches, and to not find some others. somewhere in the afternoon hours i had a really big mood swing. maybe i could have modulated it better; i felt the upswing and i know that i always have to pay for an upswing later.

so i was very grumpy for a while. i felt very much like getting drunk. i realized something that might be important:

even with the pain and more pain of the ECT, there was a thing i loved about it: that moment when the anesthesia kicked in (even if i was screaming and crying from the extreme pain of it as i passed out). that moment in which i passed out was a moment in which i felt the dissolution of my entire being. it's what i liked about drinking.

so ever since the ECT, i've been thinking about that. it's been a long time since it was even a consideration.

and then because it wasn't quite suppertime and also because it was raining, everyone else thought it would be fun to go to IKEA. didn't sound like fun to me, but sometimes we just bite down and do things for the people we love. so i plotted a course and navigated us there.

i would be lying if i tried to tell you i was sad to see they were closed for the evening.

but there was a geocache nearby! just feet from here! unfortunately, on the other side of that building. and blocked by that fence.

so we drove around for a while (a LONG while), looking for the one tiny little road that would take us to it. the IKEA stands in the middle of a great clustertangle of autoroute exchanges and one-way streets.

mrs. crashco and rumblestrip are in the backseat talking ceaselessly about cats (i will never understand this impulse), and crashco and i are gyro-navigating without much result for a long time. we finally get on the correct road, but then miss the turn into the correct parking lot and get dumped back onto an autoroute ramp. by the time we find the right spot, it is dark. still raining, and dark. neither of us gets out of the car with a light, even though we have plenty of them with us. and something nearby smells very, very dead.

when we find the cache, we decide that we are not letting mrs. crashco and rumblestrip sign the log. mrs. crashco could not care less, but in retrospect i decide that we have been ungenerous to rumblestrip and i feel sad about it.

and we're thinking about where to eat and nobody seems to have any idea, but then i remember a cafe i'd been to a long time ago and i look it up on the laptop and it's still there. cafe santropol is a quirky little place that serves sandwiches and features cream cheese in about a bazillion ways. everything comes with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, which i know will please rumblestrip, so that's where i decide we will go.

coming back over the border we are caught in line for a couple of hours. there's this guy sauntering down between the rows. rumblestrip identifies him as engaged in attention-getting behaviors. i explain to her that he's just going over to talk to people he knows, a theory rumblestrip is prepaered to accept until the guy moons all the traffic. repeatedly. ok, so once again rumblestrip proves that she is not just the good-looking one, but also the smart one.

just say no to crack.

it's a great week at work; everything falls into place. everything is going well. so well that for some parts of it i wonder why it took me twenty years to think of it.

all the while i was unable to return to work i spent a lot of time asking bob the Big Scary Question: what if all this means that i'm not meant to go back to that work? what if i'm meant to do something else?

all right, i kept saying. i'd rather it were not that, but if it comes to that, it comes to that. i will do what you ask of me.

even with my recent successes, i might still reasonably ask the question, but i think bob and i have arrived at an agreement: if it comes to that, i'll be given clear instructions. i'll be given the chance to leave my job with the appropriate farewells that are due a twenty year veteran. when you leave a community in which you are so enmeshed, you deserve the chance to say goodbye and thanks, to bequeath your equipment, to look around the place and walk out with your head up.

i want them to bury me in my BFA shirt.

so anyway, i'm back at work, and i'm staying around. every day when i come to the end of it, i feel i have done some good in the world. it's probably more than i have a right to ask for.

and then it was friday. i packed my bags and left the house in the morning and after work i went straight down to lebanon, where Flyingfisher lives. last summer i practically lived at the Flyingfishers', but this year i've been at home, not able to travel so much. and i've missed Flyingfisher.

so i get there and even though Flyingfisher isn't hungry, mr. flyingfisher and i have some dinner. and Flyingfisher and i sit up way too late playing with her extensive collection of geocoins.

in the morning, there is the traditional breakfast of oatmeal with blueberries, or more accurately, blueberries with oatmeal, and a couple of eggs.

eventually we all pack into the car and we head for foxboro MA, but on the way there is a geocache on which Flyingfisher has her heart set. we look for a long time and we do not find it. we look right up until the time we have to get going so they can get me to church on time. we drop mr. flyingfisher off near gillette stadium and go off to find the church. we arrive at a nearby side street in just enough time for me to change clothes into something presentable and skedaddle inside.

very uncomfortably, the homily sounds like it is aimed at me particularly. and even though i have promised to tell the truth here, you're not getting that much truth. not for love or for money.

aside from that, there are some congregational prayers for the patriots, whose season will open the following night. this is a little strange for me; a little culture shock. later on in the story, i will tell you with the voice of the omniscient narrator from the future, we will be standing in the stadium singing "tomorrow night it's only football", which suits me just fine, because i hate football and i take a perverse joy in insisting that football is what they do in gillette stadium when more important things aren't going on.

so anyway, we rejoin mr. flyingfisher in the parking lot, in the section reserved for the midnight riders. i am very obviously a visitor; i am not wearing appropriate revolution regalia. the grills are fired up. beers are being drunk. cigars are being smoked. there's some early singing. we admire the pinata made in the image of a red bull, the new york team's mascot. it has tony meola's name inscribed just under the tail. everyone thinks this is very funny. there are some amusing "dead bull" t-shirts, a play on the ubiquitous red bull trademark.

everyone, including the new york fans, seems to prefer talking about the team using its previous name, the metrostars. it appears to pain the new york fans somewhat that their new team name is a corporate sellout.

at one point a handful of guys in red shirts and scarves pulls up very close to us and as soon as they emerge from their car, they are subject to ridicule and harassment.

who are ya? who are ya? who are ya? who are ya?, the revs fans chant, advancing in a line, pointing fingers. there's some abusive shouting. the revs fans sing if your team is not a beverage, clap your hands and if you're not a corporate sellout clap your hands, at which time the small group of metrostar fans come on over and accept a couple of beers that have been offered, and some barbecue.

they stand with good natured equanimity while our guys beat the heck out of the pinata, and burn one of their shirts. while they do this, they sing:

(sort of a drunken tuneless "my bonnie lies over the ocean")

if i had the wings of a swallow
if i had the ass of a crow
i'd fly over jersey tomorrow
and shit on those bastards below.

the red guys stand by placidly. i remark to mr. flyingfisher how strange this behavior is, but he shrugs it off. "they do it to us when we play at their stadium."

it's kind of a tribal ritual, i guess. and i'm told that although they support different teams in US play, they all support the US national team together, so they're friends.

ok, so it's a cultural thing.

the stadium security is not as easygoing. they come right over and demand that we extinguish the burning shirt. it takes a while to organize this, because nobody is willing to pour beer on the fire and somebody has to find an open soft drink.

at last it's time to go into the stadium. i'm starting to feel more at home. the first time i went with the Flyingfiishers to a game i was overwhelmed, but i'm starting to get the hang of some of the tribal ritual. and mr. Flyingfisher hands his really big drum over to me for the night, which puts me smack dab in the middle of it. there's a LOT of drumming with the singing; it has a hypnotic quality.

i get caught up in the unison arm-raising and it strikes me that this gesture wouldn't have been out of place at a nuremberg rally. it's a lot more cheerful and a lot more benign, but the large group mentality is certainly there. it is quite a rush.

and somewhere around eight minutes into the game noonan makes the night's only goal and the fort goes wild. we pass up the huge revolution banner, everybody grabbing on to it to pass it up, covering the first several rows of seats. and the people under it keep poking at it from underneath like popcorn, keeping it moving until it is retracted again.

it is a good night to be a revs fan.

and when the game is over, we reconvene at the top of the section and process to the entrance, where we drum and sing while the crowd leaves the stadium. and then we process out into the parking lot, where the red bull guys again stand good-naturedly around while more abuse is flung at them.

and then the singing becomes more esoteric and much more vulgar, which i find amusing. i'd quote it for you, but

...no, cancel that. i wouldn't quote it for you. i just wouldn't . when i was in college i belonged to a secret society whose entire purpose was to roast marshmallows and sing dirty songs, but these particular songs were beyond our reach. interesting, though.

we get home to the Flyingfishers' house, um, late.

in the morning Flyingfisher and i have breakfast and dash out (well, as much as we ever do go dashing out anywhere) to come back up here and then some to be in johnson to celebrate DJ and CAL's 1000th cache find. DJ and CAL are stalwarts of the vermont geocaching community and a large group of people gather at rather shor notice to picnic with them and come along to witness the big moment.

salt of the earth, those folks.

so we're up there at the top of the hill, on the cliff, looking out at that fabulous view in the late afternoon light and i am standing at the ege, solid and strong, arms outstretched. for a moment i look behing me and i know in an instant that rumblestrip kows exactly what i am thinking. after a few moments she comes over to stand beside me. "you told me this day would come", she says.

down in the parking lot, there is more picnic to be had; desserts are coming out.

it's a good day to be alive.

keep your hand on the plow

today was my first day back at work since i left it last december. it is a job that i love and that i'm good at. it's also my first job right out of college. i've been out of college for more than a few years.

people were glad to see me. i can't tell them what i've gone through, of course, so they don't really understand the full import when i say that the worst thing about the winter, spring and summer was that i was unable to be there, in that place, doing that work.

bob sez

permission? you don't need my permission to quit early.

...but you'll know if you did your best.

most precious treasure and suddenly for a few moments i almost wish i had a little less of it.

burnt offering

it's been that kind of week.

sunday after church i thought it would be nice to go for a ride; something easy after saturday's hard riding. so i thought i would just get on my bike and ride out from the driveway.

i live in west bolton. for argument's sake let's say i live right downtown. in truth, i live a little ways from downtown, but close enough for government work. the post office considers it to be jericho and the phone company considers it to be richmond, but it is not.

it is west bolton.

bolton is one of those towns whose borders don't really match up with the landscape. most of it falls on the north side of the winooski river and up and down the surrounding hills.

outside of bolton proper there's that little bit hanging on to the south side of the river, which is sometimes referred to as "bolton landing" and there's our little corner of it up over the mountain, by either notch road or stage road. it used to be a real town with mills and stores and churches. used to be you could stand on the steps of the baptist church and look clear through the notch.

you can still stand on the steps of the baptist church, but that's all that's left of it; it's only a cellarhole now. and the trees have grown back, so you can't see past cemetery road, let alone into the notch.

most of the structures and livelihood of the town were swallowed up by the government for the installation of the firing range.

but anyway, if you leave my house you either go up or down. there's going to be a climb. you can defer it a little while by going out nashville road, but once you get out to brown's trace you can downhill or downhill. no matter how you slice it, you're going to climb on the return trip.

so i figured i'd take the gradual rollers of nashville road on my way home. go down stage road, maybe tool around on the river road, come back up by skunk hollow or barber farm. here's a version of the supposed route.

stage road is almost entirely unpaved. and it's steep. and there's a lot of gravel and some washboard and some washout, so you can't afford to go all that fast.

but there's this thing about gravity; suppose for a moment that i am a fairly heavy little woman (not a big stretch of the imagination) riding a bike with narrow tires and fast hubs. at some point there's just no stopping, because the force i have to apply to the brakes exceeds the ability of those two little patches of rubber to hold their position on the road.

so it's slow going. and i have to be careful of how much braking i do, because there's always the possiblity that the brake pads will glaze over, or the tire rims will overheat and a tire will pop.

and if that happens to you on a steep descent, you learn to fly.

and then land.

painfully.

with much debriding to be done.

incidentally, the reason men in the cycling world often shave their legs is not because it makes you more aero; the benefit is negligible. the real reason is because when (and you will note my use of the word "when" rather than "if") when you fall, it is much, much easier to debride the resultant road rash.

a while ago i was rollerblading on route 100 just south of waitsfield and i was trying to gain speed coming downhill and caught an edge. i got road rash on my left calf, left thigh, and right thigh. deep enough to bleed freely. and i got to keep skating, because i fell near the bridge, but my car was parked at the laundromat.

i got a talking to for coming home late, too, which seems kind of incomprehensible.

the worst part was that after i got all the gravel and dirt out of the wounds, i had to apply a dressing, cover that with make up, pull on nylons and get down to the theater. oddly, while onstage i did not feel the pain.

but it was the first week of july (does july ALWAYS suck?) and that puppy didn't scab over let alone heal until sometime in october. talk about insomnia. and it was a hot summer, too. it's been fifteen years and you can still see the scar.

uh, anyway.

by the time i got down stage road my hands were tired from judicious application of brakes. the plan was still to take an easy, casual ride.

so it's a bit of a mystery to me how i ended up crossing the river and heading up wes white hill. i remember going up it a couple of times on a mountain bike. maybe you know this and maybe you don't, but the gearing on a mountain bike is a lot more hill friendly and i did not remember it being quite that painful.

but i did it. and then since i happened to be in huntington, i took hinesburg hollow road over to -duh- hinesburg and then came back home through richmond. so much for the easy ride.

got back home just as i lost the light.

and then monday i went out to catamount for their monday treasure hunt and ended up on a trail i haven't seen but once or twice. which is odd, 'cos that place is kind of my second home. i know the trails pretty well. and i got a brand-new water bottle for my trouble.

i spent some time practicing some of the technical passages that i've either lost the ability to ride or never had the ability to ride. i fell some. nothing serious.

and tuesday night i took four minutes off my best time on the run. i felt fast out there, too. i started to run and i simply handed each step over to bob. it's been a tough week, and riding or running i just decided to turn it over. every step, every pedal stroke.

the stress of the week takes a toll on me. the length and steepness of the rides stay with me; my muscles are tired. but i run hard on tuesday, ride hard on wednesday. and in yesterday's time trial crashco and i rode at an average of 18.55 MPH. he had to pull me all the way around, but he's in good shape and he has that spiffy new bike. but he's a dear and he not only does all the work, but he recalls last year when i had to pull him.

but i am toast. burnt up. but each night i come to sit in prayer and no matter what each day has brought me, i am thankful in spite of myself.

courage, i ask. give me courage to endure. put your strength in my hands. let me carry your Light.

maybe i'm asking for the wrong things. i'm still asking to be made a good servant rather than for pain abatement. i ask for blessings on (proper name) and (proper name) and some others while i'm at it.

i'm thankful that i've been able to read. i have some rules about reading scripture. here's what i wrote rumblestrip:

according to the rules (which i make up) i am not allowed to read scripture when i am drugged, overtired, distracted, or otherwise too bunched up to give it my full attention. given these rules, it's fairly amazing that between october and january i read the entire KJV. yesterday i finished exodus and read most of leviticus. since i start wtih the NT and then cycle around to the beginning, this represents pretty good progress on the NLT.

but somewhere along the way i had a talk with bob about obedience. and i realized: reluctant obedience counts. faith in the context of suffering has meaning. there aren't any special prizes for it, and you know for certain that Grace is a gift. it is not earned. you cannot buy it, not with any amount of suffering and yet every step, every new breath is a triumph.

i have this ongoing fantasy in which i run a race that is difficult and painful. i don't win it, not by a long shot. but the people present know me and know what it takes for me to cross that finish line, and they stand and cheer, calling my name.

it's called tuesday.

and i know to whom it belongs.

"place me in your heart so that others may see."

life's tough; get a helmet.

okay. i was going to just go to bed because i'm tired and it's going to be a comparatively early morning. church is at nine in the summer. i really like it better at ten, but i don't get to choose.

i don't necessarily need quiet to sleep, but my neighbors (mere children, they appear to me. ...hear that, mrs. crashco? these kids are twenty-somethings and they seem very, very young to me. we're middle-aged, babycakes. get used to it. and while we're at it, looked in a mirror lately? salt-and-pepper is an attractive look for you, but those are still grey hairs.)

uh, anyway.

my neighbors are having a party and there's at least one guest who's had enough beers and they're very loud. i don't mind steady party hum, music and such, but intermittent shrieking at irregular intervals gets on my nerves at about the same level as the presence of small children.

i am not fond of small children.

if you give me a choice between two happy toddlers and a whole roomful of sullen thirteen-year-olds, i know who i choose. no contest.

so i'm not in bed yet. soon. i'm thinking maybe of pressing the ipod into service. but i have a few minutes more and i'm writing this, which is a pleasant enough way to pass the time. gives me some time to absorb dinner, too. leftover chinese. it's what my mom brought over yesterday. and i was plenty hungry.

i went for a bike ride, which was good in itself, but actually pretty close to a small miracle if you're following along.

'member last week, when everything looked all good and everything? sometimes life throws you a curve ball. on thursday rumblestrip went with me up to the building where i work, just to check out my room and to walk around some. get the feeling of the place. i've been away a long time.

and things look pretty daunting and i cry some, but i still manage to get to my race and i manage to improve over my last time on that course by FOUR MINUTES. it's still four minutes slower than my best time on that course, but that was last year and i was fifty pounds lighter.

but everything felt like it was going to be all right.

and then on friday around noon the phone call came. i don't feel like telling you the whole story, but it cut me off at the ankles and all of a sudden all i can do is cry.

and at one point i call rumblestrip, which turns out to be a mistake, because she is unable to help, but still in a position where she can worry. she has a meeting she has to be in, and then she's going to be on her way to some place in maine.

but then i get a grip i think i'm going to be all right, and i tell her so. i talk to my mom, too. and i go to the post office to pick up the certified letters. 'dja ever notice that good news rarely comes in certified mail?

and they're worse than i'm expecting and i don't think i can hold up under the strain of it and all of a sudden i don't think i can go back to work. come to think of it, i don't think i can continue to draw breath; i wish to be excused. i am toast. i am finished.

there's a lot about this next interval that i simply don't remember. i know that some of the people i would call are too far away, either because they live too far away, or because a they have chosen THIS day to go away to maine or seacoast new hampshire or what-have-you, and finally i reach my mom and spend a lot of the next couple of hours trying to explain to her that i'm done and it's time for me to go.

just imagine for a moment what it must be like to be the mother who loves me so.

...okay, you don't have to think about it anymore, but it's not so easy if you're my mom. she doesn't have the luxury of not thinking about it.

and at one point one or the other of our phones drops the call and all my mom knows is that i'm out there somewhere, and it's not good. and i don't know who-all else she might have called, but a message comes in on my phone.

my mom has called rumblestrip.

'member? i told her i'd be all right. the one thing i know for certain is that i want her to be able to enjoy her weekend and not worry about me. and now she has grounds to really WORRY and she's out of range. for the whole weekend. blast.

i know i got home somehow. and i know i was on the phone with my mom when there was another dropped call. why would a call get dropped?, i think. because they're coming out here. i have to get away from here.

so i grab my bag and a few things and i get out. i call again from someplace but i won't tell where. i am stunningly out of my head, paranoid and out on the road. but somehow i get it into my head that what i would really like to do is go down to the church and sit there, preferably with the pastor, but i do not have her number, nor do i have a key to the church.

i try to call some of the people i think might be able to help, but either cannot get their numbers or they are not at home. i do finally get in touch with the (proper name)s, but as luck would have it, they're on their way to maine.

i'm on my way to hell. could be i got there. it's hard to tell, signage on that particular road being what it is.

but they're tenacious. they have a phone book in their car. they give me some numbers and apparently they make some calls as well. 'coz a couple of calls come in that i'm not expecting. and DJ calls in the middle of it, and he is not expecting to hear any of THIS. he is expecting to talk to the lighthearted flask, the one that goes out and finds geocaches.

at some point in the evening the pastor reaches me. we talk for a while, which helps some. and i have already decided due to an amazing little piece of warped reasooning that i am not going to try to explain that i'll wait until at least monday to check out.

it's really stupid reasoning, but at least it buys us all some time, eh?

and today i discover that i have run out of paid leave (not a surprise, but it sucks when it happens, just the same) and i have $401.09 on which to live for the remainder of the summer.

and i am not in the mood to think about how i will proceed if i am going to recover my life and return fully to the realm of the living. it is very hard to plan for difficult circumstances if you're already of the opinion that none of it matters because you'll be dead anyway.

but eventually i pick up the thread and decide i'll give it a try. so i'm kind of back to where i was last monday, only now i think things are actually going to be easier.

try to follow this: up until things hit crisis proportion yesterday around four, i'd probably have just continued on, barely keeping my head above water. but now we have a plan, and possibly some solutions.

so i go for a bike ride.

i head out of richmond up to the gore road, only i don't go through huntington. i decide that i will get there by way of hinesburg and bristol. bristol, for goodness' sake. go ahead and have a look at the map.

i didn't bother to really look at the map when i left; if i had, i might have noticed that it's forty-three miles. i knew about all the climbing, though. i just figured to take my time and go easy.

there's only so easy you can ride going up route 17, though. any way you slice it you're still going up over the mountain.

i'm out of water by the time i get to the jerusalem corners store. lately i have learned that in a lot of places if you stop to buy a gatorade or whatever, they'll fill your water bottle from the tap, saving you a dollar and a half.

and i have a lovely conversation with a guy on a motorcycle who's on his way home to concord, nh. rubber side down, i tell him. i drink my gatorade, toss the bottle, and resume climbing.

i am tired and pleasantly surprised to find that the descent actually starts way before you hit the gore road, so i was going pretty fast when i started to come down it, but then i had this weird sense of jamais vu and thought i'd taken some other road; nothing looked familiar until i got all the way down to van dine road, and even then things looked foreign, but the street sign and the cemetery were proof positive that i was where i was.

i kind of chalked it up to being kind of tired. kind of a hard day.

as i was going by i noticed (and not for the first time) that texas hill road is only marked if you're coming up from richmond; maybe they assume that if you're coming from huntington proper you know where it is.

and i'd forgotten, but you actually have to climb again a little on the way out to richmond, but then when that last descent comes you FLY. i don't know how fast exactly i was going, but i know what it feels like to be in excess of fifty miles an hour on a bike, and it was a lot like that.

no brakes. not 'till you get down into richmond. and i almost timed it right to get the green light at the bridge. almost. the second i footed down, the light turned. and then i couldn't quite clip in with my right foot, but when that light turns you really have to book if you're on a bike.

so i got home. had dinner. leftover chinese. a fairly large pile of it. and now the neighbors are a little quieter, and i have church in the morning. they'll be looking for me there.

sometimes when things are at their worst, somebody hands you your helmet and tells you to get back out on the course. sometimes it takes a lot of people and some careful stepping, but you get there anyway.