Re-thinking A Position.

I was in a mood.
The one I sometimes get into when I'm on the other side of something bad, and I've come through it with most of me intact.
I've gotten two "Get Out Of Massive Head Injuries Free" cards - once in 2001 when I smashed one side of my face into the asphalt,(which, incidentally happened to be my own-ass fault) and didn't get more than, well, a half-smashed face - and this last wreck, caused by a cage driver who thought there was time to pull out in front of me.
There wasn't.
There was time to choose - barely. Choose between hitting the car, and hitting the pavement.
I hit the brakes, then I hit the pavement. As I was going down, I flashed on the last time it went this way. March 2001...
The way everything exploded white, then went gray for a few years/seconds when I hit the deck in a one-point landing, head-to-tar...
The way, as my head cleared a little, I could feel the blood running off my face...
The thought in my head: "Ohh, my family doesn't need this -" (Incidentally, for those of you who maybe thought I didn't have it in me - then I thought, "Ohh, my f'in' bike!")
However, while the part about the bike didn't flash through my head, the rest did.
As far as I knew, it was time for a repeat performance, likely much worse. I was wincing while I was still in the air.
Have you ever been involved in a wreck of any kind where your body has been thrown, and bumped hard, and you're actually still conscious - maybe in pain, but conscious? If it was just you, or you knew everybody else was okay, did you take a little mental inventory of how everything was feeling? Were you ever surprised?
I was.
I knew my arm was broken. How bad, nope. I knew the right side of my chest felt like maybe Lars or Neil or Ginger had just done a drum solo on it. I knew my feet weren't real happy either - bruises to go around! But...
My head. I hadn't hit it. Not even a grazing blow. My headrag wasn't even dirty.
I can't explain it. I was bouncing on that damned pavement like a piece of lumber that fell off of the back of a truck, lengthwise. I remember three very hard impacts - the first, when my arm broke, and two more. WHAM!, WHAM, whamthumpitythumpthump, and fetchin' up next to the offending car. Ow...
The EMTs didn't believe it. The X-ray/CT techs didn't believe it. I was in a wreck with NO HELMET, I must have hit my head, We're Gonna Look In The Coconut Tonight, Boy. And don't figure on goin' straight home with that bruised lung, either!
I found myself in a wheelchair in the Admitting area of the nearby hospital, trying not to smile. Trying not to smile, because there was so much misery around me. Sick folks, hurt folks, sad folks. Another Friday night in a metropolitan Phoenix hospital.
Realizing what an incredibly lucky cat I truly was. (Only 3 or 4 lives left, though.)
Seeing the faces of my brothers & sisters, and of my wife and Mom-in-law, as they came through the doors and saw me sitting there, grinning like a fool just because I was getting to see them all. Basking in the love like a lizard on a sunny rock.
There were other emotions at work, too. The fear that I could see had been in Li'lBit's heart. The relief in everyone's eyes.
I got swept up in my joy at being alive, rightly so.
But when I wrote the previous post, I had gotten cocky. I beat the odds, right?
A couple of weeks later a fella I've known, and ridden with, didn't.
It set me to thinkin'.
I've skated twice. Will there be a third time, if I can't avoid somebody again?
I've looked in the faces of the many people I know and love, some of whom even love me(!), and also in the little faces of some people who are just getting to know me.
I've spent quite a bit of time figuring out when to be stubborn, and when to compromise. I just never gave much thought to it. It's always been my choice. I've made another, now...
I'm going to buy, and wear(at least in our beloved city), a full-face helmet.
After all, it isn't a horse I'm ridin', so I won't look silly.

Slivers Of Time - Solstice 2008

At any rate, he didn't grow up to be a vegetarian.
We were both pretty young at that point - him at just over a year, and I had just clocked in at the ripe old age of twenty. Can you tell it's 1976? My eyes keep gravitating to the muttonchop sideburns, hah!
I had just begun a job at a local bakery. It still holds the record as my longest gig, ten years; a comfortable place for the guy that I was, accustomed to chaos, smart as hell in the academic sense, not so much when it came to the world and the way of it. I got that way, fast enough, but at the time, we were both babies yet; it was just more obvious (not to mention cuter) with him. My in-laws were amazingly patient and loving with me, in spite of the fact that I wasn't as cute.
Normally I don't give Time much consideration. I've spent a lot of it educating myself in the nature of our little blue marble, so that tends to color my perspective on it. 100,000 years, to me anyway, is a blip, barely worth consideration overall. Why would it be, when the bedrock under me is not just millions, but hundreds of millions of years old? When very little changes but the weather(and just incidentally, us)?
I have occasionally suffered such a thing as skewed perspective, no, really!
Ennyhoo, 20 came, then 30, then 40, and a couple of blinks ago was 50. I've gotten more considerate of time in the last eight years. I suppose it accompanied the passing of my Dad.
Without going into too much detail, the last 9 3/4 years of my time with him were some of the best in my life. His influence on me reeled wildly from one extreme to another early on; his intelligence, his focus, his high standards for himself, and thus, for me; his addiction, which distorted him and the rest of us that were affected; and ultimately, his recovery from that addiction, which began long before mine.
The shot on the right is him with my oldest, just a day or two after his birth. You may see, perhaps, his fashion sense wasn't always switched on. I was hoping that what appears to be the pattern of his trousers is only something covering his lap while he holds his first grandson, but somehow I don't think so...LOL! I've always liked this pic in any case. I've shown it to family and friends and said, "Compare their faces!" Dad ever so slightly in his cups, and Dana, fresh... The tone of their flesh, and their facial expressions are what I focus on. Could be I'm just full of it, too, but who asked ya, anyway?!?
So Time, despite my increased consideration, is not, and probably never will be, especially important to me. I suppose it's because I focus on Today. I've been functioning on a level where I maintain, for the most part, that the Present is the most important; all that has gone by is History, Tomorrow's a Mystery. That doesn't stop me from planning ahead, or having dreams of things I'd like to do, but it does help me focus on the idea that I'd better do a pretty good job on what's right in front of me, right now.
Because all that I do in the Present affects the Mystery ahead.

So Much For That

Yeah, okay, medical updates are boring.
Since I've had much more time on my hands, I've been surfing the 'Net a great deal more. Nice to see I'm not the only one idling about on a keyboard. I tend to reserve comment on most goings-on, simply because SO many people have so much to say already... I can only read so many posts that are variations on a theme before I find myself thinking "Alright! ALRIGHT! I get it, you're (insert adjective here) about (insert subject here), and there are folks out there who agree!" Therefore, I shy away from beating a dead horse, most days. I can only hope that the passion for issues I see expressed is matched by action; that's really the main thing, in my view. I can carp all the livelong day about things I feel strongly about, but if I don't take action - whatever that action may be, voting, calling the congresscritters, etcetera - then it's all meaningless, just another rant disguised as my opinion.

Bah!

I have a delightful new scar, courtesy of the other driver...
It is the result of a Two-fer: that is, in order to repair the fracture on the bicep side of the elbow, Doc had to cut apart the two bones in the forearm side(I guess it qualifies as a Three-fer, then!) and put plates and screws on both sides. Lovely.
All things considered, I'm not doing too badly; I have to passively exercise the arm, that is, let it hang down so gravity aids in straightening it; rest the elbow on my knee as a pivot point and push it gently as far out as it will go, and then fold it as far as it will go; and last, and by far the most fun, Doc has me placing a book on my open palm - again, resting the elbow on something - and letting the weight of the book work on straightening the arm. I thought I knew what a stiff joint felt like already - my healing elbow informs me that I didn't. Whatever; I make a little more progress every day - it seems maddeningly slow - but after a couple of days go by, I notice. It's just that every gain is measured in fractions of an inch, and I'm not the most patient guy, y'know? Still, I heed Doc's advice and I don't go overboard. It's too important to mess up by getting in too much of a hurry.

Having Played The Odds For A While

I'm here today by a series of events that were set in motion at about 8:15pm on Friday 11/14. (Guess that skips "First, the earth cooled...") I was riding Her Darkness next to a prospect; we were leaving one meeting to attend another across town. When I'm out with the crew we run in "pack" formation; that is, two-by-two, side by side. This enables us to keep the group close together, with the longer-term benefit of increasing good riding skills.You have to keep your shit together, know where your wingman is, all the time, because, quite literally, his life or yours could depend on it...
It's partly about odds. When you ride anything with less than 4 wheels, in most cases, you put some odds up against your life. You bet against larger, heavier objects that will either squash or smash apart pretty much any body part you currently own. You have to take your awareness of things around you to higher levels, and be ready to act at any time to avoid troubles. You can nudge the odds favorably a great deal by the way you ride.
From time to time, somebody will comment (or ask) about the helmet thing, or the whole motorcycle thing. "Why do you take your life in your hands?" "Why don't you wear a helmet?" All I can say to that is, if you've never done it, or you've never done it without a helmet, I can't explain it beyond this: it reminds me that I am, indeed, alive. I'm ab-so-fakkin-lutely in love with the wind. If I couldn't do it on a bike then I'd buy or rent a bigass horse. And I wouldn't wear a helmet then, either. Besides, has anybody ever seen Ol' Tex ridin' Ol' Paint with a even a skid lid on?
Nope. No lid for this Kowboy (excepting, of course, the places where the badges can pull you over and make you pay, if you are lidless). Even in the unfortunate event that I make unexpected and unpleasant contact with the pavement.
Which I proceeded to do, at a little after 8:15pm on Friday the 14th.
Without going into too much detail, either. Essentially I laid the bike down to avoid an impact on a car that would likely have dealt me far more serious injury than what I got from the pavement - given that I didn't thump my coconut on the asphalt as opposed to part of the car. Bad choice to have to make, but with less than 40 feet to go and moving at 25+ mph - plenty enough to crack the hardest of coconutz, even mine - I had to grab the binders, slew the front to the right, and boom.
SON-uva... Fragged the left elbow on first contact. Prospect heard me scream one of my well-worn vulgarities, and as he dodged to the right of our unexpected roadblock saw me tumblin' and cussin' down the road as I went alongside the bike. It hit the car and bounced off, landing on my feet even as I came to rest next to the car. All I can say is that I was in sensory overload, and only dimly aware of pain in my dogs through the pain-wall that my arm had become.
My odds worked out pretty damn good.
I've lost more than a few Bros and acquaintances to the asphalt. That's the way of it. While I'm sure none of them preferred to die like that - Gods, when somebody says, "He would have wanted to go like that" do they actually know what that going was like? - they are beyond giving an opinion. As for me, the idea of dying on the bike is somewhat desirable versus rotting away, but, having gotten a pass twice now - at least in bike wrecks - oh, MAN, this shit hurts. And the truly fatal ones, that I've knowledge of at least, are ugly and horribly painful for those left behind. The pain of knowing that someone you love and/or respect has been snuffed out like candle - by a sledgehammer. That the urn or closed casket is all that everybody has, now, because right now it's damn hard to think of the joys of having that person in their life. Joys overshadowed by a violent, and more often than not, unnecessary, end.
I'm not going to make this a rant, I'm not, I'm not...
As I wrote a little ways back - my odds worked out. A fractured elbow, bruised lung and feet, and a teeny slash o' the rash on my knees and right forearm. The coconut never touched the asphalt until I actually laid it gently down - something nobody in the rescue or medical professions quite believed until much later, Saturday morn or so. I had surgery for the elbow on Thursday, a little less than a week later. I now have an steel-plated elbow!
Her Darkness did better, mostly by virtue of being made of replacable parts. Looks like a new front end, minimum. Hopefully the frame isn't twisted; time, and an inspection, will tell.

Changing

Halloween, and shortly thereafter my BD, come and gone. Most days I'm content to return home from the job to settle someplace, usually here in front of the 'puter, and veg. Gah. Doing z-e-r-o. My excuse being that I've been navigating this pretzel I refer to as my conscious mind through the muddy, though not often treacherous, waters of Daily Business. I interact with people and machines, all demanding a slice of Time. Some for information, some for direction, some for a chunk of the Company cabbage, some for a turn of the valve or a button-push.
I'm in a constant state of flux.
Years ago I began to train myself to emulate water. To be linear, yet flexible. The linear part is easy - I set myself on a course to be ever better at whatever I do. Flexibility is nominally tougher; I like doing things right. I had to accept that there are variations on that theme, that flexibility demands adaptation. Being acquainted with Darwin, That hasn't been real tough either. Those who can't adapt as things around them change, die, either metaphorically, or really-most-sincerely. In emulating water, I adapt by moving differently, by absorbing/dispersing, by deposition/erosion, or any other illustration one cares to use relating to the behavior of H20 under changing conditions. Even as it changes to meet conditions, it remains essentially the same. Apply heat or light or pressure in certain ways and it purifies. Even frozen it is still fluid. How cool is that? Supercool...LOL.

Gone Stalking (Wildlife, That Is)

Uhhooof.
Having laid off the writing for a while, I feel the grinding of my mental gears as the rusty cogs roll over again. This is a muscle that, if not exercised at least occasionally, gets hard to rouse as time moves on.
The last time out here I spent my energy riffing on matters spiritual, havin' gotten my hackles up over a comment made on another blog. This will bring things a little farther along...
In November, I got to walk in some woods a little upstate from where my mother and her kin lived, back before they became Californicans. I spent a week hunting white-tailed deer in Missouri with my best buddy Rocket.
I've lived in the Desert Southwest for over 30 years now. The ways I walk the uninhabited spaces have been shaped by not only the desire to spot cool mineral specimens/fossils, but also the desire to spot the odd rattlesnake or Gila monster before I step on 'em. I also like to hunt, and Out Here, because it is desert, the wildlife we can hunt are fewer in number. Not to mention s-n-e-a-k-y. One trick is, as elsewhere, to appear like the terrain. That's easy enough. Wally world and the local military surplus can set one up very well to blend in. Being quiet isn't too tough either - depending on how much rain we've had, not that many bushes to whack. And consider this: desert bushes have attitude. You mostly don't want to bump into or brush against the locals. Too many noises associated with that. Noises like"AaAh! #*%@!!", or r-r-i-i-i-p-p. (Desert wildlife, the hunted varieties anyway, are keenly attuned to those sounds.) The other hazards with local fauna are firmly attached, you might say, to the things that cause the noises. One bush is called 'Cat-claw'. Can you guess why? Combine that with a slight incline - often an incline with a steep drop off into a dry wash close by, and a little pebble, or dozens of them, underfoot. You're easing along with your eye on a whitetail or mule deer, or maybe a javelina, quiet as quiet, when the dastardly cat-claw snags at you from beside a creosote bush. Movement in that direction is suddenly arrested - at least at point of contact - but your foot, or feet, slide in the loose stuff...
I don't care if, like me, you stifle the scream of surprise and despair; when you land in that wash downhill, most likely on top of the odd rattlesnake or Gila monster, you ARE gonna have the wind knocked out of you. Last time I checked, that isn't what I'd call stealthy, and if you've really stepped in it, as it were, the firearm that was supposed to go off only when you pulled the trigger will proceed to cause any and all critters in the vicinity to high-tail it to wherever you are not. Another sun goes down in the northern Sonora Desert.
I went hunting in Missouri. With Rocket.
November in MO is very different for a Desert Rat. For one thing, the ground is very hard to see; it's mostly covered in something! The colors are different, too. At that time of year a lot of reds, but everywhere is still an abundance of green. (Driving through New Mexico and Texas into Oklahoma didn't prepare me. Shoot, that was like driving around home, at least until it flattened out a lot.) We got into his home town late Friday night; long hours on the road, and darkness, made the view of the terrain a low priority, at least until the next day. I bedded down on the World's Most Comfortable Couch in his mom 'n step dad's place and forgot everything, including consciousness, until a few hours later.
Later, in the afternoon, down on Missy and Ricks cattle farm... Rocket parks the jeep and we set out. I'm still goggling at how green everything is. What I am coming to realize is, everywhere the trees are, a rich reddish brown coverlet lies upon the... growth. I think there's ground under there, I've seen it in the creek(!) beds and road cuts. (Gods, what a lot of water!) This coverlet takes me back to when I was 10 - my Dad went to work for a Large Corporation in Cincinnati, and we left suburban Cal for semi-woodsy sorta-rural Ohio. Nice. As I wax nostalgic, I realize that this coverlet is easily a foot deep, and dry. These leaves are not small, either, being the fallen armies of old oaks that reach for the sky(far larger than the little viejos we have in small numbers in AZ - just like the huntable critters). I step from meadow into forest... and it sounds like I have slipped my feet into some comfortable potato chip bags. I quickly understand that I am not gonna get near anything, even if I try to sneak up on an earthquake. What to do? I try the old toe-heel approach; that only produces a different tone of crrustle-unch. I am now reduced to a shuffle-stop sort of travel. Even the frisky little breeze that had accompanied us is no longer an ally. When I stop, it whips up, the trees move and I attempt to move along further, at which point it dies out again... it's a conspiracy! Look, it's a Desert Rat, let's see how much we can mess with him!
Then there were the cattle...