Revisiting The Past

Time to blow off the dust, again.
As one might expect, a lot has gone on since my last post. Changes in my life and the lives of pretty much everyone else I know...good, bad, everything in between. I rolled up my colors just under a year ago, having found(with some insight supplied from my family) that my focus needed to change; a difficult decision, to be sure. The biggest part of my reasoning pivoted on why I ride in the first place: I no longer felt the freedom and enjoyment that attracted me to riding.
It was time to move on.
That theme has continued to play out for me. Here at Chateau Loki things went on as they had for some time, but change was in the offing - not for the way things are with the family, thank the Gods - as of last July, something happened to me that had not happened in 43 years: I was fired from my job. In my position I had a great deal of responsibility, and very few of the kind of mistakes I could potentially make would be less than serious. As it was, I made enough of them, over a time period stretching from May of  '13 to last July, that by the standards I was held to, I was let go. Funny how you don't think about how tied up in a job, particularly a long-term one that you truly enjoy, your ego can be - at least while you hold it. Leaving it on purpose for another position is one thing - that's an adventure you planned on having! Getting fired is definitely not the "setting out on an adventure" I had planned...and my ego took a large hit. I didn't see it at first, and it kicked my ass pretty good.
Still, time to move on. Some relief followed: I was unemployed less than three days, found work at an outfit where there were folks I'd worked with before, and moved forward with the understanding that, at some point, I'd be a permanent member of the team. Did I mention the haircut?

Job hunter biker

Then came the physical.
Drug test? no problem. Hand-eye coordination? Check. Range of motion, eyesight, check, check. Muscle condition, check. Blood pressure...a bit high. Okay... Then I hear, 7/9 points too far up for me to be cleared for work...and it went up another 9/2 points.
What. The. Fuck.
I knew I was stressing; who hasn't upon losing a job? Who hasn't, when faced with the reality of having ones income reduced by roughly a third? And then, maybe not keeping the new job?
Yours Truly would love to say that I faced this with calm and rational thinking.
{snort}
I've never experienced an out-and-out anxiety attack, but what I put myself thru on Thursday last seems pretty close: heart rate way up, breath short, sweating...and let's not go into what I was thinking. Scared. Suffice to say that, in my most recent literally life-threatening situation, I was a freakin' iceberg by comparison to Thursday.
I considered some really knuckle-headed nonsense courses of action. Instead, I went for a ride.

I don't mind being scared, in the main; fear has a remarkable way of sharpening my senses and focusing my thinking, most of the time. Fear can keep me from being really, really stupid. I have a lot of experience with it that has been exhilarating after the fact.
Not this time. No exhilaration here, just a hunkahunka self-hate. I let the merry-go-round in my head take the pole position and roll, roll, roll. As has happened to me a couple of times before, when going through something I've never gone through before, I played the bad hand that I had not yet been dealt, went through all the shitty scenarios I could project...until I put things into a different perspective. Until I chose to turn the negativity away, and focus instead about what I could, and can, do. Which, while I was riding, included a "conversation" with myself.
When I ride, I wear a helmet. Most of the time. It keeps my eyes from drying out, keeps the grit and rocks off my pretty face...and prevents other drivers from seeing for themselves just how crazy I can be...
Helmets are designed with several things in mind: to protect your melon from becoming a different shape in the event of impact with objects harder than it is(yes, there are some things harder than my head), to keep your face from being ground off in the event of an unintended dismount, and to place on the heads of small children(at their request, having nothing to do with riding).

Precocious Grandchild

Helmets have several materials in their construction. mainly cloth and plastic, encasing a Styrofoam shell, designed for safety and comfort, designed to keep your melon safe from the outside forces that would otherwise rearrange it.
Inside forces - sneezing,  or blistering language, for instance - are not taken into account.
B. H. (Before Helmet), if another driver did something especially stupid in my vicinity, it didn't matter if the windows were up and the stereo was loud. My displeasure was easily visually noticeable, and my vocal projection was trained into me by an older male who, at one point in his life, spent some time using his considerable lung power motivating other young men in BDUs to do his bidding. The only way to not hear me was to have your music volume up around 32 or 33.
Then came the last wreck, and the helmet.
Now, unless I roll right up on the offending driver and stick my head into the vehicle(and probably not even then, it's a good helmet), all anybody will hear is "WOOFAHUDOONUFWOOFINMOARUN"
which brings a reaction similar to the one I get, when I make a noise at Morey the Boxer, and she doesn't quite comprende: "Ur?" Tilted head and all. Kinda spoils the effect, y'know. Hard to remain furious at someone who looks dumber than a dog, since they didn't actually cause me to, you know, die or anything.
Which brings me back to the inside of my helmet. And blistering language. When I say "blistering language", I mean the kind that, when one utters it, the air seems to take on that shimmery quality associated with an open hatch on a blast furnace. Styrofoam doesn't like blast furnace, right? My "conversation with myself" while I was riding the other day originated in the depths of my blast-furnace regard for certain behaviors in myself and others. I got it out of my system, stopped for a while to watch fighter jets practice touch-and-go at the local base - awesome - and went home considerably calmer.
I will deal with whatever happens, the right way, like I always eventually do. Seeing my doc, taking the meds he prescribes, moving on in my life and making it better wherever and whenever I can, for myself and those around me.
Last night, when I put on my helmet to go out, I thought it seemed a little looser in the front, down where my mouth is.

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.

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.