Friday Afternoon Interlude (Lucky and Good Edition)
How many good things have I been so lucky or blessed to experience this week?
When the weather breaks enough to ride into work in fingerless gloves, a wool layer thinner, sans long johns and balaclava, that’s a good time.
When you take on the previously undefeated office foosball champ, slam fireballs at him from the back row, take a few blurry bombs yourself, and emerge victorious ten-eight… man, that’s a good time.
When the KickBack’s you bought on Valentines Day Special arrive, each box containing two little heart-shaped candies from our sweethearts at Xtracycle, and then they install in about 15 minutes, and then within 30 seconds you can tell that things you thought were perfect have just gotten even a little bit better, that’s a good time. Totally.
When the new laptop shows up, it’s a sturdy chassis with a rock solid keyboard and comes up flawlessly, that’s a good time. When you figure that, with your schedule, it’ll probably take a week to build it out as a dual-boot XP/Ubuntu lappy with all the updates and packages you want, and then you knock it out in a couple of hours, that’s a really good time. Then when Ubuntu sees your wireless, your NVidia video card, and your sound card without any special procedures or workarounds, that’s a great time. When it proceeds to suspend to RAM perfectly, that’s amazing, and when it handles suspend to disk perfectly without any tinkering whatsoever, that’s an unnervingly good time, and you’re not quite sure which world you woke up in. But wherever it is, you want to stay, for good times abound there.
When you came into the third week of the month looking like you were going to hit your goal for riding miles real early, then go away for a 3-day weekend, then get sick and miss several days in the saddle, and come into week 4 lookin’ like you might not make it, that’s a challenge. When you close out week 4 with some take-the-long-way commutes and up-before-light rides through the deep dark woods, including one where it’s almost 50 freaking degrees, and then snuggle right up to your goal so you can hit it on the last day of the month, boy howdy that’s a good time.
Add in all the kissin’ and cuddlin’ and huggin’ I get on a semi-regular basis from them kids and the wife, and it gets a little hard for even a pleasure pig like myself to take. But I’ll take it, and make it look easy doin’ it.
Now, back in my oats-sowin’ days, before there were loved-ones to celebrate with, I’d have a week like this (or at least one that didn’t suck) and I’d return home on Friday afternoon with six tall-boys and a pack of delicious foreign cigarettes. I’d step through the door, check my messages, power up each stereo component, give the amp’s volume control a hard turn to starboard, and share this little gem with anyone in a 2 mile radius who wasn’t fortunate enough to be standing next to a running table saw or a revving Harley Davidson.
And on this splendid, sixty-three degree partly-cloudy Friday afternoon, I’m gonna share it with you. This one’s for those of you out there that want to be free, free to do what you want to do. It’s for those of you that wanna ride, that wanna ride their machines without being hassled by the man. And of course, it’s for those of you who, once upon a time (or, ya know, today) have come face to face with Friday night, trouble in your eyes, and proclaimed, “I wanna get loaded!”
Woo! Woooooooooooooo! WOOOOOOOOOOO!
I guess it’s just been that kinda week.
As a side note on the above, I’d set a goal of 340 miles for February, when I park Nigel tonight that’ll leave just eight more for the morning. Perfect, just need to find a coffee shop about 4 miles away. March gets lighter, warmer, and there’s 3 more days, so 400 seems like the right spot to shoot for. That’s just 15 more miles each week, just one more pleasant hour spent crankin’ with reasonable vigor through these Mid-Atlantic forests as green pixels starts to emerge in the branches. I think it’s gonna be a good time.
Have a great weekend! Do eet! Doo eet now!
[Update]: This week: 101 miles and change. This month: 340.45. That’s clearing the bar and hoping your t-shirt doesn’t catch it on the way over. What a goddam gorgeous morning.
Tags: Entertaining Interludes
